About Broken Link Checker

Find broken links and validate URLs in HTML content. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Web / Frontend collection.

Use Cases

• Audit site migrations for broken internal and external links
• Verify documentation before a product launch or major release
• Monitor for external links that have gone dead since last checked
• Check HTML email templates for broken image and CTA URLs

Tips

• Paste full HTML including relative links — the checker resolves them against a configurable base URL you set in the options panel
• Filter results by status code: 404 (not found), 301/302 (redirects that should be updated), and connection timeouts
• Use the 'internal links only' mode to check links within the same domain without triggering rate limits on external sites

Fun Facts

• A 2021 study by Harvard Law School's Library found that 49% of URLs cited in Supreme Court opinions returned 404 errors — a phenomenon called 'link rot'. The median half-life of a web URL is estimated at about 2 years.
• The HTTP 301 status code (Moved Permanently) was introduced in HTTP/1.0 in 1996. Redirects account for roughly 15% of all HTTP responses served on the modern web.
• The term '404 Not Found' comes from CERN's office numbering system, where the room containing the original web team and their file server was Room 404. Though widely repeated, CERN has neither confirmed nor denied this story.

FAQ

Does it follow redirects?

Yes — by default it follows up to 5 redirect hops and reports the final status code. You can flag pages that redirect (3xx) rather than directly serving content, since outdated links should point to canonical URLs.

Can it check JavaScript-rendered pages?

No — this tool checks links found in static HTML. JavaScript-injected links require a headless browser (Puppeteer, Playwright). For SPAs, extract the full rendered HTML first and paste it here.

Why are some external links reported as broken when they work in my browser?

Some servers block requests from bots by checking the User-Agent header or requiring cookies from a prior session. The checker makes plain HTTP requests — sites protected by Cloudflare bot challenges may appear as errors.