Broken Link Checker — Crawl a Whole Website for Dead Links 🔗

Find every broken link on a website automatically. This broken link checker crawls an entire site, follows internal links, and checks every internal and external link for 404, 410 and 5xx errors. For each link you get the source page it was found on, the anchor text, the link type and the exact HTTP status code.

Give it one URL — it discovers and audits thousands of pages and links for you. No login, no proxy setup, no headless browser. Fast, cheap and schedulable.

Looking for a dead link checker, 404 finder, broken link finder or a website link validator? This actor does all of it, site-wide.

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✨ Key features

• 🕷️ Full-site crawl — start from one URL and automatically follow internal links across the whole domain.
• 🔗 Checks every link — internal and external (outbound) links, not just a flat list.
• 🚦 Exact HTTP status — 200, 301, 404, 410, 500, plus network errors (timeouts, unreachable hosts, DNS failures).
• 📄 Source page + anchor text — know exactly where each broken link lives so you can fix it fast.
• ⚡ Fast & cheap — pure HTTP (HEAD with GET fallback), no browser. Each unique URL is checked only once and cached.
• 🗓️ Schedulable monitoring — run it daily/weekly to catch dead links the moment they appear.
• 🎛️ Flexible output — export only broken links or a full audit of every link on the site.

💡 Use cases

• SEO audits — broken internal links waste crawl budget and hurt rankings. Find and fix them across the whole site.
• Website migrations & redesigns — catch every 404 before and after a launch or domain move.
• Content & docs maintenance — keep large blogs, documentation and knowledge bases link-clean.
• Affiliate & outbound link monitoring — make sure the external links you earn from still resolve.
• Ongoing link monitoring — schedule the actor and get alerted when something breaks.

📦 What you get

One row per link checked:

Field	Description
sourceUrl	The page the link was found on
linkUrl	The link target (absolute URL)
anchorText	The clickable text of the link
linkType	internal or external
statusCode	HTTP status code (e.g. 200, 404, 500)
ok	true if the link works, false if it's broken
error	Network error (timeout, unreachable, …) when there is no status code
checkedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of the check

Example output

{
  "sourceUrl": "https://example.com/blog/post-1",
  "linkUrl": "https://example.com/old-page",
  "anchorText": "see our old guide",
  "linkType": "internal",
  "statusCode": 404,
  "ok": false,
  "error": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-05-25T14:08:46.306Z"
}

Turn on Only output broken links for a clean list of just the dead links, or leave it off to export a complete link audit of the entire website.

🚀 How to use the Broken Link Checker

1. Click Try for free / Start.
2. Paste one or more website URLs into Start URLs.
3. (Optional) Set Max pages to crawl — use 0 to crawl the whole site.
4. (Optional) Toggle Check external links and Only output broken links.
5. Click Save & Start.
6. Download your results as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or via API — or schedule the run to repeat.

⚙️ Input

Option	Description	Default
startUrls	Websites to crawl	– (required)
maxPagesToCrawl	Max pages to crawl per run (0 = crawl the whole site)	1000
checkExternalLinks	Also check links pointing to other domains	true
onlyBroken	Save only broken links (4xx / 5xx / unreachable)	false
maxConcurrency	Number of parallel requests	10

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://example.com" }],
  "maxPagesToCrawl": 2000,
  "checkExternalLinks": true,
  "onlyBroken": false,
  "maxConcurrency": 10
}

🔍 How it works

The crawler starts from your Start URLs and follows internal <a> links within the same domain (skipping asset files like images, PDFs and scripts). On every page it extracts all links and verifies each one with a lightweight HEAD request, automatically falling back to GET for servers that don't support HEAD. Every unique URL is checked only once and the result is reused across pages, so even very large sites are audited efficiently.

🧰 Tips & best practices

• Set maxPagesToCrawl to 0 for full-site coverage; keep it lower for quick spot-checks.
• Lower maxConcurrency if the target site starts rate-limiting or returning 429.
• Use Only output broken links for fix-lists, and the full export for complete link inventories.
• Schedule the actor (daily/weekly) so broken links never sit unnoticed.

❓ FAQ

What counts as a broken link? Any link returning a 4xx or 5xx status code, or one that can't be reached (timeout, DNS failure, connection refused). These have ok: false.

Does it crawl other websites too? It checks external links (their status) but only crawls deeper within your own domain, so you stay in control of scope.

Will it find every page on my site? It follows internal links up to maxPagesToCrawl. Increase that limit (or set it to 0) for complete coverage.

Does it use a real browser? No — it's pure HTTP, which makes it fast and inexpensive. This works for the vast majority of websites.

Can I check several sites at once? Yes — add multiple Start URLs.

What output formats are supported? JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML table and a full REST API, like every Apify actor.

How do I export broken links to CSV or JSON?

Run the crawl, then download the results in one click as CSV, JSON, Excel or HTML — or pull them via the REST API. Turn on Only output broken links for a clean dead-link list to import into a spreadsheet.

Is there a broken link checker that crawls a whole website without a browser?

Yes — this actor is a site-wide dead link finder that uses pure HTTP (no headless browser, no login, no proxy setup), so it crawls thousands of pages and audits every internal and external link fast and cheaply.

Can I find all 404 pages on a site and export the audit?

Yes. It discovers pages by following internal links and reports the exact HTTP status for each one, so you get a complete 404 finder report with the source page and anchor text, ready to export to CSV or JSON.

🔗 Related actors by the same author

• Bulk URL Status Checker — check a flat list of URLs for status codes & redirects.
• Website Link Graph & Outbound Links Crawler — map internal & outbound links site-wide.
• Website SEO Audit Crawler — full on-page SEO audit for every page.
• Sitemap to URL Crawler — extract all URLs from any sitemap.xml.

📝 Changelog

2026-06-15

• Reliability pass: re-verified end-to-end on live data with real-world inputs. Routine maintenance build.

2026-06-07

• Docs: added coverage for exporting broken links to CSV/JSON, site-wide 404 finding without a browser, and full dead-link audit export.

2026-06-05

• 🛡️ Reliability fix: results are no longer dropped by strict output validation — runs now complete cleanly even at high volume (thousands of results).
• ⚡ Stability & performance hardening; fresh rebuild.

2026-06-04

• Verified live & refreshed build — reliability/maintenance pass.