Bulk URL Status Checker: Redirect Chain & Response Time

Give it a list of URLs, up to 100,000 per run, and get one row per URL with:

• the final HTTP status (200, 301, 404, 500...) and a plain result (ok, not_found, server_error, redirect_loop, timeout, dns_error...),
• every redirect hop: its URL, status code, Location and response time in milliseconds,
• the final URL, the number of redirects, whether it ends on https, and the total time,
• the final response's Content-Type, Content-Length, Last-Modified, Server and X-Robots-Tag headers,
• for HTML pages: the <title>, meta robots and rel=canonical,
• a notes list that flags what usually needs fixing: redirect chains longer than one hop, no https, https-to-http downgrades, loops, 404s, server errors, timeouts, DNS and TLS failures, blocked answers (401, 403, 429, 999), noindex, and a canonical pointing elsewhere.

You pay $0.50 per 1,000 URLs that got an answer, whatever the answer (a 404 or a 500 is exactly what you wanted to know). URLs where no server answered at all (the domain doesn't exist, the connection timed out or was refused, the TLS certificate is broken) and invalid entries still get a row, at no charge.

Who it's for

• SEO teams and agencies checking redirects after a site migration, cleaning up redirect chains, or auditing a list of backlinks, sitemap URLs or old campaign links.
• Developers and ops verifying that a list of endpoints, docs links or short links still resolve, on a schedule.
• Content and data teams cleaning a spreadsheet of URLs before an import: which are dead, which moved and where to.

How it compares

	This Actor	Typical small URL status checker in the Store
Price	$0.50 per 1,000 URLs answered, no start fee	Often $1 per 1,000, or a start fee plus compute
URLs with no answer (DNS, timeout, TLS)	Free	Usually charged like any other URL
Redirect chain	Every hop with status, Location and time	Varies; often only the final status
Loop and chain detection	Yes, with cookie-aware loops (a site that sets a cookie and redirects to itself is not a loop)	Varies
Title, meta robots, canonical	Yes, from the first 512 KB of HTML pages	Rarely
HEAD with GET fallback	Yes (servers that answer HEAD wrongly are retried with GET)	Varies
Polite to servers	Per-host rate limit, slows down on 429, robots.txt for page content	Varies

How it works

1. Each URL is requested with HEAD (light: no page download). If the server refuses or fails HEAD (some answer 405 or even 404 by mistake), it is asked again with GET, without downloading the body. Choose GET only for servers you know answer HEAD wrongly.
2. Redirects are followed by hand, up to 10 hops, so every hop is reported with its own status and time. A URL seen twice in a chain is a loop (unless the site set a cookie in between, which the next hop then sends back, like a browser would; cookies never leave one URL's chain). Redirects to local or private network addresses are never followed.
3. For a final page that is HTML and answers 2xx, the first 512 KB are read for the <title>, meta robots and canonical. This is only done where the site's robots.txt allows this tool to read that page (robots.txt is read once per site and cached). The status check itself does not depend on robots.txt: like any link checker, it only requests the URLs you supplied, once each.
4. Answers are retried with back-off on 429 and 5xx (429 up to 4 tries, 503 up to 3, other 5xx twice; Retry-After honored up to 10 seconds). Timeouts are not retried.

It is polite by design: at most 3 requests per second to any one host by default, a host that answers 429 is slowed down for the rest of the run (down to one request every 2 seconds) and, if it keeps refusing, its remaining URLs are left unchecked (free rows with result rate_limited). Different hosts are checked in parallel, and a host with thousands of URLs in your list takes its turn with the others instead of holding them up. Local and private network addresses (localhost, 10.x, 192.168.x, .internal...) are never requested, by name or by what the domain resolves to.

Input

Field	Default	What it does
URLs to check (urls)		One per line. example.com/page is checked as https://example.com/page; write http:// to check the plain-http version. Request-list style objects ({"url": "..."}) work too.
Or paste a list (urlsText)		URLs pasted from a spreadsheet or text file: one per line or separated by spaces or tabs. Combined with the list above. Repeats are checked once.
Request method (method)	HEAD_THEN_GET	HEAD_THEN_GET or GET.
Follow redirects (followRedirects)	true	Off: the first answer only; a redirect's target is in hops[0].location.
Read page title, meta robots and canonical (readPageDetails)	true	Off: status and headers only, fewer requests.
User-Agent (userAgent)	tool	tool sends UrlStatusCheckBot/1.0. browser sends a common desktop Chrome User-Agent, to see what a visitor gets from sites that answer bots with 403.
Requests per second per host (maxRequestsPerSecondPerHost)	3	1 to 10.
Timeout per request (timeoutSecs)	15	1 to 60 seconds. One URL with all its hops and retries gets at most 4 times this (at least 30 s).

Example input:

{
  "urls": ["http://github.com", "http://wikipedia.org", "https://example.com/old-page"],
  "urlsText": "https://example.org/a\nhttps://example.org/b",
  "method": "HEAD_THEN_GET",
  "followRedirects": true,
  "readPageDetails": true,
  "userAgent": "tool",
  "maxRequestsPerSecondPerHost": 3,
  "timeoutSecs": 15
}

Output

One row per URL (values illustrative):

{
  "position": 2,
  "inputUrl": "http://wikipedia.org",
  "url": "http://wikipedia.org/",
  "finalUrl": "https://www.wikipedia.org/",
  "finalStatus": 200,
  "statusClass": "2xx",
  "result": "ok",
  "redirectCount": 2,
  "endsOnHttps": true,
  "totalTimeMs": 212,
  "hops": [
    {"url": "http://wikipedia.org/", "method": "HEAD", "status": 301, "location": "https://wikipedia.org/", "timeMs": 61},
    {"url": "https://wikipedia.org/", "method": "HEAD", "status": 301, "location": "https://www.wikipedia.org/", "timeMs": 74},
    {"url": "https://www.wikipedia.org/", "method": "HEAD", "status": 200, "location": null, "timeMs": 77}
  ],
  "contentType": "text/html",
  "contentLength": 75011,
  "lastModified": "Mon, 02 Nov 2026 09:12:40 GMT",
  "server": "ATS/9.2.11",
  "xRobotsTag": null,
  "title": "Wikipedia",
  "metaRobots": null,
  "canonicalUrl": null,
  "pageInfo": "read",
  "notes": ["long_redirect_chain"],
  "error": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-11-04T16:02:11.000000+00:00"
}

result is one of: ok (2xx), redirect (a 3xx that was not followed, or a 300/304), not_found (404, 410), client_error (other 4xx), blocked (401, 403, 429, 999: a login wall or bot protection; the URL may still work in a browser), server_error (5xx), redirect_loop, too_many_redirects (more than 10), bad_redirect (a redirect with no Location, or to something that isn't a web address), timeout, dns_error, ssl_error, connection_error, rate_limited (the host kept answering 429, so the URL was left unchecked), local_address, invalid_url.

notes holds the result when it isn't ok, plus any of: long_redirect_chain (more than one redirect), not_https (the final URL is plain http), https_to_http (the chain went from https to http), redirect_not_followed, noindex (in meta robots or X-Robots-Tag), canonical_elsewhere (the canonical is a different URL).

pageInfo says whether the title and tags were read: read, not_html, robots_disallowed (robots.txt doesn't allow this tool to read the page, or couldn't be read because the server answered 429 or 5xx), not_read (the GET for the page failed), off; empty when the final answer wasn't 2xx.

position is the URL's place in your input, so you can sort the results back into your order (URLs are checked in parallel). finalStatus is empty when the final URL got no answer. totalTimeMs is the sum of the hops' response times, without the tool's own pacing waits.

Download results as JSON, CSV or Excel (the overview view is spreadsheet-friendly), or send them to Google Sheets, Zapier, Make or n8n. The run also saves a SUMMARY record with counts by result, status class and note, median and 90th-percentile response times, the hosts slowed down by 429, and whether the spending cap was reached.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.0005 per URL that got an HTTP answer ($0.50 per 1,000). No start fee. A URL counts as answered when a server gave any HTTP status for it, even if a later hop of its redirect chain then failed (for example a redirect to a dead domain: the redirect itself is a finding). URLs where no server answered at all, local addresses, invalid entries and URLs left unchecked because the host kept answering 429 are free. Set a maximum charge per run in the run options and the Actor stops cleanly when it's reached, before starting a URL it couldn't pay for.

Good to know

• Speed: different hosts are checked in parallel (50 URLs at a time), each host at most 3 requests per second by default. A list of 10,000 URLs on 10,000 different sites takes a few minutes. 10,000 URLs on one site take about an hour at 3 requests per second with page details off (one request per URL), about two with them on (HTML pages need a second request); raise the per-host rate if it's your own site, and the run timeout (1 hour by default) for big lists.
• What servers tell bots: some sites (LinkedIn, some shops behind bot protection) answer automated requests with 403, 429 or 999 even when the page works in a browser. Those rows say blocked; try the browser User-Agent, or check them by hand.
• HEAD vs GET: a few servers give a different status to HEAD than to GET. Any HEAD answer of 400 or above is double-checked with GET, and a host whose HEAD answers turn out wrong is asked with GET for the rest of the run.
• No JavaScript: it checks what the server answers over HTTP. Redirects done by JavaScript or <meta http-equiv="refresh"> are not followed.
• robots.txt: checking the status of the URLs you give it doesn't depend on robots.txt (it is the same single request a link checker or a browser makes), but reading page content does: titles, meta robots and canonicals are only read where the site's robots.txt allows UrlStatusCheckBot (or *).

This Actor isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any of the websites it checks.

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