Broken Link Checker

About this tool

Broken Link Checker requests a public webpage from the UtilityKit backend and checks the links it finds, reporting HTTP status codes, response times, and whether each URL is reachable. Enter a URL, set the crawl depth (1 = the URL you entered only, 2 = that page plus every link on it, 3 = also links on the same-site pages it reaches), and toggle 'Same domain only' to decide whether external pages are crawled further. The checker starts a background job on the server and polls for results every 2 seconds so you see links appear as they are tested. The results table highlights broken links in red, and a summary shows how many URLs were checked, how many are broken, and how many are OK. When the job completes, export the results as a CSV for further analysis or to share with your SEO team.

Why use it

• Live polling shows results as they arrive — no waiting for a full crawl to finish.

• Configurable crawl depth lets you do a quick single-page check or a deeper site audit.

• Same-domain toggle prevents wasted time testing external sites you don't control.

• CSV export makes it easy to share results with SEO teams or file issues.

• Status code and response time data help distinguish flaky links from hard 404s.

• Free and unlimited — no account, no page limits, no paywalled reports.

How to use

1. Enter the URL of the page you want to check — must be publicly accessible (no login walls).
2. Set crawl depth: 1 checks only the URL you entered, 2 also checks every link on that page, 3 also checks links on the same-site pages it reaches.
3. Toggle 'Same domain only' to limit the crawl to links within the same origin, or uncheck it to also test external links.
4. Click Check Links. A background job starts and results appear live as each link is tested.
5. Watch the live results table — broken links (4xx/5xx) are highlighted in red.
6. When the crawl finishes, review the summary (total / broken / OK) and click CSV to export.

When it helps

• Auditing a website for broken links before a redesign or migration.
• Regular SEO maintenance to catch and fix 404 errors that hurt rankings.
• Quality-checking a newly published article or landing page.
• Verifying all resource links still work after a domain change.
• Identifying internal links that need to be updated after content is moved or deleted.
• Auditing a website for broken links before a redesign, migration, or domain change

Examples

URL: https://example.com/blog
Depth: 1
Same domain only: ON

1 checked / 0 broken / 1 OK — only https://example.com/blog itself is requested; links on the page are not checked at this depth.

URL: https://example.com
Depth: 2
Same domain only: ON

Every link in the page's HTML is checked, up to 200 URLs. Each row shows the URL, its status badge and time in ms; 4xx/5xx and errors are highlighted red.

URL: https://example.com/resources
Depth: 3
Same domain only: OFF

Links on the starting page and on the pages it links to are checked, external pages included, until 200 URLs have been checked.

Tips

• Start with depth 2 to check the links on a single page before committing to a depth-3 crawl, which takes longer and stops at 200 URLs.
• Many '403 Forbidden' results on external links are bot-blocking, not real breakage — verify in a real browser first.
• A 'Timeout' is not necessarily a 404 — slow servers or rate-limited APIs may be reachable but unable to respond in 12 seconds.
• Export to CSV before closing the tab — results are kept for only 5 minutes after the crawl completes to limit memory use.
• Same-domain mode is best for in-progress site audits; uncheck only when you specifically want to validate outbound link health.
• Pages with lots of JavaScript-rendered links may not be fully crawled — the parser reads server-rendered HTML, not client-rendered content.
• Combine this tool with Lighthouse Lite Audit for a complete pre-launch checklist — links plus performance and SEO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Glossary

HTTP HEAD

An HTTP method that requests only response headers, not the body — used for efficient existence checks without downloading the full resource.

HTTP GET

An HTTP method that requests both headers and body — used by the crawler on the seed page to fetch HTML and extract links.

Status code 2xx

Success responses (200 OK, 201 Created, 204 No Content) — the link is reachable and working.

Status code 3xx

Redirection responses (301 Moved Permanently, 302 Found) — the link points elsewhere; the crawler follows automatically.

Status code 4xx

Client error responses — 400 Bad Request, 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 410 Gone. Indicates the link is broken or restricted.

Status code 5xx

Server error responses — 500 Internal Server Error, 502 Bad Gateway, 503 Service Unavailable, 504 Gateway Timeout. Indicates a server-side problem at the target.

Redirect chain

A sequence of 3xx responses leading to a final 2xx or 4xx — long chains slow page load and may trigger SEO 'redirect hop' penalties.

404 Not Found

The most common 'broken link' status — the target server responded but the requested resource does not exist at that URL.

robots.txt

A file at /robots.txt that tells crawlers which paths to avoid; this tool does not consult robots.txt because it acts on user-supplied seed URLs only.

Crawl depth

How many levels the checker goes from the seed URL. In this tool depth 1 checks only the seed URL, depth 2 adds the links on the seed page, and depth 3 adds links found on same-site pages one level further.

Soft 404

A page that returns HTTP 200 but contains a 'not found' message in the body — these are not flagged as broken by status-only checkers.

Crawl budget

The total number of URLs a crawler will fetch in one job — 200 here, to keep server resources fair across users.