Turn URLs into structured Open Graph data
Send a GET request with a URL.
Get back everything you need to render a rich link card in your app – the kind you see in Slack, iMessage, or Twitter when someone pastes a link.
What is Exabase's link preview API?
Exabase Link Preview takes any URL and returns its metadata as JSON.
Paste a URL and get back structured metadata: title, description, image, favicon, site name. The tool runs on the Exabase Link Preview API, which fetches and parses pages in real time, including those rendered with JavaScript.
Response includes:
Title
Description
Preview image
Destination URL
Canonical URL
Locale
Site name
Full image/icon details (dimensions, file size, MIME type)
When you need the full page
Link Preview returns surface-level metadata. If you need the full page content as structured, searchable text chunks, that's what Extract does. Extract processes the entire page and returns JSON with text split into chunks, ready to feed into a RAG pipeline or index with Deep Search.
Build it into your app
The Link Preview API is a single GET request. Pass a URL, get JSON back. For higher rate limits and access to the full Extract API, grab an API key.
It works well for enriching knowledge bases with preview metadata, generating link cards in chat interfaces, or validating URLs before storing them as Resources in Exabase.
The API reference and the Link Preview docs cover everything you need to integrate.
How do I use it?
Get your API key
Free, no credit card:
Sign up at exabase.io → copy your API key from the dashboard
Fetch a link preview
GET request:
Get JSON back
Four fields. One request. No HTML parsing, no headless browser, no Puppeteer.
What you get back
Field
Type
Description
title
string
Page title
description
string
Page description
image
string
Preview image URL (og:image)
url
string
Destination URL
canonical
string
Canonical URL
locale
string
Page locale (e.g. en_US)
site_name
string
Site name
image_x
number
Image width in pixels
image_y
number
Image height in pixels
image_size
number
Image file size in bytes
image_type
string
Image MIME type (e.g. image/png)
icon
string
Favicon URL
icon_x
number
Favicon width in pixels
icon_y
number
Favicon height in pixels
icon_size
number
Favicon file size in bytes
icon_type
string
Favicon MIME type
Use cases
Works with other Exabase features
Why Exabase
FAQs
What is Exabase?
Exabase is infrastructure for AI agents. It gives your agents memory, versioned file storage, AI deep search, and context automation through a set of APIs. Store what your agent learns, search inside any content type, and keep knowledge bases current automatically. Built for production use.
Who uses Exabase?
Developers and teams building AI agents, copilots, and RAG applications. If your agent needs to remember things between sessions, store and retrieve files, search across documents and media, or stay up to date without manual maintenance, Exabase handles that infrastructure so you can focus on your product.
How fast is it?
Cached URLs return instantly. First-time fetches depend on the target site, typically 1-3 seconds. JavaScript rendering adds 1-2 seconds when needed.
What if the page doesn't have Open Graph tags?
The API falls back to standard HTML: the <title> tag, meta description, and the first usable image. You'll always get at least a title and URL.
What about sites that block scrapers?
Custom integrations with major content providers (YouTube, Amazon, Twitter, Airbnb, The Guardian, and others) ensure reliable results on the most-shared URLs. Some sites explicitly block all third-party access via robots.txt, and those return a 423 error.
Can I validate the og:image before displaying it?
Yes. Request the image_x, image_y, image_size, and image_type fields. Use these to check that the image exists, discard images that are too small, and determine portrait/landscape orientation, all without fetching the image yourself.
Can I use this from the browser (client-side)?
Yes, CORS is supported. But your API key is visible in client-side code. For production, we recommend calling the API from your backend and forwarding the result. The response is under 1KB so this adds negligible latency.
What does it cost?
Exabase has a free tier to get started. See the pricing page for details.
How is the rate limit calculated?
Rolling window. If you're on the Pro plan and make 1,000 requests between 10:15 and 11:15, you're temporarily blocked until the earliest requests in that window expire and free up capacity.
Is there a per-domain rate limit?
Yes. Requests to the same domain are limited to 1 per second, to protect smaller websites from excessive load. High-traffic domains like YouTube, Amazon, and Twitter are exempt.
What happens if the URL redirects?
The API follows redirects and returns the final destination URL in the url field and the canonical URL in the canonical field.
Can I preview URLs behind a login or paywall?
No. The API can only access publicly available pages. Login-protected URLs will return the login page's metadata or an error.
Why is a URL returning blank or wrong metadata?
Some sites don't follow Open Graph standards, load meta tags via JavaScript after page load, block crawlers via robots.txt, or use platform-specific deep links. The API handles most of these cases, but edge cases exist. If a URL consistently returns wrong data, contact support.
What's the difference between Link Preview and Extract?
Link Preview returns metadata only: title, description, image, URL. Extract returns the full page content (or from files or media), including headings, paragraphs, tables, and everything else. Same account, different endpoints.
Do you support oEmbed?
Not directly. The API returns Open Graph and standard HTML metadata. For oEmbed-specific data like embed HTML for YouTube videos or tweets, you'd need to call the provider's oEmbed endpoint separately.
Other tools
Deciding?
Ask your favourite AI about Exabase:
