Broken Link Checker for WordPress: The Best Free Tools

Every broken link on your website is a small disappointment – for visitors, for Google, and sometimes for your wallet too. The good news: running a free WordPress broken link checker isn't rocket science. The bad news: not every tool marketed for the job is actually the right choice for your site. In this post, we take an honest look at the common free options – weaknesses included – and show you a workflow for finding, evaluating, and cleanly fixing broken links.

Why broken links do more damage than you think

A dead link seems like a small thing at first. Added up, it rarely stays that way. Broken links work against you on several levels at once:

• SEO: If you link internally to a dead page, the link equity you meant to pass along simply evaporates. Google also reads a buildup of broken links as a sign of neglect – not a classic ranking factor, but a trust signal pointing the wrong way.
• User experience: Anyone who clicks a dead link hits a dead end and often bounces immediately – lost time on page, lost conversion.
• Trust: A website with lots of dead links looks neglected. That's especially true for guides or comparison pages whose value rests on how current their linked sources are.
• Affiliate revenue: The most expensive case: a partner changes its URL structure or shuts down a program, and your link keeps pointing at the old address. Every click that fizzles out there is a commission you often only notice months later when you look at the numbers.

The types of broken links

Not every dead link looks the same, and not every tool finds them equally well. For a realistic picture, it's worth distinguishing between:

• Internal links: references within your own website that lead nowhere – for example after deleting a post or restructuring categories.
• External links: references to other sites that no longer exist, have moved, or have completely changed their content. This category is the hardest to control, because you have no influence over how other websites are maintained.
• Images: embedded images whose file has been deleted or whose external source is no longer reachable. A missing image often catches a visitor's eye immediately and looks unprofessional.
• Offline affiliate targets: a special case of external links, but with its own risk – the partner program may still exist, but the specific product page you linked to is offline, moved, or renamed. The click then often lands on a generic error page instead of the product – and the commission stays away.

The tool overview: what's actually good for what?

There's no shortage of choices for finding broken links. Here are five approaches that actually deliver in practice – with strengths and weaknesses, not just marketing promises.

Broken Link Checker plugin (WPMU DEV)

Probably the best-known WordPress plugin for this purpose. It scans your entire website, checks internal and external links as well as images, and reports hits directly in the dashboard or by email.

• Strengths: Runs automatically in the background, also checks images, very easy to set up with no technical background needed.
• Weaknesses: This is exactly where the catch is – the plugin is known for creating noticeable server load, because it continuously re-requests every link in the background. On larger sites or budget hosting, that can measurably worsen load times. The free version also hasn't been actively developed for years, which can become a risk with WordPress updates.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free)

With Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs offers a free option for verified site owners. The built-in site audit finds, among other things, internal and external broken links as part of a full crawl.

• Strengths: Very reliable crawling engine, delivers a wealth of additional SEO data on the side (backlinks, rankings, technical errors), no performance impact on your site because crawling happens externally.
• Weaknesses: Domain verification required, crawls run on a schedule rather than in real time, and the free scope is deliberately limited compared to full paid access.

Google Search Console (404 report)

Under "Pages" or "Indexing," Search Console shows you which URLs on your website Google is returning a 404 for. That's not a dedicated link-checker feature, but an important addition because it shows what Google actually perceives as broken.

• Strengths: Free, official, shows exactly the errors relevant to your ranking, no installation needed.
• Weaknesses: Only finds URLs Google has already crawled, the data is often several days old, and broken external links on other sites don't show up here at all – only errors on your own domain.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free-tier limit)

The classic among desktop crawlers. Screaming Frog crawls your website like a search engine bot and lists every status code – including all 404 errors on internal and external links.

• Strengths: Very precise and fast, shows exactly which link is broken on which page, exportable as CSV for further processing.
• Weaknesses: The free version is capped at 500 URLs per crawl – not enough for larger websites. It's also a desktop tool with no ongoing monitoring: you have to trigger the crawl manually.

Online checkers (W3C Link Checker, drlinkcheck & co.)

For a quick one-off check, there are free web tools like the W3C Link Checker or drlinkcheck.com: enter a URL, wait for the results list.

• Strengths: No account, no installation, ready to use instantly for a rough overview or a single page.
• Weaknesses: Usually built for single pages rather than the whole website, sometimes slow on larger crawls, result quality varies from provider to provider.

Our recommendation: crawl externally instead of an always-on plugin

After this comparison, the recommendation is fairly clear: run the search for broken links externally instead of letting a plugin work permanently in the background. The reason is simple – an always-on plugin has to regularly re-request every link on your website to check whether it still works. That costs compute time on your own server, continuously, not just once.

An external crawl with Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Screaming Frog, on the other hand, barely burdens your server, because the check happens from outside. For most websites, a monthly or quarterly run is enough – broken links rarely appear en masse overnight, but creep in gradually through deleted posts, relocated partner pages, or content updates.

The workflow: find, evaluate, fix

A report full of broken links alone doesn't achieve anything – what matters is what happens next. A three-step process has proven itself:

• 1. Find: run a crawl (Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or an online checker) and export the list of all broken links with status code and location.
• 2. Evaluate: not every hit is equally important. Prioritize by visibility – your most-visited page or a high-revenue affiliate article first, an old subpage later. Also check whether the link is even still relevant.
• 3. Fix: three possible paths – correct the URL (only the address changed), cleanly redirect via 301 (content moved or was replaced), or remove the link (no sensible replacement exists anymore).

It's exactly this third step, fixing, that often gets tedious in practice – especially with external and affiliate links, which are frequently scattered across many different articles.

Fixing with Linkjet: redirect instead of search and replace

Once you've found broken links, the obvious fix is usually a 301 redirect. This is exactly where Linkjet comes in. Instead of manually finding and replacing every dead URL in your post text, you set up a redirect in Linkjet that automatically points the broken target to the right new address – no matter how many articles contain the link.

This is especially valuable for affiliate links: if you manage your partner links centrally through /go/ short links, you change the target in exactly one place going forward – instead of hunting for the old URL across fifty articles. If a partner program changes its structure, you simply adjust the Linkjet target, and every article points correctly again immediately. If you're currently managing your redirects in Redirection, Linkjet's import wizard takes over your existing setup with one click – more on that in our post on the best free WordPress redirect plugins.

Linkjet's built-in 404 monitor adds a second perspective to the external crawl: it automatically logs whenever a visitor clicks one of your /go/ links that leads nowhere. That way you see not just what a crawler theoretically finds, but also which dead affiliate targets are actually being clicked – a direct signal of where you're currently losing commissions. Finding and redirecting 404 errors step by step is a topic for its own post; for now, Linkjet's monitor gives you the raw signal to act on.

Monitoring rhythm: how often is enough?

How often you should check depends on the size and type of your website:

• Small websites with few articles: a crawl every three months is usually enough.
• Content-heavy blogs with lots of external source references: a monthly crawl, because other websites keep changing.
• Affiliate websites: the tightest cadence – monthly via external crawl, complemented by ongoing monitoring of actual clicks through the 404 monitor. Commission losses from dead affiliate targets add up fast if they go unnoticed.
• After every major change: after a relaunch, migration, or major content cleanup, an extra crawl outside the normal rhythm is worthwhile.

Conclusion

Using a free WordPress broken link checker isn't a question of budget, but of the right combination of tools. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools and Screaming Frog deliver the most reliable stocktake, Search Console adds the Google perspective, and online checkers help with a quick single check. An always-on plugin sounds convenient, but in doubt costs you more performance than it saves in time. Once you've found broken links, the real work is fixing them – and that's exactly where Linkjet helps, by managing redirects centrally instead of you searching through every article one by one.

Frequently asked questions

Not sure what a setup like this costs? A look at hafenstudios' pricing shows: Linkjet stays completely free – including for the redirects you set up after your next broken-link check.