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Is there a desktop or web applications that would search for broken links in my web site?

I want it to stay within the domain I give it and check links that go from one page to another as well as links that go to other websites. I'd like it to report 404, 5XX, 3XX and other errors.

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closed as not constructive by slhck Jan 26 '13 at 16:10


5 Answers 5

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Desktop link checkers

Web-based link checkers

  • LinkAider. Paid (free for small websites with less than 500 pages). Checked number of pages you specify
  • W3C Link Checker. Free. Checks entire site.
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there's a bunch I'd never heard of on that list - great resource :) –  warren Sep 14 '09 at 7:18

You can use W3C's link validation tool - W3C's Link Checker.

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good one :) –  Molly7244 Sep 9 '09 at 14:32
geez Molly, must you answer the same things as I do? You always grab the upvotes!! :) –  caliban Sep 9 '09 at 14:41
+1 as it checks recursively and is web-based too so you can run it without chewing up your own bandwidth in the process. –  Kez Sep 14 '09 at 7:25
Very slow to use for more than one page as it checks links sequentially. Somethins like 'Link Sleuth' will check dozens of links at a time. –  pelms May 10 '10 at 11:29

LinkChecker is a free, GPL licensed URL validator.

recursive and multithreaded checking



restriction of link checking with regular expression filters for URLs

proxy support

username/password authorization for HTTP and FTP and Telnet

honors robots.txt exclusion protocol

Cookie support

HTML and CSS syntax check

Antivirus check

a command line interface

a GUI client interface

a (Fast)CGI web interface (requires HTTP server)

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I use the LinkChecker Firefox add-on for checking single pages (the W3C checker is another, less friendly option).

For sets of pages or entire sites, the previously mentioned Xenu's Link Sleuth is very quick as (unlike the above options) it checks many links simultaneously.

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You might also consider running wget in -spider mode. See http://linux.die.net/man/1/wget for the wget man pages :)

wget -spider <URL> seems to be along the lines of what you're asking.

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