Bulk Redirect Chain Checker & Loop Finder

Check up to 100 URLs in one run and see exactly where each one lands. This bulk redirect chain checker follows every 301, 302, 303, 307 and 308 hop, records the status code and response time of each step, and flags the three chains that cost you traffic: loops, destinations that answer 404 or 500, and links that take two or more hops to arrive.

Redirects are cheap until they are wrong. During a site migration, campaign launch, affiliate update, or domain change, one stale hop can send customers to a 404, waste crawl budget, strip trust from a campaign URL, or create a loop that browsers never escape. Checking a few links by hand is easy. Checking hundreds after every deployment is where the bill appears.

Who uses it

• SEO agencies: validate redirect maps before and after client migrations without opening URLs one by one.
• Web agencies: catch loops and 404 destinations after deployments, CMS changes, or domain moves.
• Growth teams: verify campaign and affiliate links before paid traffic reaches them.
• Ecommerce teams: audit old product and category URLs after catalog restructuring.
• Developers: add a simple redirect regression check to an automation or release workflow.

What the bulk redirect chain checker does

For every submitted public HTTP or HTTPS URL, it:

1. Follows 301, 302, 303, 307, and 308 responses manually.
2. Records the URL, status, Location destination, and response time for every hop.
3. Resolves relative redirects against the current URL.
4. Detects redirect loops and chains beyond the configured limit.
5. Flags final 4xx and 5xx destinations.
6. Flags chains with more than one redirect so they can be shortened.
7. Saves a plain-language diagnosis and a complete machine-readable chain.

The Actor does not require cookies, login credentials, or an external API key. It rejects local and private network destinations and audits only public URLs.

Redirect loops, dead destinations and long chains

Three failures are flagged explicitly in issue. A loop is a chain that returns to a URL it already visited, or that runs past maxRedirects. A dead destination is a final response in the 4xx or 5xx range, which is what a visitor sees. A long chain is any URL that needs two or more hops: the first link should point straight at the last one. Set issuesOnly: true and only these rows reach the dataset.

Ready-to-run example

{
  "urls": [
    "http://example.com",
    "https://www.apify.com"
  ],
  "maxRedirects": 10,
  "requestTimeoutSecs": 15,
  "issuesOnly": false
}

Every required field has a working default, so the default run completes without configuration. Use issuesOnly: true for scheduled checks when you only want actionable failures in the dataset.

Output example

{
  "inputUrl": "http://example.com",
  "finalUrl": "https://example.com/",
  "finalStatus": 200,
  "redirectCount": 1,
  "hasIssue": false,
  "issue": null,
  "totalDurationMs": 183,
  "chain": [
    {
      "url": "http://example.com/",
      "status": 301,
      "location": "https://example.com/",
      "durationMs": 81
    },
    {
      "url": "https://example.com/",
      "status": 200,
      "location": null,
      "durationMs": 102
    }
  ],
  "checkedAt": "2026-07-20T05:00:00.000Z"
}

A run-level SUMMARY record reports the number of URLs checked, URLs with issues, and dataset rows returned.

Data returned for each URL

Field	What it holds
inputUrl	The URL submitted
finalUrl	Where the chain actually ends
finalStatus	HTTP status of the final response
redirectCount	Number of hops before the final response
hasIssue / issue	Loop, broken destination, long chain or network failure
totalDurationMs	Combined request time across the chain
chain[]	Per hop: url, status, Location target, durationMs

Reading the diagnosis

A single redirect that reaches a healthy final page is treated as clean. A redirect status without a Location header is returned as the final response so the missing destination remains visible. Network failures and timeouts become result rows rather than silently disappearing.

totalDurationMs is the combined request time observed during this run. It is useful for comparisons, not a laboratory performance benchmark: geography, server load, and network conditions can change it.

Limits and responsible use

Runs are capped at 100 input URLs, 20 redirect hops per URL, and 30 seconds per request. The Actor uses ordinary GET requests and cancels response bodies after reading headers. It does not bypass access controls, CAPTCHAs, paywalls, or authentication. Only submit URLs you are authorized to test, and schedule audits at a reasonable frequency.

Unofficial tool disclaimer

This is an unofficial, independent tool. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any website, browser vendor, search engine, or analytics platform. HTTP behavior can vary by user agent, geography, cookies, and server configuration; confirm critical migration decisions with your own production monitoring.