Broken Link Checker
by WPMU DEV
Crawls your content for dead links and missing images and reports them in one editable list.
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What Broken Link Checker does
Crawls your content for dead links and missing images and reports them in one editable list.
It sits in the seo part of a WordPress stack and is sold by WPMU DEV on a freemium basis. We recommend it in our seo guides because it does that one job well without asking you to rebuild the rest of the site around it.
Every plugin adds work to a page request, so treat this as a decision with a cost. Record a speed test before you install it and run the same test afterwards, on the same page, so you know exactly what it charged you.
Real user ratings
Score
3.8/5
Reviews
605
Active installs
500,000+
Downloads
24.4M
Latest version
2.4.14.1
Last updated
2026-08-31
These figures come straight from the public WordPress.org plugin directory API for version 2.4.14.1, not from us. Check them yourself on the WordPress.org listing. Our own editorial score is 3.8/5.
Where Broken Link Checker ranks elsewhere
Broken Link Checker does not appear in the published "best of" lists we track from WPBeginner, TechRadar, Kinsta, Themeisle and similar sites. That is not a mark against it - those roundups are short and skew towards the biggest names.
What changed in the latest version
- Fix: A server-side request vulnerability
- Fix: Fixed scheduled scans running more than once and duplicate scan report emails being sent when the site uses a 12-hour time format.
- Fix: Fixed the scan report email showing an incorrect broken links count when links were ignored after the scan.
- Fix: Fixed broken links being missing from the scan report email when their source post could not be resolved.
- Fix: Fixed scheduled scans running at the wrong time or on the wrong day for sites with a timezone other than UTC.
- Fix: Fixed the scan schedule allowing the same recipient to be added more than once, which resulted in duplicate scan report emails.
- Fix: Patched a cross-site scripting (XSS) issue.
Release notes are the developer's own words, published on WordPress.org. Read the full changelog
Pros and cons
- Finds link rot across years of archives
- A free tier you can trial before paying
- Actively maintained and used on production sites we test
- Older on-site scanning versions were resource hungry
- The features most sites need sit in the paid tier
How to use it
- 1Import existing metadata if you are switching from another SEO plugin.
- 2Set your site title pattern, default social image and organisation schema.
- 3Disable modules you will not use so the admin stays fast.
- 4Submit the generated sitemap in Google Search Console.
- 5Spot-check twenty URLs for correct titles, descriptions and canonicals.
How it compares
Other seo plugins we recommend, with their rating and pricing model.
| Plugin | Our rating | WordPress.org | Pricing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broken Link Checker | 3.8 | 3.8 (605) | Freemium | Finds link rot across years of archives |
| AIOSEO | 4.6 | n/a | Freemium | Broad feature coverage in one place |
| AIOSEO Writing Assistant | 4.2 | n/a | Premium | Competitor-based content scoring |
| All in One SEO | 4.6 | 4.7 (5,205) | Freemium | Local SEO and redirects included |
| Link Whisper | 4.5 | 4.1 (145) | Premium | Internal linking at scale |
| Rank Math | 4.8 | 4.8 (7,499) | Freemium | Adds no stylesheet and almost no script to the frontend |
Alternatives
Other seo plugins
AIOSEO
AIOSEO
The All in One SEO toolkit: titles, schema, sitemaps, redirects and search console insight in one dashboard.
AIOSEO Writing Assistant
AIOSEO
Grades drafts against the pages already ranking for your keyword and lists the terms and questions they cover.
All in One SEO
AIOSEO
A full SEO suite with schema, local SEO, redirects and a site audit, aimed at business sites rather than single blogs.
5,205 reviews · 210.2M downloads · v5.0.1.1