Guide · Trust and privacy

How long does a shortened link last?

Every link here has an expiry: an hour, a day, a week, or a year for premium links. This guide explains why links expire at all, what happens at the moment they do, and how to keep one alive.

The lifetimes on offer

  • An hour: a flash link — a download that lives as long as a meeting, a queue that closes with the day.
  • A day: a link for one event: the menu of tonight, the form that closes at midnight.
  • The free maximum: what the operator sets as the longest free lifetime (a week by default).
  • A year: what a premium pack buys, renewable with another credit.

What happens at expiry

The link stops opening to its destination. The address answers with a page that says the link expired, so a reader who arrives late learns the truth instead of guessing. The address itself is retired, not reassigned: an expired code is never handed to a different destination, because an address that once answered is an address somebody may have written down (RFC 9110 calls the equivalent HTTP status 410 Gone — the resource was there and is deliberately no longer available).

A premium link can be renewed before or after it lapses from the key page: paste the pack key and the link's creator token, and one credit extends the lifetime. The date on the result page is the honest one — set the reminder from it rather than from memory.

Questions

How long does a free link last?

Up to the operator's free maximum — a week by default — or an hour or a day if you choose a shorter one.

How long does a premium link last?

A year from the moment the pack is paid, renewable with another credit from the same key.

Can a link last forever?

No. Every link expires; there are no perpetual links. A premium link renews, which is as close as the service gets.

Can I reuse an expired link's address?

No. An expired address is retired permanently: it answers with its expiry page and is never reassigned.

Sources

The documents this guide's statements rest on. Each link opens in a new page.

  1. RFC 9110: HTTP Semantics
  2. RFC 3986: Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax
  3. Google Safe Browsing