Redirect Chain Tracer
Follows a shortened or tracking URL through every redirect and shows the final destination.
Follows a shortened or tracking link on our server and shows you where it lands, one redirect at a time, without opening it in your browser. For a link that arrived in a text message from a number you do not recognise, that difference is the entire point.
Our server makes this request for you. Only the URL you typed is sent to it — none of your cookies or login state goes along. The server will only connect to public addresses and refuses private and internal ones.
How to use it
Paste the link without opening it
Long-press and copy rather than tap. A bare host works — https:// is assumed.
Read the chain from the top
Each hop shows its status code, the kind of redirect, the address it resolved to and the time it took. A chain that passes through several unrelated domains is a normal ad-tech pattern and also a normal phishing one.
Take the clean URL if you do want to visit
The destination is also given with utm_*, fbclid, gclid and similar identifiers removed — the same page, without the identifier that ties the visit back to you.
Common questions
Does the sender know I checked?
They see one click, from our server, with no cookies and no device details of yours. The click counter goes up by one; what it records is us, not you.
It stopped partway with an error
The chain so far is still shown, which is usually the useful part. Common causes: more than five redirects, a hop that requires a real browser, or a destination on a private address — that last one the fetcher refuses outright.
Is the destination safe just because it resolved?
No. This tells you where a link goes, not whether what is there is trustworthy. A convincing lookalike domain resolves as cleanly as the real one — the point is that you now get to read the address before deciding.
Why does it not follow a JavaScript redirect?
The chain is read from HTTP status codes and Location headers only; no page is executed. A destination reached by script or a meta refresh is where the trail stops, and the last hop shown is the page that would have moved you.
Feed it from
HTTP Header Inspector
Fetches a URL and shows the full response headers, redirect chain, timings and compression used.
URL Parser & Query Editor
Splits a URL into its parts, shows query parameters as an editable table and rebuilds the result.
Broken Link Checker
Extracts up to 100 links from a page, or takes a pasted list, and checks each in parallel — status, redirect target and response time, HEAD first and GET when refused.
Suspicious URL Check
Inspects a link’s shape before you open it — lookalike characters, IP-literal hosts, @ tricks, deep subdomains, odd ports, shorteners — and on request traces its redirects and looks up the domain’s registration date. No reputation database.
Next
These accept what this tool produces, so the result can go straight in.
HTTP Header Inspector
Fetches a URL and shows the full response headers, redirect chain, timings and compression used.
Link Preview Debugger
Reads Open Graph and Twitter card tags from a URL and renders how the link will look when shared.
URL Parser & Query Editor
Splits a URL into its parts, shows query parameters as an editable table and rebuilds the result.
Suspicious URL Check
Inspects a link’s shape before you open it — lookalike characters, IP-literal hosts, @ tricks, deep subdomains, odd ports, shorteners — and on request traces its redirects and looks up the domain’s registration date. No reputation database.
DNS Lookup
Queries A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS, SOA, SRV, CAA and PTR records over DoH, with TTL and the DNSSEC bit shown, from Cloudflare or Google.
HTTP Request Builder
Composes and sends a GET/POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE/HEAD request with custom headers and a body, and shows the status, headers, body and timing — without ever forwarding cookies or Authorization.