Broken Link Checker - Website Link Validator & 404 Finder

Find broken links (404/500), unreachable URLs, and invalid asset references across a website. This actor crawls pages and checks the HTTP status of links and resources, producing a clean report for SEO audits, QA testing, and ongoing website maintenance.

What it checks

• Page links: <a href="...">
• Assets (optional): images, scripts, stylesheets
• Redirects: treated as OK (2xx/3xx)

Typical use cases

• SEO site audits (broken outbound links hurt UX and trust)
• QA checks before launch
• Ongoing monitoring of large content sites
• Migration validation (old URLs, changed routes)

Input

• Start URLs (required): entry pages to crawl
• Max pages: stop after N pages crawled
• Max depth: how deep to crawl internal pages
• Max links per page: caps link checks per page
• Check external links: include outbound links
• Check assets: include images/scripts/stylesheets
• Ignore URL patterns: regex patterns to skip
• Proxy configuration: optional

Output

Dataset contains broken items with:

• sourceUrl (where the link was found)
• linkUrl (the checked URL)
• statusCode (0 if request failed)
• finalUrl (after redirects, if available)
• error (network/timeout errors)
• linkType (a, img, script, link)

Key-value store also contains SUMMARY with totals and status-code breakdown.

SEO keywords

broken link checker, link validator, 404 finder, website audit, SEO audit, dead link checker, link checker API

Quick start

Store page: https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/broken-link-checker

Paste this into Input and click Run:

{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://example.com/"
    }
  ],
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

Outputs (what you get)

• Dataset: Dataset items typically include fields like: sourceUrl, linkUrl, statusCode, linkType, finalUrl, checkedAt.
• Key-value store: SUMMARY

Tips (trust + predictable results)

• Start with 1–3 URLs to validate behavior, then scale up.
• If a target blocks requests, enable Proxy and/or slow down concurrency in Input.
• Use the SUMMARY / REPORT keys (when present) for automation pipelines and monitoring.

Related actors

• canonical-url-checker (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/canonical-url-checker)
• meta-tag-analyzer (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/meta-tag-analyzer)
• security-headers-checker (https://apify.com/scrappy_garden/security-headers-checker)

Search keywords

broken link checker, broken link checker - website link validator & 404 finder, website audit, seo, broken links