URL Redirect Tracer & Link Expander (Hop Chain)

URL Redirect Tracer Trace the full redirect chain of any URL and expand short links — every hop, status code and the final URL — in one bulk call. No API key. Built for developers who need fast, reliable, bulk results without managing servers or proxies.

Features

• One structured JSON record per url.
• Bulk + concurrent — process up to 100 urls per run.
• No proxy, no browser, no API key — fast and low-cost.
• Graceful failures: unreachable inputs return ok: false with an error; the run never crashes.

Input

{"urls": ["https://apify.com", "https://bit.ly/example"], "maxItems": 100}

Output

One record per url:

{
  "url": "https://bit.ly/example",
  "ok": true,
  "finalUrl": "https://www.example.com/page",
  "finalStatus": 200,
  "hopCount": 2,
  "redirected": true,
  "hops": [{"url": "https://bit.ly/example", "status": 301}, {"url": "https://example.com/page", "status": 301}]
}

Who it's for

• Marketers expanding shortened campaign links
• Security teams unmasking suspicious links
• Analytics & attribution pipelines
• Affiliate/link QA

How to use

1. Add your urls to the urls input field.
2. Run the Actor and read one structured record per input from the dataset.
3. Export as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or call the Actor's API from your backend.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. You provide urls; the Actor does the rest. Does it return personal data? No — only public infrastructure/metadata, never personal contact data. What formats can I export? JSON, CSV, and Excel via the dataset, or the Actor API.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: a tiny per-run start fee plus a small per-result charge. You pay only for successful results. See the Pricing tab.

Further reading

• Keyword: URL redirect tracer link expander.

Use URL Redirect Tracer & Link Expander (Hop Chain) with AI agents (MCP)

Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client this Actor as a tool through the hosted Apify MCP server. The agent sees the input fields with descriptions and example values, runs the Actor, and reads the results.

MCP server URL (this Actor only):

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=technicaldost/url-redirect-tracer

Claude Code:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=technicaldost/url-redirect-tracer" --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"

Cursor, VS Code, Claude Desktop and other clients (mcp.json or the client's MCP settings):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=technicaldost/url-redirect-tracer",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

Clients that support sign-in (such as Claude.ai connectors) can use the URL without a token and log in to Apify instead. Get your token in Apify Console → Settings → API & Integrations, or generate a ready config for your client at mcp.apify.com. In the agent the tool is named technicaldost--url-redirect-tracer; ask it, for example, to "run URL Redirect Tracer & Link Expander (Hop Chain) with {"urls": ["https://apify.com", "https://t.co"]}".

AI agents without an Apify account can also run and pay for this Actor per request with x402 agentic payments.

Run URL Redirect Tracer & Link Expander (Hop Chain) via API

Run the Actor and get its results in one call (replace YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN):

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/technicaldost~url-redirect-tracer/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://apify.com", "https://t.co"]}'

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("technicaldost/url-redirect-tracer").call(run_input={"urls": ["https://apify.com", "https://t.co"]})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript / TypeScript (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('technicaldost/url-redirect-tracer').call({"urls": ["https://apify.com", "https://t.co"]});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Long runs: start them with POST /v2/acts/technicaldost~url-redirect-tracer/runs and fetch the dataset when the run finishes, or receive a webhook.

Integrations

URL Redirect Tracer & Link Expander (Hop Chain) works with Make, Zapier, n8n, LangChain, Google Sheets, Slack, GitHub and webhooks. Schedule runs in Apify Console and send new results straight to your apps, spreadsheets or AI pipelines.

Related Actors

• Link Preview API: turn URLs into rich link previews in bulk: title, description, image, favicon, OpenGraph, Twitter Card and JSON-LD. Built for chat apps, social tools and AI agents that unfurl thousands of links.
• Bulk URL Status & Redirect Chain Checker — Check thousands of URLs for broken links, redirect chains and HTTP status in one run. Returns every hop of eac