Alternative to Ahrefs

Ahrefs broken link checker: where the reports are, and a faster way

Ahrefs finds broken links in Site Audit and in your broken backlinks. Here is what each report covers and where it stops — plus a dedicated scanner that takes a URL and no account.

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How to find broken links in Ahrefs

Ahrefs reports broken links in three different places, and which one you want depends on whether you are fixing your own site, recovering lost link equity, or prospecting other people's dead pages. Here is what each report is for.

1

Broken links on your own site — Site Audit

Create a project for your domain and let the crawl finish. In Site Audit, the Links reports flag internal links returning 4xx, and the Internal pages report lists the URLs answering 404. This is the report you want when you are cleaning up your own site.
2

Broken outgoing links — Site Audit, outgoing links

The same crawl records the external URLs your pages point to and their status. Dead outgoing links are the ones that quietly rot as other people reorganise their sites, so they are worth re-checking on a schedule rather than once.
3

Broken backlinks — Site Explorer

Enter your domain in Site Explorer and open the broken backlinks view. These are pages that other sites still link to but that no longer exist on yours. Each one is link equity you already earned and are currently throwing away with a 404 — usually the highest-value fix on the list.
4

Broken link building — Site Explorer on someone else

Point Site Explorer at a competitor or a resource page in your field and sort their best pages by referring domains, filtering for the ones returning 404. Every site still linking to that dead page is a site you can offer a working replacement to.

Where this runs out

• Site Audit and Site Explorer are paid features. Ahrefs plans start around $99 a month, which is a lot if broken links are the only thing you came for.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free but only covers domains you have verified — it will not crawl a client's site, a prospect's site, or a page you do not own.
• Crawls are projects, not one-off checks: you configure a project, wait for the crawl, then read a report. There is no paste-a-URL-and-look path.
• Broken links are one report among hundreds. If you are not also doing keyword research and backlink analysis, most of what you are paying for goes unused.

Check your site right here

One URL, no account, no install. We crawl the whole site — every page it links to — and check every link on it.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Broken Link Scan	Ahrefs
Price	Free / from $24/mo	From $99/mo
Broken link focus	Dedicated tool	One report in a suite
Scan a site you don't own		Paid plans only
First scan without an account
Automated monitoring		Scheduled crawls (paid)
Email alerts on new breakage
Broken backlink recovery
Keyword research & rank tracking
Pages per scan	500 free / 5,000 on Pro	By plan quota

Why Switch from Ahrefs?

If broken links are the whole job

Ahrefs is an SEO suite that happens to report broken links. If that report is the only one you open, you are paying $99 a month for it. Broken Link Scan does that single job, free for a one-off scan and $12 a month for continuous monitoring.

No project setup

Paste a URL and read the results. No project to configure, no domain to verify, no crawl to schedule — which also means you can scan a client's site or a prospect's site, not just your own.

It watches, instead of waiting to be asked

Broken links appear when other people's sites change, not when you decide to look. Scheduled scans and email alerts tell you the day something breaks rather than the next time you remember to run an audit.

Use both, honestly

They are not really competitors. Ahrefs earns its price on backlinks, keywords and rank tracking — none of which we do. Plenty of people keep Ahrefs for strategy and hand the recurring link-rot checking to a tool built for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Ahrefs have a free broken link checker?

Partly. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free and includes Site Audit, but only for domains you have verified ownership of. To crawl a site you do not own — a client's, a prospect's, or one you are researching — you need a paid plan starting around $99 a month.

Where does Ahrefs show broken links?

In three places: Site Audit reports internal and outgoing links returning 4xx after a crawl; Site Explorer's broken backlinks view shows pages other sites link to that now 404 on yours; and Site Explorer pointed at another domain, filtered for 404s, is the standard broken link building workflow.

Is Broken Link Scan as accurate as Ahrefs for broken links?

For broken link detection, yes — both crawl the site and check every link's HTTP status in real time. The difference is not accuracy, it is scope: Ahrefs does this alongside a hundred other reports, we do only this, continuously, and on any URL you paste.

What can Ahrefs do that Broken Link Scan cannot?

Backlink analysis, keyword research, rank tracking, content gap analysis and competitive research — the reasons most people buy Ahrefs in the first place. We do not do any of that and are not trying to. If you need those, keep Ahrefs.

How many pages can I scan for free?

Up to 500 pages per site with no signup at all. A free account sees and exports every result as CSV or JSON, and re-checks one site every week; Pro raises the crawl to 5,000 pages, scans daily and covers 3 websites, from $10 a month billed annually.

Ready to switch from Ahrefs?

Start with a free scan — no signup, no credit card, no install required.

Try Free Scan