Bulk URL Redirect, Status & SSL Health Checker

Check hundreds of URLs at once for HTTP status, the full redirect chain, security headers and SSL certificate expiry. Every URL gets a health verdict (OK, WARNING or ERROR) and a list of findings, so you can fix broken links, redirect chains and expiring certificates before visitors or search engines notice.

What is the Bulk URL Health Checker?

It is an Apify Actor that follows each URL the way a browser would, records every hop, and reports what it finds: the final status code, whether the chain is long or looping, whether http upgrades to https, which security headers the final page sends, and when its certificate expires. It never downloads page bodies, so it is fast and cheap.

What makes it different?

• The whole redirect chain, hop by hop. Each hop shows its status, whether it is permanent or temporary, and what changed: protocol, www, trailing slash or path.
• Certificate expiry in the same run. Issuer, expiry date, days left and whether the certificate is trusted, with one handshake per host.
• Security headers at a glance. HSTS, Content-Type-Options, frame protection, CSP, Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy.
• Monitoring mode. Return only URLs with warnings or errors; healthy ones are neither returned nor charged.
• Safe by design. Private and internal addresses are blocked.

What data does the URL checker return?

Field	Example
url, finalUrl, status	http://github.com, https://github.com/, 200
health, issues	WARNING, [{ code: 'LONG_REDIRECT_CHAIN', … }]
redirects, permanentRedirects, temporaryRedirects	1, 1, 0
chain	every hop: step, url, status, type, location, changes
upgradedToHttps, redirectLoop	true, false
securityHeaders	{ hsts: true, csp: true, … , count: 4, total: 6 }
certificate	{ issuer, validTo, daysLeft: 42, trusted: true }
contentType, server, cacheControl, totalMs	headers and timing

A SUMMARY record shows how many URLs were checked and how many are OK, WARNING and ERROR.

What it flags

Finding	Severity	When
CLIENT_ERROR, SERVER_ERROR	error	the final page answers 4xx or 5xx
FETCH_FAILED	error	the URL could not be reached
REDIRECT_LOOP	error	a URL repeats, or the chain exceeds 10 hops
CERT_EXPIRED, CERT_NOT_TRUSTED	error	the certificate is expired or not trusted
LONG_REDIRECT_CHAIN	warning	more than 2 redirects
NOT_HTTPS	warning	the final URL is http
CERT_EXPIRING_SOON	warning	14 days or fewer left
SLOW	warning	the chain took over 3 seconds
CERT_EXPIRING, NO_HSTS	info	30 days or fewer left; no HSTS header

Info-level findings do not change the health verdict.

How to check redirects, status codes and SSL expiry in bulk

1. Paste your URLs, one per line.
2. Leave Check SSL certificates on to get expiry dates.
3. Click Start, then sort by health to see the ERRORs and WARNINGs first.
4. Schedule it daily with Only return URLs with warnings or errors for a cheap monitor, and send the results to Slack, email, Make, n8n or Zapier.

{
    "urls": [
        "http://github.com",
        "https://example.com/"
    ]
}

• urls: any public web addresses. Redirects are followed up to 10 hops.
• checkTls: adds the certificate details. Turn it off to skip the TLS handshake.
• onlyProblems: returns, and charges for, only the URLs with a warning or an error.

How much does bulk URL checking cost?

You pay per URL checked returned plus a very small start fee. There is no subscription.

URLs	Approximate cost
100	$0.30
1,000	$3
5,000	$15
10,000	$30

Paid Apify plans get tiered discounts, and you can set a maximum cost per run. You can try it on Apify's free plan without a card.

Who is it for?

• SEO teams auditing redirects after a migration.
• Web developers and DevOps monitoring status codes and certificate expiry.
• Agencies checking many client sites at once.
• Marketers validating campaign and link-in-bio URLs before sending.

Frequently asked questions

Does it download the pages? No. It reads the response headers only and stops, which keeps it quick and cheap.

Is a 302 always wrong? No. Temporary redirects are normal for things like login or geo routing. The Actor reports the type of each hop so you can judge; it only flags long chains and loops.

Why does it say my site is slow? Timing is measured from the data centre running the Actor, so it includes that distance. Compare URLs with each other rather than treating it as an absolute figure.

Can it check certificates for any port? It checks the standard HTTPS port 443 of each final URL's host.

Does it respect robots.txt? It follows redirects and reads headers for URLs you list, like a link checker. Only check sites you are allowed to.

Notes and limits

• Private, loopback and cloud-metadata addresses are refused.
• Findings are factual checks, not a security audit. A site can pass every check and still be vulnerable.