Marco Beierer

<p>The <a href="https://www.marcobeierer.com/wordpress-plugins/link-checker" rel="nofollow ugc">Link Checker</a> for WordPress uses an external service to crawl your website and find broken links and images on your website.</p>
<p>In contrast to search engine tools like the Google Search Console, which only show if a URL on your website is not reachable, it does not matter for the Link Checker if the links leads to an internal or external URL. The Link Checker will find all dead links.</p>
<p>The Link Checker works for every plugin out of the box. The computation costs for your website is also very low because the crawler does the heavy work and just acts like a normal visitor, who visits all pages of you website once.</p>
<h4>Out of service</h4>
<p>It’s no longer possible to purchase tokens for the Link Checker as of mid-January 2023.</p>
<p>The service is still available for all users that have already purchased a token and will be shutdown when the last issued token expires mid-January 2024.</p>
<h4>Paid plugin</h4>
<p>Please note that the Link Checker requires a paid token to operate. The free version is no longer offered.</p>
<h4>Videos</h4>
<p>You can find videos about the Link Checker on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rUFDp09tjs&list=PL5VYcNma6nfxIrlbpz0f1avXT_JIrUZA1" rel="nofollow ugc">Link Checker for WordPress playlist on YouTube</a>.</p>
<span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8rUFDp09tjs?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&listType=playlist&list=PL5VYcNma6nfxIrlbpz0f1avXT_JIrUZA1" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe></span>
<h4>Features</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Simple setup</strong>.</li>
<li><strong>Works out of the box</strong> with all WordPress plugins.</li>
<li><strong>Low computation costs</strong> for your webserver.</li>
<li>Lists all broken links and redirects on your website.</li>
<li>Support for Polylang (probably also WPML) sites.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Technical Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Respects your robots.txt file (also the crawl-delay directive).
<ul>
<li>You can use the user-agents MB-LinkChecker to control the crawler.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>Additional Features of the Professional Version</h4>
<ul>
<li>Check if embedded internal and external <strong>images</strong> are broken.</li>
<li>Check if embedded <strong>YouTube videos</strong> are broken.</li>
<li>Scheduler to <strong>automatically check a website</strong> once a day and get a summary report by email.</li>
<li>The result can be exported as CSV file.</li>
<li>Form login support to check protected pages like membership areas.</li>
<li>The result is saved on the Link Checker server so that it can be fetched multiple times without requiring a recheck. For example from different users or with different browsers.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Upcoming Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Support for checking the availability of videos, CSS files and JS files.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Technical Requirements</h4>
<ul>
<li>Works with <strong>PHP 5.6 and 7</strong>.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Is the service free of charge?</h4>
<p>The Link Checker Professional is a paid plugin. A free version was offered for many years, but since August 2022 only a paid version is available.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.marcobeierer.com/wordpress-plugins/link-checker-professional" rel="nofollow ugc">Link Checker Professional</a></p>
<h4>Use of an External Server</h4>
<p>The Link Checker uses an external server, operated by the developer of the plugin, to crawl your website and detect broken links. This means, that there is some communication between your website and the server. The only data that is communicated to the external server by your website is the URL of your website and the fact that you are using WordPress. The server than crawlers your website (as a normal visitor does) and answers with a list of the found broken links.</p>


Link Checker Professional

EDITED REVIEW: 2021.03.10 
The free plugin works, but stops before it can finish being useful. 500 links is simply not enough for a free version. It doesn't provide a free tier that's functional for most medium-sized websites. You end up having to buy it to actually use it. That makes this more of an advertisement than an actual plugin. I'm using a different plugin.

EDITED 2021.03.11
See my reply dated today.

	EDIT: The free plugin only checks 500 links. This is entirely useless, even for medium-sized sites.
	EDIT: Plugin registration consists of link allotments, with the minimum being 25K links checked in one go for ~50 Euros. It goes up drastically from there because Marco's server is the one doing the crawling.
	Most target websites are small, hosted on huge commercial properties optimized for WordPress. Additionally, crawling the local site may not be as optimal as scraping each post's content field for links and storing results locally.
	My server should be the one doing the work. If my server is doing the work, you can't expect me to pay by the link for a service my server is doing. Period.
	An example of a per unit subscription model that works is Mailchimp. Their servers are doing the work in a trusted secure environment so that my web host box doesn't become a shadow spambot. Offloading that service to mailchimp is not sketchy, and their terms are more than generous for small to mid-sized website admins, with a free tier that is actually commodious. That's not what's happening with this plugin.
	It checks every link on every page, even footer links that repeat across the entire site, so if you have a link like "theme created by...", that link counts on every page against your priced link count. Absurd.
	Worse, it counts a number of known valid links as broken.
	WordPress plugins in the .org library should offer a reasonable modicum of usefulness out of the gate. It should not seem hampered to the site admin. The pro version should offer additional capabilities that make the free plugin seem more complete. This plugin offers only a glimpse of what the paid plugin might do if you are willing to pay 45 euros minimum to check 25K links. You want to check more links? Buy more tokens.
	EDIT: Given the Author's (Marco Beierer) balanced response, I'll say this would better serve the WP community and Marco himself by:

 	scraping post content directly for links rather than crawling, 
	removing the tier caps -- including for the free version -- and then 
	Price the pro version between $50 and $100 for a single-tier paid version that also includes image and youtube link checking.
	Also for the pro version, add the ability to check all site menu links, sidebar/footer/widget links, post content for custom post-type links, custom field links, etc.

This would give the expected additional capability along with unrestricted link checking found in the free version.

A great plugin makes the free-plugin adopter feel like they're getting such a bargain they feel guilty for not supporting the plugin with either a donation or an upgrade to the pro version.

Bait and Switch - Pretty much forced to buy if you want to use.

An easy to use link checker for WordPress to detect broken links and images on your website.

Sadhan Pal

<p>Cute Broken Link Highlighter is a lightweight WordPress plugin that helps you identify broken links directly in your post editor. No more publishing posts with dead links – catch them before they go live!</p>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Visual Link Highlighting</strong> – Broken links are highlighted in red with a clear warning label</li>
<li><strong>Classic Editor Support</strong> – Works seamlessly with the Classic Editor</li>
<li><strong>Gutenberg Compatible</strong> – Full support for the Block Editor (Gutenberg)</li>
<li><strong>Bulk Scanning</strong> – Scan all your posts and pages at once from the admin dashboard</li>
<li><strong>Detailed Reports</strong> – View comprehensive statistics and filter results</li>
<li><strong>Real-Time Checking</strong> – Check links on-demand while editing your content</li>
<li><strong>Security Focused</strong> – Built with WordPress.org coding standards and security best practices</li>
<li><strong>Lightweight</strong> – Minimal impact on your site’s performance</li>
</ul>
<h4>How It Works</h4>
<ol>
<li>Open any post or page in the editor</li>
<li>Click the “Check Links” button in the Link Checker panel</li>
<li>Broken links are instantly highlighted in red</li>
<li>Fix the links and publish with confidence!</li>
</ol>
<h4>Bulk Scanning Feature</h4>
<p>The plugin includes a powerful bulk scanning tool accessible from <strong>Tools > Link Scanner</strong> that allows you to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Scan all posts and pages in one go</li>
<li>Include or exclude draft posts</li>
<li>View detailed statistics (total posts, broken links, clean posts)</li>
<li>Filter results by status</li>
<li>Quickly navigate to posts that need fixing</li>
</ul>
<h4>Use Cases</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Content Quality Control</strong> – Ensure all your content has working links before publishing</li>
<li><strong>Site Maintenance</strong> – Regularly scan your entire site for broken links</li>
<li><strong>SEO Optimization</strong> – Broken links hurt SEO – keep your site healthy</li>
<li><strong>Migration Recovery</strong> – After migrating your site, check for broken internal links</li>
<li><strong>Guest Post Review</strong> – Verify links in guest posts before publishing</li>
</ul>
<h4>Technical Details</h4>
<ul>
<li>Uses WordPress HTTP API for link checking</li>
<li>Checks HTTP status codes (4xx and 5xx considered broken)</li>
<li>Follows redirects (up to 5 redirects)</li>
<li>10-second timeout per link</li>
<li>Skips anchor links, mailto, tel, and javascript links</li>
<li>Supports both relative and absolute URLs</li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy Policy</h3>
<p>Cute Broken Link Highlighter does not collect, store, or transmit any personal data. The plugin only checks link URLs to determine their status. No user data is logged or shared with external services.</p>
<h3>Support</h3>
<p>For support, feature requests, or bug reports, please visit the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/broken-link-highlighter/" rel="ugc">plugin support forum</a>.</p>


Cute Broken Link Highlighter – Smart Broken Link Checker and Content Scanner

Instantly detect and highlight broken links in your WordPress post editor. Works with both Classic Editor and Gutenberg Block Editor.

Link Checker Professional vs Cute Broken Link Highlighter – Smart Broken Link Checker and Content Scanner