Redirect Chain Checker

Analyze HTTP redirect chains for any URL — no browser required.

Redirect Chain Checker is an Apify Actor built for SEO professionals, developers, and marketers who need to audit how URLs resolve across the web. Enter one or more URLs and get a complete picture of every hop: status codes, Location headers, final destination, redirect count, loop detection, and response times.

Ideal for:

• SEO audits — verify 301/302 chains, spot redirect loops, and confirm canonical destinations
• Affiliate link checks — trace tracking URLs to their landing pages
• Site migrations — validate redirect rules after domain or path changes
• API & integration testing — confirm endpoints resolve as expected

Features

• Follows HTTP redirects manually (301, 302, 303, 307, 308) using native fetch
• Returns the full redirect chain with status codes and Location headers
• Detects redirect loops automatically
• Configurable max redirects, per-request timeout, and custom User-Agent
• Processes multiple URLs in a single run
• Graceful error handling — failed URLs are recorded without stopping the run

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	string[]	Yes	—	URLs to check for redirect chains
maxRedirects	integer	No	10	Max redirects to follow per URL (1–50)
timeoutMs	integer	No	10000	Per-request timeout in milliseconds
userAgent	string	No	ApifyRedirectChecker/1.0	User-Agent header for requests

Example input

{
  "urls": [
    "https://httpbin.org/redirect/3",
    "https://google.com"
  ],
  "maxRedirects": 10,
  "timeoutMs": 10000
}

Output

Each checked URL produces one dataset item:

Field	Type	Description
inputUrl	string	Original URL submitted
finalUrl	string	Final URL after all redirects
statusCode	integer	HTTP status of the final response
redirectChain	array	Ordered hops: { url, status, location }
totalRedirects	integer	Number of redirect responses
isLoop	boolean	true if a redirect loop was detected
responseTimeMs	integer	Total time to resolve the chain (ms)
error	string	Present only when the check failed

Example output

{
  "inputUrl": "https://httpbin.org/redirect/3",
  "finalUrl": "https://httpbin.org/get",
  "statusCode": 200,
  "redirectChain": [
    { "url": "https://httpbin.org/redirect/3", "status": 302, "location": "/redirect/2" },
    { "url": "https://httpbin.org/redirect/2", "status": 302, "location": "/redirect/1" },
    { "url": "https://httpbin.org/redirect/1", "status": 302, "location": "/get" },
    { "url": "https://httpbin.org/get", "status": 200, "location": null }
  ],
  "totalRedirects": 3,
  "isLoop": false,
  "responseTimeMs": 1240
}

How it works

1. The Actor reads urls from input and processes each one sequentially.
2. For each URL, it sends HTTP GET requests with redirect: 'manual' so redirects are not followed automatically.
3. On 3xx responses, it reads the Location header and follows the chain until a non-redirect response, a loop, an error, or maxRedirects is reached.
4. Results are saved to the default dataset via Actor.pushData().

Run locally

$apify run

Set test input in storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json:

{
  "urls": ["https://httpbin.org/redirect/3", "https://google.com"]
}

Deploy to Apify

apify login
apify push

Resources

• Apify SDK for JavaScript
• Actor input schema
• Dataset storage