Automated broken-link monitoring
LinkSweep checks every link on every page of your site — internal and external — on a schedule you set. It flags 404s, server errors and links that fail to connect, then re-verifies each one and reconciles the results against your sitemap so a firewall hiccup never shows up as a false broken link. You get an emailed report grouped by severity, so you know what to fix first.
Links rot quietly. A page renames a URL, a supplier removes a resource, an external site goes down — and nothing tells you until a visitor hits the dead end. Uptime monitors won't catch it either: a page can return HTTP 200 while a link inside it is broken. LinkSweep crawls the whole site and checks the links themselves.
How it works
- Discover every page. LinkSweep crawls from your XML sitemap and internal links, rendering JavaScript sites in a real browser when needed.
- Check every link. It requests each link and records the status — following redirects up to ten hops.
- Re-verify failures. Anything that failed is re-checked to rule out a one-off timeout, and on firewall-protected hosts results are reconciled against your sitemap.
- Prioritise and deliver. Findings are grouped into errors and warnings and sent by email, webhook, CSV or PDF depending on your plan.
What it catches
- 404 Not Found and other 4xx client errors
- 5xx server errors on the pages you link to
- Network and DNS failures — links that don't connect at all
- Broken images —
<img>sources that return nothing - Missing references — action links like "read more" that point nowhere
- Bot-blocked links — reported as information, not counted as broken
Related checks: redirect chains, JavaScript & SPA crawling, and outdated content. See the full list on the features page.
Frequently asked questions
Does LinkSweep check both internal and external links?
Yes. It checks every link it finds on every page — links to your own pages and links out to other sites — and reports failures with the page they were found on.
How does LinkSweep avoid false positives?
Flagged links are re-verified before they're reported, and on firewall-protected sites the results are reconciled against your XML sitemap, so an intermittent firewall response doesn't become a false broken link.
What counts as a broken link?
A link that returns a 404, a 5xx server error, or fails to connect at all. Links blocked by bot protection are reported separately as information, not counted as broken.
How often does it check?
On the schedule you choose — weekly, biweekly or monthly — plus on-demand scans on paid plans, with an emailed report each time and optional Slack/Discord alerts.
Find your broken links free
Run a whole-site scan and see your issue counts and top fixes. No credit card required.