broken-link-audit — Free Broken Link Scanner & Checker (CLI)

broken-link-audit is a free, open-source broken link scanner for SEO audits. Crawl any website from a single URL, find every broken internal link, image, video, and asset — with no URL cap and no paid API.

npx broken-link-audit https://yoursite.com

Unlike free tiers of Screaming Frog (500 URL limit) or paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, broken-link-audit runs entirely on your machine and reports which parent page each broken link appears on, so you know exactly what to fix.

Why use broken-link-audit?

| | broken-link-audit | Screaming Frog (free) | Ahrefs / Semrush | |---|-------------------|----------------------|------------------| | Price | Free, open source | Free (500 URL cap) | Paid subscriptions | | URL limit | Unlimited | 500 URLs | Quota-based | | Broken images & media | Yes (img, video, audio, CSS) | Limited in free tier | Varies by plan | | JS-rendered sites | --render-js (Playwright) | Paid license | Varies | | Parent page attribution | Every issue shows the page it was found on | Yes | Yes | | Runs locally | Yes — no data sent to third parties | Yes | Cloud-based |

Install

Requirements: Node.js 20+

npm install -g broken-link-audit

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/jjf2009/broken-link-audit.git
cd broken-link-audit
npm install
npm run build
npm link

For JavaScript-heavy sites (React, Next.js, Vue):

npx playwright install chromium

Quick start

# Basic broken link check
broken-link-audit https://example.com

# Full site audit with reports
broken-link-audit https://example.com --output ./broken-link-audit-report/

# JS-rendered SPA
broken-link-audit https://example.com --render-js

# Also check external links
broken-link-audit https://example.com --check-external

Reports — fix issues by parent page

Every broken link report includes the parent page (the page where the bad link appears):

| File | What it contains | |------|------------------| | pages-with-issues.csv | Start here — parent_page first, then broken URL, type, anchor text | | pages-with-issues-summary.csv | One row per parent page with issue count | | report.html | Visual report grouped by parent page | | summary.txt | Human-readable overview listing pages with issues | | report.csv / report.json | Full audit data |

CLI options

| Flag | Description | Default | |------|-------------|---------| | --max-depth <n> | Max crawl depth | unlimited | | --max-pages <n> | Max pages to crawl | unlimited | | --concurrency <n> | Crawl concurrency ceiling | Crawlee autoscaled | | --check-concurrency <n> | Max parallel link checks | 6 | | --timeout <seconds> | Per-request timeout | 10 | | --retries <n> | Retries before marking broken | 2 | | --render-js | Render JS before extracting links | off | | --check-external | Also check external link targets | off | | --use-sitemap / --no-sitemap | Seed from sitemap.xml | on | | --respect-robots / --ignore-robots | Honor robots.txt | respect | | --user-agent <string> | Custom User-Agent | BrokenLinkAuditBot/1.0 | | --output <path> | Report directory | ./broken-link-audit-report/ | | --format <csv\|json\|both> | Export format | both |

What it checks

• Page links — <a href> internal and external anchors
• Images — <img src>, srcset, <picture> sources
• Video & audio — <video>, <audio>, <source> tags
• Embeds — <iframe>, <embed>, <object>
• Assets — <link href> stylesheets, icons, preload tags
• Inline CSS — url() references in style attributes

FAQ

What is the best free broken link checker?

For unlimited crawls without a paid license, broken-link-audit is a strong choice: open source, runs locally, checks images and media (not just <a> tags), supports JS-rendered sites, and reports issues grouped by parent page.

How do I find broken links on my website?

broken-link-audit https://yoursite.com

Open broken-link-audit-report/pages-with-issues.csv — the parent_page column shows exactly which page contains each broken link.

Does it work with React / Next.js / Vue?

Yes. Use --render-js for headless Chromium via Playwright.

CI/CD usage

Exits 1 when broken links are found:

broken-link-audit https://staging.example.com || exit 1

Development

npm run build
npm test
npm run audit -- https://example.com

License

MIT — see LICENSE.