The share card is the ad for your link
When a link gets shared, almost nobody reads the URL — they look at the card: the headline, the one-line description, the image. That card is what decides whether your link gets a click, a scroll-past, or worse, looks broken. And you don’t control it by hoping; you control it with a handful of meta tags in your page’s <head>. When those tags are set well, every platform renders a clean, deliberate card. When they’re missing, platforms improvise — pulling a random image, truncating the wrong text, or showing nothing but a bare link. This tool exists so you see the real card before you publish, across every place a link actually gets posted.
The four tags that do the work
Behind every good share card are essentially four Open Graph tags. og:titleis the headline — keep it under about 65 characters so it doesn’t get cut. og:description is the snippet underneath; 50 to 160 characters is the readable range. og:imageis the picture, and it should be 1200×630 (a 1.91:1 ratio) so Facebook, LinkedIn, and X’s large card all render it without cropping — the image resizer will fit any image to that, and the image-sizes guide covers the ratios. Finally, twitter:card tells X whether to show a big image or a small thumbnail. Set those four and the score on this page climbs into the green; the report tells you exactly which are missing.
Why the same link looks different everywhere
Each platform reads the tags slightly differently, which is why this tool shows six cards instead of one. X checks the twitter:* tags first and falls back to Open Graph; Google’s search result leans on the <title>and meta description rather than the image; Slack and Discord build a compact unfurl with the favicon and a smaller image. A card that looks great on Facebook can still be wrong on X if the image ratio is off or the card type isn’t set. Seeing all six at once is how you catch the platform-specific surprise before a follower does.
When the preview won’t update
The one quirk worth knowing: platforms cachethe card. The first time a link is shared, the platform fetches and stores its preview, then keeps serving that stored version even after you fix the tags. So if you updated og:image yesterday and the old one still shows on LinkedIn, the tags aren’t broken — the cache is stale. Force a refresh with the platform’s own debugger (Facebook’s Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn’s Post Inspector), which re-fetches your page. This tool always reads your page live, so what you see here is your current markup — handy for confirming the fix landed before you go chase the caches.
Frequently asked questions
What is a link preview, and why does it matter?
A link preview — or share card — is the title, description, and image box that appears when someone posts your link on social media, in a chat, or in search. It's effectively the ad for your link: most people decide whether to click based on that card alone, not the URL. The card is built from the page's Open Graph and meta tags, so if those are missing or weak, platforms guess (often badly) and your link shows up as a bare URL or a cropped, wrong image. This tool shows you the card every major platform will generate, so you catch problems before you post instead of after.
Does it show the Facebook, X, and LinkedIn link preview?
Yes — paste a URL and it renders the share card the way each platform actually builds it: Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, and a Google result, side by side. Each reads the page's Open Graph and Twitter Card tags a little differently, so a link can look perfect on one and broken on another — seeing all of them at once, plus a scored report of which tags are missing or undersized, lets you fix it before you post rather than after the bad card is already cached.
Is this a Twitter Card validator?
Yes — paste your URL and it reads your twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:image, and twitter:description tags, renders the exact card X builds from them, and flags anything missing or undersized in the scored report. It's a practical replacement for X's old Card Validator, which was retired and never replaced — X no longer gives you a first-party way to preview a card. Worth knowing: X reads the twitter:* tags first and falls back to your Open Graph tags, so if you've only set the og:* tags plus twitter:card, the preview here still shows what X will actually display.
Which meta tags control the share card?
Four do most of the work. og:title sets the headline, og:description sets the snippet underneath, og:image sets the picture (1200×630 is the safe size), and twitter:card tells X whether to show a large image or a thumbnail. og:url, og:site_name, and og:type fill in the details. X reads the twitter:* tags first and falls back to the og:* ones, so you usually only need the Open Graph set plus twitter:card. The scored report on this page checks each of these and tells you exactly what to add.
I updated my tags but the old preview still shows. Why?
Because platforms cache the card. When a link is first shared, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and others fetch and store its preview — and they keep serving that stored version for a while even after you change the tags. The fix is to force a re-scrape using each platform's own debugger (Facebook's Sharing Debugger, LinkedIn's Post Inspector, X's old Card Validator), which re-fetches your page and refreshes their cache. This tool always fetches your page fresh, so what you see here is your current tags — the lag is on the platform's side, not yours.
What's the ideal share image size?
1200×630 pixels, a 1.91:1 ratio — that's the size Facebook, LinkedIn, and X's large card all render cleanly without cropping. Going larger (e.g. 2400×1260 at the same ratio) keeps it crisp on high-density screens. Avoid square or portrait images for the share card; they get letterboxed or cropped awkwardly. If you need to resize an image to that ratio, our image resizer handles it, and the image-sizes guide covers the ratios in depth.
Is anything stored when I preview a link?
No. The tool fetches the page's meta tags to build the preview and returns them to you — nothing about the URL or its contents is saved on our side, and there's no account or history. The previews and the edit fields all run in your browser. We only read the public meta tags any social platform would read; we don't log in, scrape content, or store the result.
Can I preview a link before the page is public?
Only if the page is reachable at a public URL — the tool fetches the page the same way a social platform would, so a draft behind a login or on localhost can't be read. The workaround is the edit fields here: type in the title, description, and image you plan to use and the previews update live, so you can design the card before the page ships, then re-check the real URL once it's live.