Alternatives to W3C Link Checker
An online W3C tool that finds broken links and anchors on a web page or whole site. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
W3C Link Checker
An online W3C tool that finds broken links and anchors on a web page or whole site.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as W3C Link Checker.
LinkChecker
Open-source command-line tool that checks links in web pages or crawls whole websites for broken ones.
LinkChecker is open-source GPL command-line software for Windows, macOS and Linux with multithreaded crawling and CSV, XML and SQL output, but has no graphical interface.
Dead Link Checker
Online broken link checker that crawls a website or single page and reports dead links.
Dead Link Checker offers free manual site checks and can scan multiple sites in one run, with scheduled emailed reports available on a paid plan.
Broken Link Check
Free online dead link checker for whole websites or single pages, with no sign-up.
Broken Link Check needs no sign-up and shows where each broken link sits in the HTML with error codes, with the free version limited to 3,000 pages.
Dr. Link Check
Online crawler that checks a website for broken links, bad SSL certificates and malicious links.
Dr. Link Check also flags links to malware and phishing sites and invalid SSL certificates on linked sites, with larger sites needing a paid plan.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
A desktop website crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux that audits sites for technical SEO issues.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a desktop crawler for Windows, macOS and Linux checking broken links among over 300 SEO issues, free up to 500 URLs.
Sitechecker Broken Link Checker
Online tool from the Sitechecker SEO platform that finds 404 and dead links across a website.
Sitechecker Broken Link Checker reports 404 links inside a wider technical SEO audit with a Chrome extension, and is oriented toward selling the paid platform.
Ahrefs Broken Link Checker
Free online tool that finds broken inbound and outbound links for any website or page.
Ahrefs Broken Link Checker shows inbound and outbound broken links from Ahrefs' existing index rather than a fresh crawl, and does not check anchors.
SortSite
Website quality scanner testing accessibility, broken links, browser compatibility and SEO against over 1200 checkpoints.
SortSite checks broken links together with accessibility, compatibility and SEO, but its free demo covers only the first 10 pages.
Also worth comparing
These listings name W3C Link Checker as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
HTMLProofer
A Ruby tool that tests rendered HTML files for broken links, images and markup problems.
W3C Link Checker runs online with no install, checking links and anchors with recursive crawling, but works on published pages rather than local build output.
Integrity
A free native Mac app that crawls a website and reports broken links.
W3C Link Checker runs in the browser with recursive crawling and anchor checks, with a plain text-heavy report instead of a native Mac app.
linkinator
A command-line broken link checker that crawls websites and local files to validate every link.
W3C Link Checker is an online tool with recursive crawling and anchor checks, needing no local install but unsuited to CI pipelines.
muffet
A fast command-line link checker, written in Go, that crawls a website to find broken links.
W3C Link Checker runs as an online tool instead of a local binary, checks anchors as well as URLs, and offers configurable recursive crawling depth.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Nu Html Checker
The W3C's online checker that tests HTML documents against current HTML conformance rules.
W3C Markup Validation Service
The W3C's free service for checking the markup of HTML and XHTML documents.
httpstatus.io
A web tool for checking HTTP status codes, response headers and redirect chains of URLs.
Redirect Checker
A free web tool that traces a URL's redirects and reports each status code in the chain.
Oh Dear
A hosted website health monitor covering uptime, SSL, DNS, cron jobs, broken links and performance.
Rocket Validator
A hosted crawler that runs HTML, CSS and accessibility checks across thousands of site pages.
