Bulk URL Unshortener — Redirect Chain Resolver & Short Link Expander (No API Key)

Resolve thousands of shortened URLs in a single run. Paste your list of short links — bit.ly, t.co, ow.ly, TinyURL, short.link, Rebrandly and every other URL shortener — and this Actor follows every redirect hop until the final destination. Each hop is logged with its HTTP status code, redirect type (permanent/temporary), next URL and per-hop latency, so every short link expands to one clean row of redirection intelligence in structured JSON. Fast HTTP HEAD requests — no captcha solver, no headless browser, no API key, no login.

🏆 Why this URL unshortener?

Full redirect chain per URL · thousands of links per run · pure HTTP HEAD (no browser) · per-hop latency & status codes · proxy-ready · export to JSON / CSV / Excel. The unofficial URL expander / short link resolver API alternative for security analysis, OSINT, marketing link audits and data enrichment.

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✨ What this Actor does / Key features

• 🔗 Resolve any shortener — bit.ly, t.co, ow.ly, TinyURL, short.link, Rebrandly, and every custom short domain.
• 🧭 Full redirect chain — every hop captured: URL, status code, redirect type (301/302/303/307/308) and next URL.
• 🧵 Chain URLs as text — comma-separated list of all URLs in the chain for quick scanning and spreadsheet filtering.
• ⏱️ Per-hop latency — every hop records its own round-trip time; total latency for the full chain is also captured.
• 📊 One row per URL — each input URL gets exactly one row with all chain details in structured JSON.
• 🧹 Protocol auto-fix — bit.ly/xyz is automatically upgraded to https://bit.ly/xyz before resolving.
• ⚡ High concurrency — configurable parallel resolution (default 20, up to 100) for very large lists.
• 🛡️ Loop prevention — configurable max redirects (default 15); stops cleanly rather than following infinite chains.
• 🔑 No API key — uses standard HTTP HEAD requests; no external unshortening service, no captcha, no browser needed.

🚀 Quick start (3 steps)

1. Configure — paste your short URLs into URLs to Unshorten, one per line (or comma-separated). Adjust Max Redirects and Max Concurrency for big lists if you want.
2. Run — click Start. The Actor resolves every redirect chain in parallel and streams one row per URL into your dataset.
3. Get your data — open the Output tab and export to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML, or pull it via the Apify API. Filter by hopCount, isShortened or statusCode.

📥 Input

Give the Actor at least one URL in urls. Everything else is optional.

Example — expand a batch of marketing short links

{
  "urls": [
    "https://bit.ly/3abcXYZ",
    "https://t.co/xyz789",
    "https://tinyurl.com/example",
    "https://ow.ly/abc123"
  ],
  "maxRedirects": 15,
  "maxConcurrency": 20,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true }
}

Example — high-volume forensic sweep (thousands of links)

{
  "urls": ["https://bit.ly/aaa", "https://bit.ly/bbb", "https://short.link/ccc"],
  "maxRedirects": 30,
  "maxConcurrency": 100,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Example — check which URLs are already direct (no redirect)

{
  "urls": ["https://github.com/logiover", "https://example.com/landing"],
  "maxRedirects": 5
}

Field	Type	Description	Default
urls	array	Shortened URLs to resolve, one per line. Any URL works — shortened or not; non-shortened URLs return their full chain too. Protocol is added automatically if omitted. Required.	–
maxRedirects	integer	Maximum redirect hops to follow per URL before stopping. Prevents infinite loops.	15 (max 30)
maxConcurrency	integer	How many URLs to resolve in parallel. Higher is faster.	20 (max 100)
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings for the HTTP requests. Recommended to avoid per-IP rate limiting from shorteners.	Apify Proxy (datacenter)

Tip: paste full short URLs including https:// when you can. If you omit it, the Actor adds it automatically. Use Max Redirects to cap resolution depth on suspicious links, and keep Apify Proxy enabled so shorteners don't rate-limit a single IP.

📤 Output

One row per input URL — the full redirect chain, final URL, hop count and per-hop latency — exportable to JSON, CSV, Excel or XML. Here is a trimmed sample record:

{
  "originalUrl": "https://bit.ly/3abcXYZ",
  "finalUrl": "https://example.com/landing-page?utm_source=twitter",
  "isShortened": "true",
  "hopCount": "2",
  "redirectChain": "[{\"url\":\"https://bit.ly/3abcXYZ\",\"statusCode\":301,\"redirectType\":\"permanent\",\"nextUrl\":\"https://example.com/lp\",\"latencyMs\":95},{\"url\":\"https://example.com/lp\",\"statusCode\":302,\"redirectType\":\"temporary\",\"nextUrl\":\"https://example.com/landing-page?utm_source=twitter\",\"latencyMs\":42}]",
  "chainUrls": "https://bit.ly/3abcXYZ, https://example.com/lp",
  "totalLatencyMs": "162",
  "statusCode": "200",
  "resolvedAt": "2026-07-06T12:00:00.000Z"
}

💡 Use cases

• Security / phishing analysis — trace where a suspicious short link actually leads without opening it in a browser.
• Digital forensics & OSINT — map redirection chains across campaigns, ad networks and tracking links.
• Marketing link audit — verify that shortened links in emails, social posts and ads still point to the correct destination.
• SEO audit — confirm that short links used in backlinks and social profiles resolve to the right canonical URLs.
• Brand protection — scan for short links that impersonate your brand and trace where they redirect.
• Data enrichment — append resolved destinations to large URL datasets for content categorization and deduplication.

👥 Who uses it

Security analysts & SOC teams · OSINT and threat-intel researchers · digital forensics investigators · performance-marketing and affiliate teams auditing tracking links · SEO specialists · brand-protection and anti-phishing teams · data engineers enriching URL datasets.

💰 Pricing

This Actor runs on a simple pay-per-result model — you pay for the URLs you resolve, with no separate Apify platform fees to calculate. Try it on the free tier first, then scale up. See the Pricing tab on this page for the current rate.

🔍 How it works

For each URL, the Actor sends an HTTP HEAD request with followRedirect: false. When a 3xx status with a Location header is returned, the hop is logged and the Actor follows to the next URL. Each hop measures its own latency, and the process repeats until:

• A non-redirect status (2xx, 4xx, 5xx) is returned → this is the final destination.
• The max redirect limit is reached → the chain is cut and the last URL is recorded as final.
• A network/timeout/DNS error occurs → the resolution fails gracefully with an error field.

Using HEAD instead of GET makes resolution fast — no page content is downloaded, only the HTTP response headers — so thousands of short links can be resolved per run with minimal bandwidth.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

How do I resolve many short URLs at once? Paste your full list of short links into the URLs field and run the Actor once. It follows every redirect chain in parallel and returns one row per URL with the full chain captured.

Is this a free URL unshortener API without a key? There's no API key to manage. The Actor uses standard HTTP HEAD requests — no external unshortening service, no captcha solving, no headless browser. It works as an unofficial URL expander / short link resolver API alternative: provide URLs and run.

Can I unshorten URLs without an API or login? Yes. No account, login or API key is needed for any shortener — only an Apify account. The Actor resolves publicly reachable redirects over direct HTTP.

Can I trace the full redirect path? Yes — the redirectChain field contains structured JSON with every hop: the URL at each step, its HTTP status code, whether the redirect was permanent or temporary, the next URL it pointed to, and the latency of that individual hop.

Does it handle t.co / X (Twitter) short links? Yes — t.co links are standard HTTP redirects and resolve cleanly. The Actor handles 301/302/303/307/308 redirects from any shortener, including t.co, bit.ly, ow.ly, TinyURL, Rebrandly and custom short domains.

How do I find the final destination of a bit.ly link? Paste the bit.ly link into the URLs field and run the Actor; it follows every redirect hop and returns the final URL, hop count and full redirect chain, exportable as CSV or JSON.

Can I check short links for phishing without opening them? Yes. The Actor uses HTTP HEAD requests only, so it traces where a suspicious short link leads and logs each hop's status code without loading any page in a browser.

What if a short link redirects many times? The maxRedirects setting (default 15, up to 30) caps the number of hops. If the limit is reached, the chain is cut and the last URL is reported as the final destination — no infinite loops.

How do I export unshortened URLs to CSV or JSON? Run the Actor, then export the resulting dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel or XML from the Apify console or via the Apify API.

How much data can I get? You can resolve thousands of short links per run. Increase Max Concurrency for very large lists and keep Apify Proxy enabled to avoid per-IP rate limiting from shorteners.

🔗 More URL, OSINT & website tools by logiover

Building a link-intelligence or website-recon pipeline? Pair this unshortener with the rest of the toolkit:

Actor	What it does
Bulk URL Status Checker	HTTP status codes, broken-link detection & response times for large URL lists
Bulk HTTP Security Headers	Scan CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options and score security posture
Bulk SSL Certificate Checker	Expiry, issuer, chain & TLS details for thousands of domains
Bulk DNS Records Lookup	A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS, CNAME, SOA, CAA records at scale
Bulk WHOIS / RDAP Lookup	Registrar, creation/expiry dates & ownership for domain lists
Subdomain Finder	Enumerate subdomains for attack-surface mapping
Certificate Transparency Monitor	Discover domains & certs via CT logs
Sitemap to URL Crawler	Expand sitemaps into full URL lists
Wayback Machine URL Extractor	Pull historical URLs from the Internet Archive
Website Contact Scraper	Extract emails, phones & social profiles from websites
URL to Markdown	Convert any web page to clean Markdown
Bulk URL Screenshot Capture	Full-page screenshots for large URL lists

👉 Browse all logiover scrapers on Apify Store — 180+ actors across real estate, jobs, crypto, social media & B2B data.

⏰ Scheduling & integration

Schedule this Actor on Apify to re-check your link lists daily or weekly. Export results to JSON, CSV or Excel, sync to Google Sheets, or push to your database, SIEM, BI tools and webhooks through the Apify API. Connect it to Make, n8n or Zapier to build automated link-monitoring and phishing-triage pipelines.

⭐ Support & feedback

Found a bug or need an extra field? Open an issue on the Issues tab — response is usually fast. If this Actor saves you time, a ★★★★★ review on the Store page genuinely helps and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

⚖️ Legal

This Actor resolves only publicly reachable URLs and is intended for legitimate security, research, analytics and marketing use. You are responsible for complying with applicable laws and the terms of service of the URLs and shorteners you resolve.

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📝 Changelog

2026-07-06

• ✨ README overhaul: richer output sample, ready-to-run example scenarios, expanded URL/OSINT tool cross-links, and clearer quick-start.

2026-07-01

• Maintenance pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data and confirmed successful runs within the 5-minute quality window on the default input.
• Sharpened Store metadata (SEO title & description) and expanded the FAQ with high-intent, long-tail questions for easier discovery in Google and Apify Store search.
• Added ready-to-run example tasks that cover common real-world use cases.

2026-06-24

• Initial release — bulk URL unshortening with full redirect chain tracing, hop-by-hop latency, no API key, CSV/JSON export.