Here are 5 free websites to expand short URL to get the original URL.
You can use any of these websites to quickly find the long (or original) URL hidden behind a short URL. Apart from this, most of these websites are handy to find if your short URL is good enough to access. That means you can check if short URL is associated with a phishing site or not. You will also be able to extract other useful information associated with a short URL. For example, you can see the meta keywords used in the content, type of content, user agent used to find the long URL and more.
Let’s start with the first short URL extractor website present in this list.
We have also covered 4 free URL shortener services to combine several URLs into one.
CheckShortURL
CheckShortURL is my favorite website in this list to fetch the original URL from the short URL. A lot of useful information is generated by this website. For example, you will be able to find if the URL is safe to use, suspicious or malicious. It does so by providing the links of services that store listing status, trustworthiness, and other statuses of URLs. You can use Web of Trust, Google Safe Browsing, SiteAdvisor, Norton, Browser Defender, and Sucuri to find if the URL is safe to access or not.
Apart from these fantastic features, this website shows title associated with the URL, used keywords, description, and more. So almost all the useful information is fetched by this website for a particular short URL entered by you.
Unfurlr
Update 2022: This website no longer exists now. We recommend you to try some other alternative instead.
Unfurlr (a project of MailChimp) is one of the best websites in this list to expand the short URL and get the original URL. It also shows how the original URL is extracted by this website. That means you can check the user agent used to find the long URL. Before extracting the original URL, you can also manually select the user agent.
Apart from this, it can also help you to decide how safe that particular URL is? It takes the help of Web of Trust, which analyzes the domains that are referenced in the URL and generates the score of those domains based on multiple parameters. In score or result, you will be able to check the reputation, description, and confidence level of each individual domain. So pretty useful information will be in front of you which will help you to take the decision.
Read the full review.
LongURL
Update 2022: This website no longer exists. Try some other websites from this list instead.
LongURL is another good website to expand the short URL and grab the original URL. It also shows extra information related to the short URL. For example, you can see the meta keywords used for the content of that URL, meta description, and type of content (HTML or Text).
Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide the feature to find the safety level of the URL, but still it is good to explore pretty useful information related to a short URL.
KnowURL
KnowURL has also easily managed to reserve a place in this list because it does what its name suggests. You can find the long URL of any short URL and can also use few more options.
It gives options to check if URL is safe (by providing Google Safe Browsing link) and provides option to generate direct share link. There are no additional features in this website, but it is worthy to use.
Untiny
Untiny is the simplest website in this whole list. It simply extracts the original URL from any short URL provided by you. After extracting the long URL, you can open that link. The whole process of finding the original URL hidden behind short URL needs only a single mouse click.
Apart from this, you can also use its bookmarklet and Google Chrome extension. So those who prefer a particular browser can use its extension and rest of the users can access its homepage or use its bookmarklet.
Full review is here.
Conclusion:
I have covered from very simple to feature rich websites in this list which you can use according to your requirement. If you want to fetch the long URL only, then Untiny and all other websites fit your need. However, if you want more features like check safety level using different services, then CheckShortURL website is indeed a good choice.
