Bulk URL Status Checker: Redirects, Broken Links, SSL

Paste a list of URLs (or upload thousands through the API) and get one clean row per URL: the HTTP status code, every redirect hop, the final URL, response time, content type and size, the page title, the canonical URL, whether the page is set to noindex, and, if you want, the SSL certificate's expiry date and issuer.

Built for SEO audits, site migrations, link monitoring and data cleaning. No browser, no proxy, no API key.

What you can use it for

• Site migrations: confirm every old URL 301-redirects to the right new page, in one hop, with no loops
• Broken link checks: find 404s, 410s, 5xx errors, DNS failures and timeouts in a link list, sitemap export or CRM field
• SEO audits: spot pages that are noindex by accident (meta robots or X-Robots-Tag), wrong canonicals and slow responses
• Certificate monitoring: list every HTTPS host whose certificate is invalid or expires within 30 days
• Data cleaning: validate website columns in lead lists before outreach or enrichment

Why this one

• Full redirect chain, hop by hop, with each status code, plus loop detection
• Status category you can filter on: ok, ok_after_redirect, redirect, client_error, server_error, error
• SEO fields in the same row: title, canonical, noindex (from the page and from the X-Robots-Tag header)
• SSL expiry and issuer per host (optional), cached so a host is read once per run
• "Only return problems" mode: you pay only for the rows that need attention
• Fast: up to 50 parallel requests; servers that refuse HEAD are retried with GET automatically

Input

Field	What it does	Default
urls	URLs or bare domains, one per line	required
followRedirects	Follow and record redirect hops	true
maxRedirects	Hop limit	10
fetchContent	Read title, canonical and noindex from HTML pages	true
method	HEAD or GET when content reading is off	HEAD
checkSsl	Read certificate expiry, days left and issuer	false
onlyProblems	Return only broken, redirected, noindex or SSL-problem URLs	false
concurrency	Parallel requests (1–50)	10
timeoutSeconds	Timeout per request	20
userAgent	Custom User-Agent	desktop Chrome
maxResults	Stop after this many URLs	10,000

Example input:

{
  "urls": ["https://apify.com", "http://github.com", "https://httpbin.org/status/404"],
  "checkSsl": true
}

Output

Field	Meaning
url, finalUrl	The URL you gave and where it ended up
statusCode, statusText, ok, category	Final HTTP status and a filterable category
redirectCount, redirectChain	Number of hops and [{url, statusCode}] for each
responseTimeMs	Total time including redirects
contentType, contentLength, server	Response headers
title, canonical, noindex, xRobotsTag	SEO fields (HTML pages)
sslExpiresAt, sslDaysLeft, sslIssuer	Certificate facts (when checkSsl is on)
error, checkedAt	What went wrong (DNS, timeout, SSL, loop) and when the check ran

Sample rows from a test run (October 2026):

[
  {"url": "http://github.com", "finalUrl": "https://github.com/", "statusCode": 200, "category": "ok_after_redirect",
   "redirectCount": 1, "redirectChain": [{"url": "http://github.com", "statusCode": 301}, {"url": "https://github.com/", "statusCode": 200}],
   "title": "GitHub · Change is constant. GitHub keeps you ahead. · GitHub · GitHub", "canonical": "https://github.com", "noindex": false,
   "sslDaysLeft": 42, "sslIssuer": "Sectigo Limited"},
  {"url": "https://httpbin.org/status/404", "statusCode": 404, "category": "client_error", "ok": false},
  {"url": "https://expired.badssl.com/", "statusCode": null, "category": "error", "error": "SSL error: certificate has expired",
   "sslExpiresAt": "invalid: certificate has expired"}
]

How much does it cost?

Pay per result: $1.25 per 1,000 URLs on the Free plan (a small one-time start fee per run), with automatic discounts on paid Apify plans. Platform compute is included. With "Only return problems" on, URLs that pass are not charged.

Worked examples:

• A 500-page site migration check: 500 × $0.00125 = $0.63
• 20,000 links from a CRM, all returned: $25.00
• 20,000 links with "Only return problems", 1,200 problems found: 1,200 × $0.00125 = $1.50

FAQ

Why do some sites return 403 here but open in my browser? Some sites block automated requests. The row still tells you the server answered (it is up). Try a custom userAgent, or treat 403 from such sites as "reachable".

HEAD or GET? With content reading on (the default) every check is a GET, because the title and noindex live in the page. With it off, HEAD is used and servers that refuse HEAD are retried with GET.

Does it follow JavaScript or meta-refresh redirects? No: it follows HTTP redirects (301, 302, 303, 307, 308), which are the ones search engines treat as redirects.

What counts as a problem in "Only return problems"? Status 400 or above, a connection, DNS or SSL error, at least one redirect, noindex, or a certificate that is invalid or expires within 30 days.

Is it legal? It requests the URLs you give it, once each, like a browser would. Check only sites and links you have a legitimate reason to check, and keep concurrency modest on small sites.

Can I schedule it? Yes: save an Apify task with your list and run it daily or weekly; pair "Only return problems" with a webhook or email integration to get alerts.

Integrations

Run it through the Apify API, on a schedule, or from Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, webhooks and AI agents (Apify MCP server). Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.

Changelog

• 0.1 (October 2026): first release: status, redirect chain, loop detection, title, canonical, noindex, SSL expiry, problems-only mode.