---
title: "How to use the free broken link checker — Lemwatch Help"
description: "Crawl any public URL and get a full report of 404s, 5xx errors, redirect chains, and dead outbound links."
canonical: "https://lemwatch.com/help/using-the-free-broken-link-checker"
source: "https://lemwatch.com"
---

# How to use the free broken link checker

> Crawl any public URL and get a full report of 404s, 5xx errors, redirect chains, and dead outbound links.

## Quick answer

 Enter a start URL at /tools/broken-link-checker. The crawler visits every internal link and reports status codes, redirect chains, and broken outbound links.

## What it checks

- Internal links returning 4xx / 5xx

- Outbound links to dead third-party pages

- Redirect chains longer than 2 hops

- Mixed HTTP/HTTPS internal links

- Anchor-only links ( # ) and mailto: typos

## Where to find it in Lemwatch

 **/tools/broken-link-checker** — public. Signed-in users can schedule recurring scans and get email diffs.

## How to use it

- Enter your homepage URL as the starting point.

- Set crawl depth (default 2 pages).

- Click Start scan .

- Filter results by status code or link type.

- Export CSV or click Monitor to run this daily inside Lemwatch.

## FAQ

### How deep does the crawl go?

 Anonymous scans cap at ~500 URLs. Paid plans go deeper. See our budgets in [Broken Link Checker Reliability](https://lemwatch.com/help/using-the-free-broken-link-checker).

### Does it respect robots.txt?

 Yes — disallowed paths are skipped and reported separately.

## Related

- Free sitemap diff tool

- Free website uptime checker


## Related

- [Help centre](https://lemwatch.com/help)
- [How to use the free sitemap diff tool](https://lemwatch.com/help/using-the-free-sitemap-diff-tool)
- [How to use the free website uptime checker](https://lemwatch.com/help/using-the-free-website-uptime-checker)
- [How to use the free Core Web Vitals checker](https://lemwatch.com/help/using-the-free-core-web-vitals-checker)
- [Lemwatch pricing](https://lemwatch.com/pricing)
- [Uptime Monitoring](https://lemwatch.com/help/uptime-monitoring)