Broken Link Checker: 404s, Redirect Chains & Mixed Content

Crawl a website, or check a plain list of URLs, and get every link's HTTP status with the pages and anchor text where it appears. Find broken links (404, 410, 5xx), dead domains and timeouts, redirect chains, links blocked by bot protection, and mixed content (http images and scripts on https pages) in one run.

What does Broken Link Checker do?

Broken Link Checker crawls a website or checks a list of URLs and finds broken links (404, 410, 5xx), dead domains, redirect chains, mixed content and blocked resources, with the source page and anchor text where each link appears. Use it for technical SEO audits and website maintenance.

How to use Broken Link Checker

1. Click Try for free on this page (a free Apify account is enough to start).
2. Fill in the input (see the examples below) or keep the prefilled example.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Download the results from the Output tab as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML, or read them with the Apify API.
5. Optional: create a Schedule to run it daily or weekly, and connect a webhook or an integration (Make, Zapier, n8n, Slack).

What it checks

• Internal links: followed and crawled (up to your page and depth limits); every page found is also checked.
• External links: checked once each (never crawled), with the full redirect chain (301 → 302 → 200) and final URL.
• Resources (optional): images (including srcset), scripts, stylesheets, iframes, video/audio, favicons, canonical and hreflang URLs.
• Mixed content: http:// resources loaded on https:// pages.
• Where each link is: up to N source pages with the anchor text, plus the total count.

Each unique URL is checked once per run, no matter how many pages link to it.

Status values

status	Meaning
ok	2xx, no redirect
redirect	Ended on 2xx after one or more redirects (see redirectChain). Update the link to the final URL to save a hop.
broken	4xx or 5xx (404 Not Found, 410 Gone, 500...)
restricted	401, 403, 429 or 999: usually login or bot protection (LinkedIn, npm, Stack Overflow...). Often fine for humans: check by hand.
error	Domain does not resolve, timeout, connection or TLS error, too many redirects (loop)
robots-disallowed	Not checked because that site's robots.txt disallows it (listed for transparency, not charged)

Polite by design

• robots.txt is respected on the site you crawl and on every external site before a link is checked (and on every redirect hop).
• At most one request per second per host (or the host's Crawl-delay), several hosts in parallel.
• Identifiable user agent (BrokenLinkCheckerBot), no proxies, no headless browser, no bypassing of bot protection.

Use cases

• SEO audits: broken internal links and redirect chains waste crawl budget and link equity.
• Website QA before and after a migration: check the old URL list (paste it or load a CSV) and see where each one ends up.
• Content maintenance: find outbound links to dead pages in blog archives and docs.
• HTTPS hygiene: find mixed-content resources that browsers block.
• Backlink / affiliate link monitoring: schedule a list check and get only the problems.

Input

Field	What it does
Websites to crawl	Start URLs. Internal = same host (with or without www.).
URLs to check (no crawling) / Dataset / CSV URL	Check a list of URLs one by one. Can be combined with a crawl.
Max pages to crawl, Max crawl depth, Max links to check	Limits (defaults 50 pages, depth 3, 2,000 links).
Check external links	On by default.
Check images, scripts, stylesheets, iframes	On by default; also enables mixed-content detection.
Ignore URLs containing	Skip logout links, cart actions, calendars...
Output	All links, problems only, or problems + redirects.

Example

{
  "startUrls": ["https://www.example.com"],
  "maxPages": 200,
  "maxDepth": 4,
  "maxLinks": 5000,
  "outputMode": "problems-and-redirects",
  "ignoreUrlsContaining": ["/logout", "?replytocom="]
}

Output

One row per unique URL, sorted with problems first:

{
  "url": "https://sdk.apify.com/docs/guides/getting-started",
  "status": "redirect",
  "httpStatus": 200,
  "error": null,
  "finalUrl": "https://docs.apify.com/sdk/js/docs/overview",
  "redirectCount": 2,
  "redirectChain": [
    { "url": "https://sdk.apify.com/docs/guides/getting-started", "status": 301 },
    { "url": "https://docs.apify.com/sdk/js/docs/guides/getting-started", "status": 302 }
  ],
  "isInternal": false,
  "linkType": "link",
  "contentType": "text/html",
  "responseTimeMs": 2243,
  "mixedContent": false,
  "foundOnCount": 11,
  "foundOn": [
    { "pageUrl": "https://crawlee.dev/js/docs/guides", "anchorText": "2.2", "tag": "a" }
  ],
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-26T22:40:00.000Z"
}

linkType is start, list, link, image, script, stylesheet, iframe, media, canonical, hreflang or form. A RUN_SUMMARY record has the totals (pages crawled, links found, broken, redirects, mixed content...).

Pricing

Pay per event: USD 1 per 1,000 links checked (USD 0.001 per unique URL). URLs not checked because of robots.txt, ignored URLs, external links when you turn them off, and links beyond your limits are not charged. With "problems only", all checked links are billed even if hidden. The Actor never checks more links than your "max charge per run" allows.

Limitations

• Pages are read as HTML without running JavaScript: links added only by client-side JavaScript are not found.
• restricted (401/403/429/999) often means bot protection, not a dead link.
• Some servers answer differently to bots than to browsers; a link reported broken should be confirmed before you remove it.
• Results reflect the network of a US cloud server (geo-blocked sites may fail).

Cost examples

Prices at the current pay-per-event rate: USD 1.00 per 1,000 unique links checked (links skipped by robots.txt, ignored links and links over your limits are free). You can set a maximum charge per run in the run options.

Job	Approximate cost
Test run: 3 pages of crawlee.dev, 39 links (measured: 32 s)	about $0.04
Prefill: 10 pages, up to 300 links	up to $0.30
Full check of a 50-page site, 2,000 links	about $2.00
List mode: 10,000 URLs from a sheet	about $10.00

Use it from your code, an integration or an AI agent

Python (pip install apify-client):

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("latamdatatools/broken-links-checker").call(run_input={
  "startUrls": [
    "https://crawlee.dev"
  ],
  "maxPages": 10,
  "maxLinks": 300,
  "outputMode": "problems"
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["status"], item["httpStatus"], item["url"])

JavaScript / Node.js (npm install apify-client):

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('latamdatatools/broken-links-checker').call({
  startUrls: [
    'https://crawlee.dev'
  ],
  maxPages: 10,
  maxLinks: 300,
  outputMode: 'problems'
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.filter((i) => i.status === "broken"));

No code:

• Schedules: save your input as a Task and run it daily or weekly from Apify Console (Schedules).
• Integrations: send the results to Google Sheets, Slack, email, Make, Zapier, n8n or Airbyte from the Integrations tab, or call your own webhook when a run finishes.
• AI agents: add it as a tool in Claude, Cursor, VS Code and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), so the agent can audit a site and list the broken links for you.

FAQ

Can I call it from my own code or from an AI agent? Yes. Start runs and fetch results with the Apify API or the JavaScript / Python clients, or use it as a tool from Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients through the Apify MCP server (mcp.apify.com).

Can I run it automatically? Yes. Create a Schedule in Apify Console (for example every morning) and add a webhook or an integration to get the results where you need them.

Which export formats are available? JSON, JSONL, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, RSS and HTML table, from the Output tab or the API.

What does it cost? See the Pricing section above. You only pay for the events listed there.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-10): first version.