Frequently Asked Questions
Is Broken Link Finder really free?
Yes — completely free, no signup, no credit card, and no crawl limits. We run it because we use it ourselves when auditing client sites, and because the best tools on the web should be free wherever possible. Ads on the page help cover hosting, but the tool itself will always be free to use.
Does it check external links as well as internal ones?
Yes. Every link on the page you scan — whether it points to your own site, to a partner site, to a blog you referenced, or to an image hosted elsewhere — gets checked. We make a real HTTP request to each destination and report the status, so soft 404s, redirect chains, and certificate errors all get caught.
How does it decide a link is broken?
We categorise every link into one of a few buckets based on the HTTP response: OK (200-range status, content returned), redirect (3xx, we follow and report the final destination), broken (404, 410, or other "not found" responses), server error (5xx responses from the destination), and timeout (no response within our limit). Each category is shown separately in the report.
Will it follow redirects?
Yes, up to a reasonable limit. If a link goes through one or two redirects before reaching a real page, we report it as a successful redirect and show the final destination. If a link gets stuck in a loop or chains through too many hops, we flag it — redirect chains are a common source of lost link equity and slow page loads.
Can I scan password-protected or staging sites?
No, unfortunately not — Broken Link Finder fetches pages anonymously, the same way a search engine crawler would. If you need to audit a site that requires login, you'll need a tool that supports session cookies. For public pages, we've got you covered.
How long does a scan take?
For a typical page with 20–50 links, a full scan usually finishes in under 10 seconds. Larger pages with hundreds of links can take up to a minute — we check links in parallel to keep things fast, but we're also careful not to hammer destination servers with simultaneous requests.
How often should I scan my site?
It depends on how much external content you link to and how often you publish. As a rough guide: monthly for small sites, fortnightly for medium ones, and weekly for large sites or sites that publish frequently. External links tend to rot faster than internal ones.