Broken Link Checker Pro

Find broken links across an entire website with a lightweight, HTTP-only scan. Broken Link Checker Pro is designed for SEO agencies, website owners, and maintenance teams that need clear link-status results without the cost of running a browser.

Why use Broken Link Checker Pro?

• Site-wide broken link checking — enter one website URL and scan up to 100 same-domain pages by default.
• No false broken alerts for 403/429 — access-blocked and rate-limited links are reported as blocked, not broken.
• Weekly monitoring — enable monitorMode and run the Actor from an Apify Schedule to compare each scan with the previous baseline.
• Actionable changes — see NEW_BROKEN, STILL_BROKEN, and RESOLVED on recurring scans.
• No browser, low cost — direct HTTP requests keep runtime and platform usage low.
• Built for SEO and maintenance workflows — export one Dataset row per checked link for audits, client reports, and repair backlogs.

Quick start

1. Enter the website URL you want to check.
2. Keep the default settings for a standard scan, or enable Weekly monitoring mode for a scheduled recurring check.
3. Click Start, then open Checked links for individual results or Scan summary for totals.

What it checks

• Same-domain pages are crawled breadth-first, up to 100 pages by default.
• Links are normalized and deduplicated globally. The Dataset keeps the first page where each link was found as sourcePage.
• External links are checked for status only. The Actor never continues crawling an external domain.
• HTTP results are classified as ok (2xx), redirected (3xx), broken (404/410 and other 4xx except blocked responses), server-error (5xx), or blocked (403/429).
• Redirects are followed, the redirect status is retained, and the resulting destination is recorded in finalUrl.
• Timeouts, DNS failures, connection failures, and other request failures are recorded with an errorType.
• Transient failures are retried automatically up to two times.
• 403 and 429 are reported as blocked and never set isBroken to true.

Input

Field	Default	Description
startUrl	—	Required HTTP or HTTPS URL to audit.
maxPages	100	Maximum same-domain HTML pages to crawl; capped at 100.
maxConcurrency	3	Conservative number of simultaneous HTTP requests; allowed range is 1–5.
timeoutSecs	20	Per-request timeout in seconds; allowed range is 5–60.
monitorMode	false	Turn on for weekly or other scheduled scans. The first run marks current broken links as NEW_BROKEN and saves a baseline; later runs report changes.

The form is intentionally small so a marketing, SEO, or website-operations user can run an audit without configuring a browser, proxy, session, or crawl rule set.

Dataset output

Each Dataset row contains exactly these fields:

• sourcePage — page where the unique link was first found.
• url — normalized link checked by the Actor.
• finalUrl — URL after redirects, when a response was received.
• statusCode — HTTP status code, or empty when no response was received.
• isBroken — true for broken, server-error, or unreachable links. Blocked links are always false.
• errorType — technical detail such as http_4xx, http_5xx, timeout, dns, connection, request, blocked, or empty.
• responseTimeMs — elapsed request time including automatic retries.
• status — user-facing classification: ok, redirected, broken, server-error, unreachable, or blocked.
• changeStatus — in later monitor runs, NEW_BROKEN, STILL_BROKEN, or RESOLVED when applicable.

The Dataset is useful for SEO audit exports, redirect cleanup, pre-launch QA, recurring website maintenance, and prioritizing fixes by broken-link type.

Monitoring mode and scheduled runs

Set monitorMode to true when this Actor is used from an Apify Schedule. The first run marks current broken links as NEW_BROKEN and stores the broken URL set as a baseline. Later runs compare the same site's normalized URLs and add changeStatus where a link is newly broken, still broken, or resolved.

The baseline is stored in a named Apify Key-Value Store and is separated by a hash of startUrl, so different scheduled sites do not overwrite one another. Each run also writes a RUN_SUMMARY record to its default Key-Value Store with totalLinks, ok, redirected, blocked, broken, newBroken, and resolved counts.

Scope and limitations

This V1.1 uses direct HTTP requests to keep runs affordable and predictable. It does not execute JavaScript, render browser-only navigation, log in to protected areas, submit forms, or crawl external domains. Links in JavaScript-generated menus and client-side applications may therefore be missed. Respect the target website's robots, rate, and access policies before running an audit.