▣ DATA EXTRACTION · SEO

Generate Link Preview API

Hosted on ApyHub

What it does

The Link Preview API fetches a URL and returns the metadata you need to build a rich preview card. Send a url in a POST body and get back JSON with title, description, siteName, images, videos, favicons, mediaType, and contentType, read from the page's Open Graph and Twitter Card tags.

secure_mode is on by default and checks the URL against a malicious-URL database before fetching. Clean URLs return the preview with reported_malicious: false, and flagged URLs return the detected threat instead of metadata. Set images_property_type to og or twitter to choose which tags supply the image, and pass user_agent, accept_language, or allow_redirects to control how the page is fetched. URLs without a protocol get http:// added automatically.

Use the link preview API to unfurl links in chat apps, comment threads, and social feeds, build bookmark and read-later collections, or show a URL preview before a user leaves your site. The safety check makes it a good fit for user-submitted links.

When a page has no preview image, capture one with the Webpage Screenshot API. To give your own pages better previews, create social images with the OG Image Generator API. For links to PDFs and documents, the File Preview API renders a PNG thumbnail.

POST

Generate a link preview

https://api.eu.apyhub.com/apyhub/generate-link-preview

QUICKSTART

GUIDE

Quickstart

Generate a preview for a URL by sending the required url field in the JSON body.

curl -X POST "https://api.eu.apyhub.com/apyhub/generate-link-preview" \
  -H "apy-token: $APY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://apyhub.com"
  }'

What you'll get back

Returns a JSON object with a data field. On a normal response, data is an object containing preview metadata such as url, title, images, videos, favicons, siteName, mediaType, contentType, description, and, when secure_mode is true, reported_malicious.

{
  "data": {
    "url": "https://apyhub.com",
    "title": "ApyHub",
    "images": ["https://apyhub.com/og-image.png"],
    "videos": [],
    "favicons": ["https://apyhub.com/favicon.ico"],
    "siteName": "ApyHub",
    "mediaType": "website",
    "contentType": "text/html",
    "description": "API tools for developers",
    "reported_malicious": false
  }
}

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API key

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About this endpoint

What it does

Generates a preview for a URL by fetching the page metadata and returning it in a JSON data object. If the URL is detected as malicious while secure_mode is enabled, the response follows the malicious-URL shape instead of the normal preview metadata shape.

Request Body

Parameter	Type	Description
url	String	The URL to generate a preview for. Protocol is optional; `http://` is prepended if absent.
user_agent	String	Custom `User-Agent` header sent when fetching the URL.
secure_mode	Boolean	When `true`, the URL is checked against the malicious-URL database before fetching. Default: `true`.
accept_language	String	Custom `Accept-Language` header sent when fetching the URL.
allow_redirects	Boolean	Whether to follow HTTP redirects when fetching the URL. Default: `false`.
images_property_type	ENUM	Preferred image meta-tag property to extract. Allowed values: `og`, `twitter`. Default: `og`.

Response

Returns a JSON object with a required data field. data is either a preview metadata object or a malicious-URL object, depending on the URL lookup result.

Parameter	Type	Description
data	Object	Either the normal preview metadata object or the malicious-URL object.

Notes

If secure_mode is true, reported_malicious is present in the normal preview response and is always false for a clean URL. In the malicious-URL response, reported_malicious is true and the object includes url and threat.

▣ COMMON ERRORS

Errors any endpoint can return

400bad_request

Required parameter missing or malformed body.

401unauthorized

API key missing, revoked, or not authorized for this service.

429rate_limited

Your plan's per-second rate exceeded. Retry with exponential backoff.

503upstream_busy

Backend temporarily unavailable. Try again in a few seconds.

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CALLGenerate File Preview APIApyHub CALLBasic OG Image Generator APIApyHub CALLSEO Tags Generator APISharpAPI CALLDynamic OG Image APIWebsite Intelligence

From the blog

Reads that touch this API.

Link Preview API: Safe Link Previews Without Building a ScraperAug 5, 2026 Turn on the Secure Link Sharing using Link Preview APIJul 9, 2026 Implement Secure Web Link Preview in Your Messaging AppJul 9, 2026 Generate Fast and Lightweight File Previews for docs, PDFs, DOCX, PPTX and more.Jul 9, 2026