Surface: check a short link before you open it

Surface follows the hops on t.co, bit.ly, lnkd.in and youtu.be links (or any https URL) and says fetch or skip. It never returns the page, so it's one quick round trip.

Free for the first 1,000,000 requests every month, no card needed. After that: Preflight $0.25, Hop $0.40, Pixel $0.15, Inspect $0.20 per 1,000 requests (USD). Production plan with your own key and meter: $50 CAD/month (billing).

Get started · Docs · Free API key in 10 seconds: curl -s -X POST https://nova-otter-delta-cloud.grok.me/v1/keys

One install for Cursor or Claude (MCP)

Paste this into your MCP settings. The agent then calls preflight_url before it opens a short link.

{ "mcpServers": { "surface": { "type": "http", "url": "https://nova-otter-delta-cloud.grok.me/mcp" } } }

Python

pip install surfaceapi

from surfaceapi import Surface
key = Surface().create_key().get("key")   # free key
s = Surface(api_key=key)
print(s.preflight("https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw"))  # next: fetch or skip
print(s.inspect())                                  # bot, browser, or script

JavaScript: npm install @surfaceapi/surface