Developers

Shorten Magic API

Create short links from your own code with a single JSON request.

Public API access is currently closed. Requests to the endpoint return 403 for now. Contact us if you'd like access for your project.

Overview

The API has one endpoint. Send the long URL as JSON (or as a normal form post) and you get the short link back. Links created through the API are public, just like links created on the home page.

Endpoint

https://www.shortenmagic.com/api/shorten

Create a link

POST/api/shorten

Field	Type	Description
url	string	Required. The destination URL. If you leave out the scheme, https:// is added.
alias	string	Optional custom ending, 3–30 characters: letters, numbers, - and _.

If the same URL was already shortened without a custom alias, the API returns the existing short link instead of creating a new one.

Responses

New links are reviewed before they start redirecting, so a new link returns 202 with "pending": true. If the same URL is already live, you get the existing link back with 200. The body looks like this:

Response · 202

{
  "ok": true,
  "pending": true,
  "short_url": "https://www.shortenmagic.com/fallsale",
  "code": "fallsale",
  "url": "https://examplestore.com/campaign",
  "message": "Your link was received and will start working after a quick review."
}

Errors

Errors return {"ok": false, "error": "…"} with a message you can show to your users.

Code	Meaning
400	The URL is invalid, or the alias is invalid or already taken.
405	The request wasn't a POST.
429	Too many links from your IP address in the last hour.
500	Something went wrong on our side. Try again in a moment.

Rate limits

Each IP address can create up to 30 links per hour. Need more for a real project? Tell us about it.

cURL

curl -X POST https://www.shortenmagic.com/api/shorten \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url":"https://examplestore.com/campaign","alias":"fallsale"}'

PHP

$ch = curl_init('https://www.shortenmagic.com/api/shorten');
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
    CURLOPT_POST           => true,
    CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
    CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER     => ['Content-Type: application/json'],
    CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS     => json_encode(['url' => 'https://examplestore.com/campaign']),
]);
$res = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
echo $res['short_url'] ?? $res['error'];

JavaScript

const res = await fetch('https://www.shortenmagic.com/api/shorten', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ url: 'https://examplestore.com/campaign' })
});
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.short_url);