The Top 5 Broken Link Checkers To Use In 2024

Having broken links on your website can negatively impact your search engine rankings and user experience. That's why it's crucial to regularly check your site for dead links and fix or remove them. 

In 2024, there are several excellent broken link checker tools available to webmasters. This article will discuss the top 5 broken link checkers to use this year based on features, accuracy, ease of use and pricing. 

Whether you manage a small business website or a large corporate site, these tools can help keep your external and internal links working properly. Read on to learn more about the best options for broken link checking in 2024.

Xenu Link Sleuth

First on our list of the top broken link checkers for 2024 is Xenu Link Sleuth. This veteran tool has been around for over 15 years and is still one of the most powerful choices available.

Xenu Link Sleuth is free to use and runs on Windows operating systems. 

It can crawl through your website pages to identify broken links rapidly through multi-threading. One of the standout features is that Xenu checks not just external links but internal ones as well, which many free tools do not offer. This ensures all the links within your site structure work properly.

The tool produces detailed reports summarizing all the pages checked, broken links found, redirect links and site statistics like page sizes and load times. The reports are presented in a clean, organized manner so you can easily interpret the data. Users mention that Xenu's reports are more comprehensive than those of some paid tools.

Xenu also enables you to validate links in CSV files from other apps like Excel. The tool is straightforward and simple to use, even for those without a technical background. However, the interface is dated, and there are no options to customize scans, which may be limiting for some users.

Overall, Xenu Link Sleuth is a powerhouse broken link checker that is hard to beat despite its age. The combination of free price point, internal/external checking, and insightful reports makes it one of the top choices for 2024.

Deadlinkchecker.com

Next up is Deadlinkchecker.com, a free online broken link checking tool. This web-based tool provides a quick and easy way to check a website for dead links without needing to install any software.

To use Deadlinkchecker, you simply enter the URL you want to scan into the homepage. The tool crawls the submitted pages to identify and extract all hyperlinks. It then tests each link to see if it is broken and generates a report with summarized results.

Deadlinkchecker presents its reports in a clean interface outlining the total links scanned, broken links, redirected links, and code errors detected. The detailed view provides the URL, link text, status code and reason for each broken link. This allows webmasters to quickly identify broken pages to fix or remove.

One advantage of Deadlinkchecker is flexibility in scanning. You can choose to check only external links, internal links or both. There are also options to select the scan depth and configure filters to customize what pages get checked.

For those managing multiple websites, Deadlinkchecker offers a premium plan starting at $5 per month. This adds features like automatic scheduled scans, 24/7 monitoring, uptime tracking and email alerts.

For most users, the free account will be sufficient for periodic checks. The tool is easy to use with customizable scans and detailed reporting. Deadlinkchecker is a great option for quickly spotting and assessing broken links in 2024.

Monitor Backlinks

Monitor Backlinks is a premium SaaS platform focused specifically on finding and fixing broken backlinks. Pricing starts at $49 per month for the Starter plan.

This tool maintains a large backlink index of over 470 million links. When you add your website, Monitor Backlinks cross checks your existing backlinks against this index to identify any that are broken. You can also add competitors to compare your backlink profiles.

One useful feature is that Monitor Backlinks rechecks broken links regularly to inform you if they become fixed in the future. This helps you avoid wasting effort contacting websites about links that will eventually resolve on their own. The tool also categorizes broken backlinks by priority so you can focus your outreach efficiently.

Detailed reports in Monitor Backlinks provide data on anchor text, URL rating, link equity and more for each broken backlink. You can export this data to CSV format for further analysis.

For tracking progress, Monitor Backlinks generates metrics showing the number of broken backlinks identified versus fixed over time. Tracking your effort helps illustrate the ROI generated from the tool.

While Monitor Backlinks specializes in backlinks, you can also use it to check internal links by adding your root domain and crawling subpages. However, this is not its primary purpose.

For businesses focused on reputation management and maximizing backlink equity, Monitor Backlinks is one of the top paid tools available in 2024. The combination of robust backlink data, automation, and prioritization make it a recommended choice.

Screaming Frog 

Screaming Frog is one of the most well-known crawlers used for SEO and broken link checking purposes. This desktop software tool enables in-depth analysis and crawling of websites.

Key features of Screaming Frog for broken link checking include:

• Configurable crawl settings: Choose which pages, file types, and external links to check along with crawl depth and priority. This allows for customized and efficient scans.
• Granular crawl stats: View detailed crawl reports containing analysis of every page and link checked, response codes, page titles, sizes, etc. Stats are presented in a structured table for easy export.
• Link explorer: Visualize all the external, internal, canonical and redirected links in one graph. Broken links are clearly marked in red to identify issues.
• Custom filtering and tagging: Use filters and tags to segment lists of URLs within the results for further analysis and export.
• Crawl simulation: Test changes prior to rolling out on your live site by uploading revised pages to see how they impact crawl results.

Screaming Frog also provides page optimization checks beyond broken links like duplicate title tags, image alt text, and more. However, these require more advanced paid plans.

For many webmasters, the Standard pricing tier at $149 per year can effectively cover broken link checking needs. The powerful customization and granular reporting capabilities make Screaming Frog a top choice for 2024.

Link Miner

Final on our list is LinkMiner, a paid SaaS tool starting at $99 per month. LinkMiner focuses primarily on backlink analysis but also includes broken link identification.

The tool features robust link data pulling from multiple sources beyond just your site's current links. LinkMiner incorporates backlink history data, archived snapshots of dead pages, links from competitor domains and more. This extensive context can help identify issues with links that may not flag as broken in standard crawl checks.

Within LinkMiner, you can view links grouped by type like dofollow/nofollow, contextual, broken, toxic, etc. A proprietary scoring algorithm called Link Equity is applied to illustrate the estimated value of each backlink. These groupings and scores enable you to instantly spot low-quality links that may be hurting your site.

While LinkMiner specializes in backlink data, the broken link checker works for both internal and external site links. The tool flags pages that timed out during crawling as potential broken links for further verification. You can then export broken links into a spreadsheet.

For businesses invested in an ongoing link building strategy, LinkMiner provides value beyond basic broken link checking. The wealth of link data helps identify risky links and new high-quality link building opportunities.

Conclusion

Regularly monitoring and maintaining your site's links should be a key component of any digital marketing strategy. Broken internal and external links negatively impact user experience and search engine optimization.

This article covered 5 of the top broken link checker tools for 2024 based on features, accuracy and ease of use. Whether you choose a free option like Xenu or Deadlinkchecker, or paid tools like Monitor Backlinks, Screaming Frog or LinkMiner, using one of these solutions can help you proactively identify and fix broken links on your website.