paste.rs

What It Is

paste.rs is a “Rocket Powered Pastebin,” a lightweight text/code snippet sharing service built on Rocket. It provides a web form, a simple HTTP API, and command-line usage, with the core goal of letting developers quickly upload raw text and turn it into an accessible link.

Core Features

Its API design is very straightforward: send a POST request with raw data to https://paste.rs/, and it returns a paste link; GET /<id> retrieves the content as plain text; GET /<id>.<ext> processes the content based on the extension—for example, md, mdown, and markdown are rendered as HTML, known code extensions receive syntax highlighting, and known format extensions return the corresponding Content-Type; DELETE /<id> deletes an existing paste. The page also provides examples for uploading files with PowerShell, uploading from stdin, and wrapping it as a command-line function, showing that it is well suited to scripted usage.

Pricing and Limits

The main text does not mention an account system, paid plans, or commercial support, so its pricing information can only be considered undisclosed. One thing to note is that the page clearly states that “Pasting is heavily rate limited,” meaning uploads are subject to strict rate limits. Also, if the content exceeds the server’s maximum upload size, it may return 206 PARTIAL, indicating that only part of the content was uploaded, though the specific maximum size is not stated.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are that it is extremely minimal, easy to use, and requires no SDK—any language capable of sending HTTP requests can integrate with it. Markdown rendering and code highlighting also make it more suitable for developer communication than a plain text dump. The status code behavior is clearly documented, and 201 and 206 help scripts determine whether an upload was completed in full. The downside is that product information is sparse: it does not specify data retention, privacy policy, maximum upload size, rate-limit rules, authentication mechanisms, whether it is open source or self-hostable, nor are there official SDKs or ecosystem integrations.

Who It’s For

It is suitable for individual developers, operations engineers, and technical support staff who need to temporarily share logs, error stacks, configuration snippets, Markdown drafts, or small pieces of code. It is less suitable for scenarios requiring access control, long-term storage, auditing, enterprise compliance, or high-frequency automated uploads.

Access in China

The extracted text does not provide information about accessibility from mainland China, so actual availability should be verified through network testing.