Broken Link Checker & Bulk URL Status Checker

Broken Link Checker & Bulk URL Status Checker

Find broken links and 404s: bulk-check URL status codes and redirect chains for SEO specialists, website maintainers and migration teams. Check a supplied URL list or crawl same-hostname links to depth 2, inspect SEO tags and optionally verify links to a known target. This is not a backlink-discovery index.

First 25 saved URL checks of every run are free; after that, $2 per 1,000 saved URL checks. Saved error and robots-denial diagnostics count toward the free prefix and are billable after it; there is no per-anchor fee. The Pricing tab is authoritative. Apify plan allowances and any applicable platform/storage charges are separate.

Example output (illustrative abbreviated record, not a captured result):

{"url":"https://example.com/","statusCode":200,"finalUrl":"https://example.com/","title":"Example Domain","redirectChain":[]}

What does Bulk URL Status & Backlink Checker do?

Bulk-check HTTP status codes, redirect chains, SEO metadata and existing backlinks from a URL list, or crawl links from a supplied page to depth 0–2 on the same hostname. Verify that your target URL or domain appears in real HTML anchors, including anchor text and nofollow, sponsored and ugc attributes.

This is a lightweight plain-HTTP link checker and API, not a search-engine backlink index. It does not discover who links to you, execute JavaScript, solve CAPTCHAs or bypass access controls. Example Domain is the one-click public test page.

Why use a bulk URL and broken-link checker?

• Audit migrations, redirects, broken links, canonical tags and noindex directives.
• Verify purchased placements or known referring pages without a browser.
• Trace each redirect's HTTP status, raw Location and resolved destination.
• Run scheduled checks or call through the Apify API; export results to your integrations.
• Bound work using maximum results, request timeouts, retries and response-size limits.

Network requests are serialized per hostname, with a default 750 ms pause between requests; separate hosts can run concurrently. Robots rules are checked before every page, including redirect destinations. No paid proxy is used.

What data can this Actor extract?

Field	Type	Meaning
url, sourceUrl, depth	string/integer	Checked URL and crawl provenance
statusCode, finalUrl	integer/string	Final HTTP response and destination
redirectChain	array	Each hop: URL, status, raw Location, resolved URL
responseTimeMs, attempts, method	integer/string	Full check elapsed time, attempt count and final HEAD/GET method
contentType, title, canonicalUrl	string	Response and HTML metadata
metaRobots, xRobotsTag, noindex	string/boolean	Observed indexing directives
target, linked, matchedLinks	string/boolean/array	Target verification and matching anchors with rel flags
robotsAllowed, error, checkedAt	boolean/string	Access diagnostic and UTC check start

Missing or unverified values are null, not invented. Each unique normalized input/crawled URL produces at most one saved row. Broken URLs, robots denials and transport failures are useful diagnostic results and count as saved results.

How to check URLs and backlinks

1. Paste public HTTP(S) URLs into URLs to check, or enter Page to crawl.
2. Choose crawl depth 0 (seeds only), 1 or 2. Crawling follows anchors only on the exact seed hostname, not sibling subdomains. Cross-host redirects are traced, but their external anchors are not added to the crawl.
3. Optionally enter a target domain or URL to verify links. Choose domain (including subdomains) or url matching.
4. Set a result limit, start the run and open the dataset.

How much does it cost?

First 25 saved URL checks of every run are free; after that, $2 per 1,000 results. One result = one saved unique URL check, including its status/error, redirect chain, available SEO metadata and optional target-link verification.

This Actor is public with pay-per-event pricing. The Pricing tab shows the current event price. There is no per-anchor fee: all matching anchors observed on a page are part of that page's result. After the first 25 saved checks, the Actor stops saving rows when its event charge limit is reached. Apify plan allowances and any applicable platform/storage charges are separate from this Actor's per-run free prefix.

Input

See the input tab for full configuration options. You can combine urls and pageUrl; duplicates and fragments are removed. Empty input checks https://example.com/ and completes with a non-empty dataset.

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com/"],
  "target": "iana.org",
  "targetMatch": "domain",
  "crawlDepth": 0,
  "maxResults": 10,
  "maxConcurrency": 5,
  "perHostDelayMs": 750,
  "headFirst": true,
  "timeoutSeconds": 20,
  "maxRetries": 1,
  "maxRedirects": 5,
  "maxResponseBytes": 2000000
}

Exact URL matching uses the URL standard's normalization, preserves path/query/trailing-slash differences and ignores fragments. Domain matching includes the named hostname and its subdomains, not lookalike suffixes. A www hostname is not automatically equivalent to its parent domain. Targets are compared with anchor destinations; redirects at the target are not independently resolved.

Output

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel. Nested redirect and anchor details are best preserved in JSON. Simplified illustrative rows:

[
  {"url":"https://example.com/","statusCode":200,"title":"Example Domain","target":"iana.org","linked":true,"matchedLinks":[{"url":"https://iana.org/domains/example","anchorText":"Learn more","rel":[],"nofollow":false,"sponsored":false,"ugc":false}]},
  {"url":"https://example.com/missing","statusCode":404,"linked":null,"error":"HTTP 404"}
]

SUMMARY contains the saved count, queued count and stop reason. STATE contains the remaining queue and saved URLs for migration/resurrection. Ordinary new runs start clean; explicit resurrection resumes saved work. Storage and charge operations cannot be transactional: an interruption precisely between saving and billing/checkpointing may require reconciliation before resurrecting a monetized run.

Advanced options and limits

HEAD is tried first. HTML pages are fetched with GET to collect metadata; HEAD failures or a missing Content-Type fall back to GET. For non-HTML content a successful HEAD may be enough. redirectChain, final status and headers describe the authoritative final attempt, not a merge of HEAD/GET/retry histories. Redirect loops and excess hops are reported. Response time includes robots requests, queues, delays and retry backoff, not just server latency.

Retries cover network errors, HTTP 429 and selected transient 5xx responses; access denials are not evaded. Timeout applies to each DNS lookup and each HTTP request, not to an entire multi-hop check. Body size is bounded; oversized responses produce an error rather than a partial HTML claim. Use lower concurrency for large HTML pages; default memory is 256 MB and the platform run timeout is 1,800 seconds.

Robots checking is always enabled, even for supplied URL lists. Missing robots (404/410) allows access; denied, challenged, unreadable or unavailable robots fails closed. Robots Crawl-delay can extend the configured wait. Public DNS addresses are validated and pinned for each connection; local/private/reserved addresses, credentials, unsupported schemes and ports other than 80/443 are refused. HTTPS certificate verification stays enabled.

FAQ and support

Is this a backlink discovery tool?

No. Supply the referring pages you want to verify. There is no web-wide backlink index, authority score or historical discovery feed.

Why is linked null?

Verification was not requested or HTML could not be inspected. false means HTML was inspected and no matching anchor was present. JavaScript-created links are not visible to this plain-HTTP Actor. A link's presence does not imply search-engine credit.

Does noindex mean Google has removed the page?

No. It reports observed noindex or none in robots/googlebot/bingbot meta tags or X-Robots-Tag. Agent-specific directives are preserved in raw fields; interpret them for your intended crawler. Non-HTML headers are available, but HTML metadata is null when no body was fetched.

Why did a URL fail?

Read error and robotsAllowed. Fix invalid URLs, reduce concurrency, or ask the site owner for permission. Do not use this Actor to bypass robots rules, authentication or CAPTCHA protections. HTTP errors are dataset diagnostics rather than reasons to fail the entire bulk run.

Use only public pages you are authorized to check and comply with site terms. Titles and anchor text can contain personal data; avoid personal-data targets and handle any incidental data under applicable law. The Actor does not intentionally harvest contact information. Report reproducible problems in the Issues tab; use the API tab for programmatic access.