URL shortener API

Quick start

1. Sign up free. Every account can use the API: 100 links a month to try it, and 10,000 a month on mylinq Pro.
2. Create a key in Dashboard → Short links → API. Copy it: it's shown once.
3. Make a request with the key in the Authorization header:

curl -X POST "https://mylinq.cc/api/v1/links" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MYLINQ_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://shop.example.com/sale/diwali-offer?utm_source=instagram",
    "style": "personal",
    "slug": "diwali",
    "preview": "auto",
    "expires_at": "2026-11-02T18:29:00Z"
  }'

Authentication

Send your key as a Bearer token on every request. Keys look like mlq_live_ followed by 32 characters.

Authorization: Bearer mlq_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Treat keys like passwords: call the API from your server, never from a website or mobile app that others can inspect. Make one key per app so you can revoke them separately. We store only a hash of each key.

Limits

Links created count per account per calendar month (UTC). When Pro ends, the account goes back to the Free limits; keys keep working.

Every response carries X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining and X-RateLimit-Reset (Unix seconds). When you're limited you get 429 with a Retry-After header.

Safe retries. Add an Idempotency-Key header (any unique string, like your order id) to create requests. If you send the same request again within 24 hours, you get the original response back instead of a duplicate link.

Errors

Errors use normal HTTP status codes and always have the same shape:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "slug_taken",
    "message": "That ending is already taken. Try another.",
    "param": "slug"
  }
}

The link object

{
  "id": "6ac7dd31e0f3ba3b07e96f5d",
  "short_url": "https://mylinq.cc/nila/diwali",
  "slug": "diwali",
  "style": "personal",
  "url": "https://shop.example.com/sale/diwali-offer?utm_source=instagram",
  "preview": {
    "title": "Diwali sale: 50% off everything",
    "description": "Only till Sunday. Free delivery across India.",
    "image": "https://shop.example.com/og/diwali.jpg"
  },
  "expires_at": "2026-11-02T18:29:00.000Z",
  "max_clicks": null,
  "clicks": 0,
  "disabled": false,
  "source": "api",
  "created_at": "2026-10-08T10:15:00.000Z"
}

source is "api" for links made through the API and "web" for links made in the dashboard. Both are returned by the list endpoint.

Try it

Paste a key from your dashboard and send a real request.