When you need a colleague to look at a JSON payload, pasting it into chat often breaks the formatting or gets cut off. The JSON Formatter can instead turn your document into a link that opens the same data, formatted, in the editor. This guide explains how share links work, their limits, and how to share safely.

Create a share link

Paste or load your JSON into the JSON Formatter.
Click the Share button in the editor panel's toolbar.
The link is copied to your clipboard. Send it to anyone; when they open it, the JSON loads into the editor.

How it works

The editor compresses your JSON with the LZ-String algorithm and puts the result in the link itself, in a data query parameter:

text
https://www.formatjson.com/?data=N4IgdghgtgpiBcIDGAGEBfIA

Nothing is saved in a database. The link is the data, which has a few consequences:

No expiry. A link works for as long as the site does, and it can't be revoked. Deleting the message you sent doesn't invalidate the link.
Anyone with the link can read the data. There's no password or access control.
The link travels like any URL. Opening it sends the full URL, including the data parameter, to the web server, as with any web page. It can also end up in browser history, chat link previews, proxy logs and analytics tools along the way.

Size limits

Compression helps a lot for typical JSON, which is full of repeated key names, but share links still have practical limits:

Browsers handle very long URLs, but many chat apps, email clients and link shorteners truncate links at a few thousand characters.
Some servers and proxies reject URLs longer than about 8,000 characters.

As a rule of thumb, share links work well for payloads up to a few tens of kilobytes. For anything larger, send the file itself, or trim it down to the part that matters. Handle large JSON shows how to extract a subset with jq.

Share safely

Because share links can't be revoked and pass through several systems, treat them like posting the data in plain text in the same channel:

Remove secrets first. Tokens, API keys, passwords and cookies should never go into a share link. If one does, rotate the credential.
Mask personal data. Replace real emails, names and addresses with placeholders. Redact / sanitize JSON has patterns that keep the data useful.
Share the minimum. If the question is about one object, share that object, not the whole response.

For a checklist, see JSON privacy & safety tips.

Alternatives for sensitive or large data

Send a file through a channel your team already trusts, such as a ticket attachment or a private repository.
Use a gist or snippet with private visibility if your team uses GitHub or GitLab.
Share a reproduction instead of the data. A small, synthetic example that triggers the same bug is often more useful than the original payload and carries no risk.

Tips for useful shared JSON

Format before sharing. The recipient sees exactly what you see, so format the document and, if it helps, sort the keys for easier reading.
Say what to look at. Point to the path of the field you're asking about, for example $.orders[2].status. The editor's JSONPath panel can copy it for you; see JSONPath examples.
Share both sides of a comparison. When asking "why are these different?", put one document in each editor panel so the recipient can use Compare; see How to compare two JSON files.