URL Shortener Resolver

Resolve shortened URLs to detect phishing, fraud, and affiliate hijacking by revealing the final destination behind bit.ly, t.co, tinyurl, and other shortener services. Malicious actors routinely hide dangerous destinations behind short links — bulk-resolve them before they reach your users. Process hundreds of URLs in parallel with full redirect chain visibility.

Features

• Full redirect chain — traces every hop from the short URL to the final destination
• Universal shortener support — works with bit.ly, t.co, tinyurl, goo.gl, ow.ly, and any HTTP redirect-based shortener
• Bulk resolution — resolve hundreds of shortened URLs concurrently in a single run
• Phishing detection — reveal hidden destinations to identify malicious or deceptive links
• Custom User-Agent — configure the UA string to handle shorteners that block non-browser requests
• Error resilience — reports errors per-URL without stopping the entire batch

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	No	["https://bit.ly/3VqFLMp"]	List of shortened URLs to resolve to their final destinations
url	string	No	—	Single shortened URL to resolve (use urls for bulk processing)
maxRedirects	integer	No	10	Maximum number of redirects to follow per URL (0-30). Increase for deeply chained shorteners
timeoutSeconds	integer	No	15	Request timeout per URL in seconds (1-120)
concurrency	integer	No	10	Number of URLs to resolve in parallel (1-50)
userAgent	string	No	Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; ...)	User-Agent header string. Some shorteners block non-browser UAs — use a browser-like string if needed

Input Example

{
  "urls": [
    "https://bit.ly/3VqFLMp",
    "https://t.co/abc123",
    "https://tinyurl.com/example"
  ],
  "maxRedirects": 15,
  "concurrency": 20
}

Output

Each shortened URL produces one dataset record with the final destination, full redirect chain, and status.

Key output fields:

• inputUrl (string) — the shortened URL as submitted
• finalUrl (string | null) — the resolved destination URL (null if resolution failed)
• redirectChain (array) — ordered list of intermediate URLs in the redirect chain
• finalStatus (number | null) — HTTP status code of the final destination
• error (string | null) — error message if resolution failed
• checkedAt (string) — ISO 8601 timestamp

Output Example

{
  "inputUrl": "https://bit.ly/3VqFLMp",
  "finalUrl": "https://www.example.com/landing-page?utm_source=social",
  "redirectChain": [
    "https://bit.ly/3VqFLMp",
    "https://www.example.com/landing-page?utm_source=social"
  ],
  "finalStatus": 200,
  "error": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-03-09T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Event	Cost
URL Resolved	$0.001

Pay only for URLs successfully resolved. Respects your per-run spending limit.

Use Cases

• Phishing investigations — bulk-resolve short links from suspicious emails or messages to identify malicious destinations
• Affiliate fraud detection — uncover affiliate link hijacking by tracing redirect chains back to the true destination
• Brand protection — monitor shortened URLs shared on social media to detect unauthorized use of your brand or domains
• Ad campaign QA — verify that campaign short links resolve to the correct landing pages with proper UTM parameters
• Threat intelligence feeds — resolve URLs in bulk from IOC feeds to enrich threat data with final destinations

Related Actors

Actor	What it adds
Redirect Chain Analyzer	Analyze full redirect chains for any URL — not just shorteners — with status codes at every hop
Security Headers Analyzer	Audit the security headers of resolved destinations to assess landing page safety
Broken Links Checker	Crawl sites for broken links including shortened URLs that may have expired