free tool

Broken-link checker

Dead links waste crawl budget, frustrate readers and weaken trust. Paste a URL — we pull the links on the page and check each one's status (up to 25 per run).

Why broken links cost more than a 404 page

A dead link wastes the two things you spent most to earn: a visitor's patience and a crawler's budget. Search engines allocate a finite number of fetches per site — every one spent on a 404 is one not spent on a page you want indexed.

Broken internal links are the worse half: they also break the path authority flows along, so pages behind the dead link get less of it than you intended.

Internal vs external — different problems, different fixes

Internal breakage is yours to fix outright: update the URL or redirect the old path. It usually appears after a restructure, when addresses changed but references did not.

External breakage is someone else's site going away. You cannot fix it, so choose: replace the link with a live equivalent, point at an archived copy, or drop it. Leaving it is the only wrong answer — a citation to nothing weakens the passage it was meant to support.

Fixing them without breaking anything else

  1. Fix internal links at the source — editing the page beats stacking redirects.
  2. Redirect old URLs with 301 only where external sites still link in.
  3. Re-check after the fix: a redirect chain is its own problem.

Questions

How do I find broken links on my website?

Enter your URL above. The checker crawls the page's links and reports every one that answers with an error, split into internal and external.

Do broken links hurt SEO?

Indirectly but measurably. They waste crawl budget, break the internal paths authority flows along, and push visitors away — all three reduce how much of your site gets indexed and ranked.

What is the difference between a broken link and a redirect?

A broken link returns an error (404, 410, 5xx) and leads nowhere. A redirect returns 301/302 and forwards to a working page. Redirects are fine; long chains of them are not.

What this tool checks

A broken link checker scans the links on a page and flags the ones that return a 404 or resolve through a dead redirect instead of a working destination. Dead links waste crawl budget, break the paths crawlers and AI answer engines follow to map your site, and erode the trust that makes a page worth citing. Fixing them keeps link equity flowing and keeps your content reachable to both search bots and the models that quote it.

What it looks at

HTTP status code
The numeric response a linked URL returns — 200 is healthy, 404/410 means the target is gone, and 5xx means the server failed.
404 Not Found
A link pointing to a page that no longer exists, sending crawlers and readers to a dead end and signaling neglect.
Dead redirect
A link that forwards to a URL which itself errors or loops, so the visitor never reaches real content.
Redirect chain
A link that hops through multiple 301/302 steps before landing; each hop leaks link equity and slows crawling.
Internal vs external links
Whether the broken link points inside your own site (your fix) or to a third-party page (their outage or removal).
Crawl reachability
Whether a bot following the link can still reach live content, which determines what gets indexed and quoted.

How to use it

  1. Paste your page URL into the scanner and run the check (up to 25 links).
  2. Review the flagged links — note the status code and whether each is a 404 or a dead redirect.
  3. Fix each one: update the URL to a live destination, restore the missing page, or remove the link.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a broken link?

A broken link is one whose destination returns an error (commonly a 404 Not Found or a 5xx server error) or forwards through a redirect that ends in an error or loop, so the visitor or crawler never reaches a working page.

Why do broken links hurt SEO and AI citations?

They waste crawl budget on dead ends, block the link paths crawlers and AI engines use to map your site, and signal low maintenance — all of which lower the odds a page gets indexed, ranked, or quoted.

How many links does this tool scan?

It scans up to 25 links from the URL you paste — enough for the main in-content links on many pages. For link-heavy pages, run it on your most important pages one at a time.

Do I need to sign up or pay?

No — the checker is free and requires no signup; paste a URL and get the results in your browser.

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