🔗 Broken Link Checker

Crawl websites to find broken links, 404 errors, and dead URLs. Essential for SEO audits, website maintenance, and content teams.

Store Quickstart

Start with the Quickstart template (single starting URL, depth 2). For full-site audits, use Deep Crawl (depth 5, up to 500 pages).

Key Features

• 🕸️ Configurable crawl depth — Follows internal links up to 5 levels deep, up to 500 pages per run
• 🌐 Internal + external checks — Validate both your own links and outbound references
• 📍 Anchor text reporting — Identify which link text points to the broken URL
• 🏷️ Error classification — TIMEOUT, DNS_FAILED, CONNECTION_REFUSED, SSL_ERROR
• ⚡ Concurrent fetching — 1-10 parallel requests to speed up crawls
• 📊 Per-page breakdown — Each result shows all broken links grouped by source page

Use Cases

Who	Why
SEO agencies	Regular broken-link audits for client websites to protect ranking
Content editors	Find dead outbound links in blog posts and documentation
E-commerce sites	Monitor product pages for broken navigation and outbound partner links
Site migrations	Validate internal linking after URL restructuring
Technical SEO	Identify redirect chains and crawl traps that waste crawl budget

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	string[]	(required)	URLs to start crawling (max 10)
maxDepth	integer	2	Crawl depth (1-5)
maxPages	integer	50	Max pages to crawl (1-500)
concurrency	integer	5	Parallel requests (1-10)
checkExternal	boolean	true	Check external links
timeoutMs	integer	10000	Request timeout in ms

Input Example

{
  "startUrls": ["https://example.com"],
  "maxDepth": 2,
  "maxPages": 50,
  "concurrency": 5,
  "checkExternal": true
}

Output

Field	Type	Description
url	string	Page URL that was crawled
brokenLinks	object[]	Array of broken link objects found on the page
brokenLinks[].href	string	The broken link URL
brokenLinks[].anchor	string	Anchor text of the link
brokenLinks[].statusCode	integer	HTTP status code returned (404, 500, 0 for network errors)
brokenLinks[].error	string	null
depth	integer	Crawl depth at which this page was discovered
crawledAt	string	ISO 8601 timestamp

Output Example

{
  "url": "https://example.com/blog",
  "brokenLinks": [
    {
      "href": "https://example.com/deleted-page",
      "statusCode": 404,
      "anchorText": "Old announcement",
      "isExternal": false,
      "error": null
    }
  ]
}

API Usage

Run this actor programmatically using the Apify API. Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/taroyamada~broken-link-checker/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "startUrls": ["https://example.com"], "maxDepth": 2, "maxPages": 50, "concurrency": 5, "checkExternal": true }'

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("taroyamada/broken-link-checker").call(run_input={
  "startUrls": ["https://example.com"],
  "maxDepth": 2,
  "maxPages": 50,
  "concurrency": 5,
  "checkExternal": true
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('taroyamada/broken-link-checker').call({
  "startUrls": ["https://example.com"],
  "maxDepth": 2,
  "maxPages": 50,
  "concurrency": 5,
  "checkExternal": true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Tips & Limitations

• Start with maxDepth: 2 and maxPages: 50 for fast audits before scaling up.
• Set checkExternal: false to focus only on internal broken links (faster).
• Combine with URL Health Checker for a full SEO link audit.
• Run weekly to catch newly broken outbound links in published content.

FAQ

How does crawl depth work?

Depth 1 = only starting URLs. Depth 2 = starting URLs + links found on them. Depth 5 is the maximum and covers most typical sites.

Does it respect robots.txt?

Yes. Pages blocked by robots.txt are skipped during crawl.

Can I exclude certain URL patterns?

Not in the current version. Add URL pattern exclusion to input if needed in future releases.

How long does a 500-page crawl take?

With concurrency=5 and 10s timeout: roughly 5-15 minutes depending on site speed.

Will it crawl pages behind login?

No — public pages only. Pages requiring authentication will be skipped.

How does it handle JavaScript-rendered links?

It uses static HTML parsing. SPA links rendered after page load will not be found.

Related Actors

URL/Link Tools cluster — explore related Apify tools:

• 🔗 URL Health Checker — Bulk-check HTTP status codes, redirects, SSL validity, and response times for thousands of URLs.
• 🔗 URL Unshortener — Expand bit.
• 🏷️ Meta Tag Analyzer — Analyze meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, JSON-LD, and hreflang for any URL.
• 📚 Wayback Machine Checker — Check if URLs are archived on the Wayback Machine and find closest snapshots by date.
• Sitemap Analyzer API | sitemap.xml SEO Audit — Analyze sitemap.
• Schema.org Validator API | JSON-LD + Microdata — Validate JSON-LD and Microdata across multiple pages, score markup quality, and flag missing or malformed Schema.
• Site Governance Monitor | Robots, Sitemap & Schema — Recurring robots.
• RDAP Domain Monitor API | Ownership + Expiry — Monitor domain registration data via RDAP and track expiry, registrar, nameserver, and ownership changes in structured rows.
• Domain Security Audit API | SSL Expiry, DMARC, Domain Expiry — Summary-first portfolio monitor for SSL expiry, DMARC/SPF/DKIM, domain expiry/ownership, and security headers with remediation-ready outputs.

Cost

Pay Per Event:

• actor-start: $0.01 (flat fee per run)
• dataset-item: $0.005 per output item

Example: 1,000 items = $0.01 + (1,000 × $0.005) = $5.01

No subscription required — you only pay for what you use.