Scan any web page for dead links, 404 errors, and redirects in 30 seconds.
No signup. No install. Free forever for single-page checks. Compare with Ahrefs ($129/mo), Screaming Frog (£199/yr) and Sitechecker ($49/mo) below.
Five steps from scan to fix. The whole flow takes under five minutes for a typical page.
Enter the URL of the web page you want to scan. We accept any public HTTP/HTTPS URL.
Our scanner extracts all <a href> links from the page and tests each destination with concurrent HTTP requests.
Working links (green), redirects (yellow), broken links (red). Export the broken list to CSV in one click.
Update each broken link to point to a working URL, or remove it. Re-check after fixing to confirm.
Pages behind broken links may have lost indexing. Use IndexFlow's Bulk Index Checker to confirm and resubmit.
Honest comparison of the top broken link checkers in 2026 — pricing, limits, and what each is best for. Most SEO professionals use a combination: a single-page checker for quick audits and a site-wide crawler for full audits.
| Tool | Pricing | Scan Scope | CSV Export | No Signup | Index Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IndexFlow Broken Link CheckerRecommended | Free | 50 links/scan | |||
| Ahrefs Broken Link Checker | $129/mo | Site-wide crawl | |||
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Free up to 500 URLs / £199/yr | Site-wide crawl | |||
| Sitechecker | $49/mo | Site-wide crawl | |||
| Dr. Link Check | Free / $9/mo Pro | 1500 links/mo free | |||
| W3C Link Checker | Free | Single page |
Use IndexFlow or Dr. Link Check. No signup, instant results, perfect for spot-checking blog posts before publishing.
Use Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) or Ahrefs Site Audit if you want a recurring scheduled crawl with alerts.
IndexFlow's tool is free forever for single-page scans. W3C Link Checker is also free but lacks CSV export and modern UI.
Knowing why links break helps you prevent them. These are the patterns we see most often when auditing client sites.
The most common cause. Sites change permalinks, move from /blog/ to /articles/, or rebuild on a new platform. Old URLs return 404.
Linked domains can expire (returning DNS errors) or be sold to spammers (returning unrelated content). Links to defunct startups are especially common.
Authors delete or unpublish content. Product pages disappear when items go out of stock. News sites paywall articles after a few weeks.
When a site moves to a new platform without setting up redirects, every old URL becomes a 404. This is the most preventable cause.
A single character mistake (extra slash, missing 's' in https) breaks the link. Common when manually copying URLs.
Temporary 5xx errors. These resolve themselves but may register as broken if you scan during the outage. Always re-check before fixing.
Scans every link on the page and checks if the destination URL is reachable
Detects broken links returning 404, 500, or other error status codes
Identifies 301/302 redirects that may need updating to direct URLs
Checks up to 50 unique links per page scan with detailed status codes
Download broken links as CSV for easy sharing with your team
Get results in under 60 seconds with concurrent link checking
Broken links are one of the most common — and most overlooked — SEO issues. Every broken link is a missed opportunity: lost link equity, frustrated visitors, and a quality signal to Google that your site isn't actively maintained.
1. Wasted crawl budget. Googlebot follows every link on your page. When it hits a 404, that crawl request was wasted. On a site with thousands of pages and a finite crawl budget, dozens of broken links per page mean fewer of your real pages get crawled — and pages that aren't crawled never get indexed.
2. Lost link equity. When you link out to a high-authority page, Google passes some of that page's authority back to yours through co-citation signals. When the destination is broken, that equity evaporates. The same is true for internal links — a broken internal link from a high-traffic page can prevent its target from inheriting authority.
3. Quality signal to Google. Google's algorithm uses many on-page signals to assess overall quality. The presence of broken links is one of them. A blog post with 5 broken outbound links looks abandoned. A pricing page with broken CTAs looks neglected. Google trusts well-maintained pages more than abandoned ones.
Studies show that 88% of users are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. Clicking a link and landing on a 404 page is one of the most frustrating experiences on the web — and bounce rate is a behavioural signal Google measures via Chrome data.
Regular broken link audits should be part of every SEO workflow. Check your most important pages monthly, and always check after a site migration or URL restructure.
Finding broken links is only half the battle. Many SEO practitioners discover that even their working pages aren't in Google's index — "Discovered, currently not indexed" is the most common Search Console status in 2026. Use IndexFlow's Bulk Index Checker to verify which of your pages Google has actually indexed, and submit URLs for re-crawling through multiple channels at once.
Five moments when a broken link check pays for itself.
Catch typos in your outbound citations before readers (or Google) see them.
Your highest-traffic pages compound any SEO damage. A monthly check on these alone catches 80% of issues.
Migrations are the #1 cause of mass broken links. Audit all pages within 48 hours of cutover.
If you've received a manual action notification, audit and fix broken links before responding — Google reviewers check these.
Outbound citations rot. Re-check every old post you update so you're not republishing dead links.
Broken links (also called dead links) are hyperlinks on a web page that point to a URL that no longer exists or returns an error. Common errors include 404 Not Found, 500 Internal Server Error, DNS resolution failure, and connection timeouts. Broken links create a poor user experience and can hurt your SEO rankings.
Broken links hurt your website in three ways: 1) They create a bad user experience when visitors click a link and get an error page. 2) Google treats broken links as a quality signal — too many can lower your rankings. 3) Broken outbound links waste your page's link equity that could be passing SEO value to working pages. Internal broken links also waste crawl budget and may prevent important pages from being indexed.
Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawl your entire site (1000s of pages) which is overkill if you just need to audit one important page. Our tool checks a single page in 30 seconds with no signup, no install, and no credit card. For full-site audits, Screaming Frog Free covers 500 URLs and Ahrefs costs $129/mo. We're free for unlimited single-page checks.
We check ALL links on the page — internal links (same domain) and external links (other domains). Both can become broken. Internal broken links are especially harmful for SEO because they waste your own crawl budget.
The tool extracts all links from the page you enter and checks up to 50 unique links per scan. For pages with more than 50 links, we check the first 50 and report the total count. Each link is checked with a HEAD request (falling back to GET) with a 10-second timeout. For larger scans, sign up for IndexFlow.
Redirect links are not technically broken — the user still reaches a page. However, they add latency, consume crawl budget, and the destination URL may have changed. We flag redirects separately so you can decide whether to update them to the final URL. For SEO, always link to the final URL — never to a redirect.
Check your most important pages monthly. External websites change frequently — pages get deleted, domains expire, and URLs get restructured. A monthly broken link audit helps you catch issues before they impact your SEO or user experience. Always check after a site migration, URL restructure, or large content update.
A few broken links won't deindex your page on their own, but they're a quality signal Google uses. If your page has many broken outbound links, Google may interpret it as low-quality or abandoned content and reduce its ranking. Combined with other quality issues, broken links can contribute to deindexing. The reverse is also true — if your page links to authoritative, indexed sources, that helps SEO.
A soft 404 is a page that returns a 200 OK status code but actually shows an error message ('Page not found', 'This product is no longer available'). Google treats soft 404s as broken. Our tool detects HTTP-level broken links (status codes); detecting soft 404s requires content analysis which is available in the IndexFlow paid tier.
Three common causes: 1) The site blocks automated requests (403 Forbidden) but allows browsers — these aren't truly broken. 2) The site requires login (401 Unauthorized) — also not broken for users. 3) Slow servers timing out — try checking again later. We show the exact status code so you can distinguish real broken links from false positives.
No. The free broken link checker works without signup — paste any URL and get results in 30 seconds. If you want to check entire sitemaps, monitor pages over time, get email alerts when links break, or check up to 100,000 URLs per month, sign up for the IndexFlow free plan.
Yes. After the scan completes, click 'Export CSV' to download all broken links with their source URL, destination URL, status code, and error type. Use the CSV in Excel or your project tracker to assign fixes to your team.