Free tool

Link Inspector — is this link safe?

Paste a short link — a bit.ly, a tinyurl, a mystery redirect from a DM — and see every hop it takes, the page it finally lands on, and whether Google Safe Browsing has flagged that destination. No account, and the link is never opened in your browser.

Why inspect a short link before you click

A short link hides its destination by design. That is usually harmless — creators shorten links to keep them clean, trackable and within character limits — but it is also exactly the property phishing depends on: a link that reads bit.ly/2xW9qK looks the same whether it leads to a press release or to a fake login page.

Expanding the link first removes the guesswork. The final hostname tells you most of what you need: is it the brand's real domain or a lookalike with a letter swapped, does it use HTTPS, and does the path look like a product page or like a credential form. The chain in between tells the rest — one hop through a well-known shortener is normal, while a long relay of unfamiliar domains is a reason to walk away.

An inspector does this without the risk of visiting. Following the redirects happens on our server, so nothing runs in your browser, no cookies are set on your machine, and the destination never learns who you are.

Different question in mind? To simply expand a short URL use Unshorten URL; to find out whether a link is an affiliate link — and which network or tag it carries — use the Affiliate Link Checker.

How redirects work: 301, 302 and 307

A redirect is a small HTTP response that says “what you want is over there” — a status code plus a Location header. The inspector follows up to five of them. The status code carries real information:

301 — Moved Permanently

The resource has moved for good. Browsers cache a 301 aggressively and search engines transfer the old URL's ranking to the new one. Most URL shorteners use 301s, which is also why a shortener cannot silently change your destination later without users who already clicked still landing on the old one from cache.

302 — Found (temporary)

The resource is temporarily somewhere else, so the original URL stays canonical and browsers keep asking it every time. Trackers and affiliate networks tend to use 302s precisely because every click must pass through them to be counted.

307 — Temporary Redirect

The strict, modern version of a 302: the browser must repeat the request to the new URL with the same method and body. It matters when a form POST gets redirected — a 302 lets browsers downgrade it to a GET, a 307 does not. Its permanent counterpart is the 308.

Frequently asked questions

Does the inspector open the link in my browser?

No. Our server requests the URL, follows the redirects and reads the response headers. Nothing is loaded or rendered in your browser, and every URL in the result is shown as plain text rather than as a clickable link.

What does the Google Safe Browsing result mean?

The final destination is checked against Google's constantly updated lists of malware, phishing and unwanted-software sites. A red result means Google has flagged that page and you should not open it. A green result means it is not on the lists right now — which is reassuring, but not a guarantee, because brand-new scam pages take time to be reported. If the check could not run, the tool says so instead of guessing.

Why couldn't my link be inspected?

Three common reasons. Some servers refuse requests that do not come from a real browser, so the chain stops with an HTTP error such as 403. Links that redirect more than five times are cut off, because endless chains are themselves a red flag. And links that point at private or internal network addresses are never fetched at all, by design.