Where does this link actually go, and who gets paid when I click it

Because cleaning removes analytics parameters, not attribution. Measured on an Amazon URL carrying both, stripped_tracking_params came back as ["utm_source"] while tag=test-20 survived into both canonical_url and cleaned_url. That is deliberate: silently deleting an affiliate tag would break someone's revenue attribution without telling them. If you want a genuinely bare URL, take the keys listed in affiliate.affiliate_params and remove them yourself — the response names them precisely so you can.

No, and it says so rather than implying otherwise. threat_intel returns status "phase2_needs_auth_key" with a note stating these are heuristic risk flags and not a malware database — real intelligence from abuse.ch URLhaus or Google Safe Browsing needs a key we do not ship. What you do get is honest structural signal: risk_score, flags such as non_https_final, domain_changed telling you the final host differs from the one you were given, and final_is_https. A measured plain-http URL scored 22 with one flag. Use it to triage, never as a security verdict.

Not necessarily. A measured call on a bit.ly path that does not exist returned status 200, hop_count 0, final_url identical to the input and final_domain still bit.ly — the shortener served its own page rather than redirecting. Check hop_count and whether final_domain changed, not just the status code. is_short_link true combined with hop_count 0 is the signature of a dead or invalid short link.

The URL pattern, which is why it still works when the page does not. A measured Amazon link returned status 404 and page_title "Page Not Found", yet product_hint still extracted possible_product_id "B08N5WRWNW" and set is_product_url true, because the /dp/<ASIN>/ shape is unambiguous. That is useful — you can classify a link without a successful fetch — but it means the id is a well-formed candidate, not proof the product exists. Confirm it with the engine named in engine_hint.

Each hop carries its own url, HTTP status, host, content_type and resolved_ips, and that IP list includes IPv6 where the host publishes it — a measured hop returned six addresses across both families. status_codes[] is the same sequence flattened, which is what you want for a quick 301-versus-302 check. hop_count is the number of redirects, so zero means the URL you passed was already final. max_hops caps how far it will follow, and redirect_loop plus stop_reason tell you why it stopped.

affiliate_type separates them: "network" means a recognized affiliate network with named parameters, and "first_party" means the merchant's own referral scheme, reported through first_party_signals. all_networks[] handles the case where a chain passes through more than one, recording which host each was seen on. A measured Amazon Associates link returned affiliate_type "network", affiliate_network "amazon_associates" and a single entry in all_networks tagged with the host it came from.

full when you have one link and want everything, because it merges resolve, normalize, affiliate, product, preview and safety into one response and one round trip. The individual actions are for volume: preview and safety both fetch the page, so calling them separately on a large list costs more than it needs to. batch is the third option, returning one resolve block per URL with its own ok flag plus count and ok_count, which is the right shape for cleaning a link table.

URL Resolver API is a ReefAPI endpoint group for url resolver It returns live JSON through POST requests under /url-resolver/v1.

Yes. ReefAPI starts with 1,000 free credits, no card required. URL Resolver calls use the same shared credit balance as every other ReefAPI engine.

No login to URL Resolver is needed for the API response. You call ReefAPI with your x-api-key header, and the playground can run live examples before you create a production key.

The page example is captured from a live resolve call, and production requests fetch live data through ReefAPI rather than a static sample.

URL Resolver actions currently cost 1 credit per successful call. Failed or blocked calls are free, and all APIs draw from one credit pool.

Yes. Connect ReefAPI once through MCP and your assistant can call url-resolver actions with the same key, credit pool and JSON envelope used by normal REST requests.

It is the managed alternative to a DIY URL Resolver scraper. Instead of building and maintaining your own scraper — proxies, headless browsers, captcha and constant breakage — you call one ReefAPI endpoint and get the same url resolver back as clean JSON.