URL Unshortener

Expand bit.ly, t.co and other short links to see the final destination and its real domain before you click.

URL Unshortener tool

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Example

Input: https://bit.ly/3DKWm5t

Result: Final destination https://www.youtube.com/, destination domain youtube.com (link redirects)

A real unshorten.me response from September 25, 2026. The destination differs from the short link, and youtube.com is highlighted as the site that controls the page.

  1. Paste the short link into the Short link box.
  2. Tap Unshorten link. The link is sent to unshorten.me, which follows the redirects on its own server.
  3. Read the final destination and the highlighted domain, and check it letter by letter.
  4. Note any warnings about international characters, plain http or IP addresses.
  5. Copy the destination, or tap Open destination only if you trust the domain.

Where Does a Short Link Really Go?

This tool expands a short link, such as a bit.ly or t.co address, and shows the page it finally leads to. You see the full destination URL and its domain, highlighted, before you decide whether to click.

Short links hide where they go. That is handy in a post but risky in a text message or email, because a scam link looks just like a real one. The part to check is the domain, the name just before the ending such as .com. In www.paypal.com.secure-login.net, the site in control is secure-login.net, not PayPal. The tool highlights that part, so a lookalike such as paypa1.com stands out. It also flags three warning signs. These are international characters in the domain (shown as xn--), a page on plain http, and an address that is a bare IP number.

The lookup is done by unshorten.me, a free service. Your browser sends it the short link, and its server follows the redirects, so the link never opens on your device. The tool never opens the destination for you either. It shows the address as text, plus a link you must tap yourself. unshorten.me allows only a few new links per hour from each network (10 in our tests), and the tool shows how many are left. Links it has resolved before come from its database and do not count. Expired links cannot be resolved, and some shorteners block automated checks.

Once you have the destination, paste it into the URL Parser to see its path and query parameters one by one. For links rewritten by Outlook or other email scanners, the Safelink Decoder unwraps them without any network request.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

Only once you know where it goes. A short link can point to any page, including a fake login form or a file download. Expand it first, then check that the highlighted domain belongs to the company you expect, letter by letter. If the message was unexpected or urgent, go to the site by typing its address yourself instead.
Paste it into this tool and tap Unshorten link. unshorten.me follows the redirects on its own server and sends back the final address, so nothing opens on your phone or computer. The same works for t.co, tinyurl, ow.ly and most other shorteners, including chains where one short link points to another.
The most common reasons are an expired or mistyped link, a shortener that blocks automated requests, or the hourly limit on new links from your network. Some links only redirect after a login, a cookie banner or a script runs, and a server-side check may not get past that. Check the link for typos, wait a while, and try again.
It marks an internationalized domain name, written in an ASCII form called Punycode. Such domains can contain letters from other alphabets, such as Cyrillic, that look almost the same as Latin ones. Scammers use this to make a fake domain look like a real brand. The tool shows the xn-- form so the trick is visible.
The shortener sees a request from the unshorten.me server, not from your device or IP address. It may still count as a click in the link statistics, so a sender watching those numbers could notice one extra visit. It cannot tell that it was you.

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