Redirect Chain Tracer 🔗

Follow every hop of any URL to its final destination. Redirect Chain Tracer takes a list of URLs and walks the full redirect chain — 301, 302, 307, 308, <meta http-equiv="refresh"> and JS-style hops — recording each step until it reaches the final 2xx page, a loop, or the max-hops limit. No API key, no login, no setup.

Perfect for SEO redirect audits, link tracing, security checks, and migration QA.

Roughly $0.50 per 1,000 URLs traced. No proxies required.

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What it does

For each URL the actor:

1. Issues a GET request with automatic redirect-following disabled.
2. Records the hop: { url, status_code, location, type } (the Location header resolved to an absolute URL).
3. Detects <meta http-equiv="refresh"> redirects on 2xx pages and follows them too.
4. Repeats until it hits a final 2xx, a redirect loop, or maxHops (default 15).

You get back the complete chain, the final URL, the hop count, and flags for whether it redirected and whether a loop was detected.

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Use cases

• SEO redirect audits — verify 301 vs 302, spot redirect chains that leak link equity, and catch http → https / www inconsistencies.
• Link tracing — unwrap shortened links (bit.ly, t.co, tracking URLs) to see the real destination.
• Security checks — reveal where a suspicious link actually lands before anyone clicks it.
• Migration QA — after a site move or replatform, confirm old URLs redirect cleanly to their new homes with the fewest possible hops.

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	select	trace	What to do. trace follows redirect chains.
urls	array of string	["http://github.com","http://google.com"]	Start URLs to trace. Missing http:// is added.
maxHops	integer	15	Max redirects to follow per URL before stopping.
maxItems	integer	200 (max 2000)	Max number of URLs to process per run.

Example input

{
  "mode": "trace",
  "urls": ["http://github.com", "http://google.com"],
  "maxHops": 15,
  "maxItems": 200
}

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Output

One dataset item per URL:

{
  "url": "http://github.com",
  "final_url": "https://github.com/",
  "final_status": 200,
  "hop_count": 1,
  "redirected": true,
  "chain": [
    { "url": "http://github.com", "status_code": 301, "location": "https://github.com/", "type": "http-301" },
    { "url": "https://github.com/", "status_code": 200, "location": null, "type": "http-200" }
  ],
  "is_loop": false,
  "source": "redirect-tracer",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-24T00:00:00Z"
}

Field	Description
url	The start URL you provided.
final_url	The final resolved URL after all hops.
final_status	HTTP status code of the final response.
hop_count	Number of redirects followed.
redirected	true if at least one redirect occurred.
chain	Ordered list of every hop: url, status_code, location, type.
is_loop	true if a redirect loop was detected.
source	Always redirect-tracer.
scraped_at	UTC timestamp of the trace.

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Pricing

Pay-per-event via the Apify platform — approximately $0.50 per 1,000 URLs. Lightweight HTTP requests, no proxy or browser needed.

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Related actors

• Broken Link Checker
• Website Uptime Monitor
• HTTP Headers Inspector
• Website Link Extractor

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FAQ

Does it follow meta-refresh and JavaScript redirects? Yes — <meta http-equiv="refresh"> redirects are detected and followed. Pure client-side JS redirects are noted where the page exposes them; standard HTTP and meta redirects are fully traced.

What happens with a redirect loop? The actor detects loops and stops, setting is_loop: true so you can flag the broken URL.

Do I need an API key or proxy? No. Just provide URLs and run.