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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Development

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

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.