Ahrefs Site Audit is bundled at $99+ a month — around $1,188 a year to keep a crawler that is, underneath, an HTTP client and a cron job. Dr. Link Check wants $14.90+/mo for the same idea. Linkguard is that HTTP client and that cron job: it walks your pages, checks every internal and external link, follows redirect chains, and re-scans on a schedule with a diff. $24, once, on your own box.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Ahrefs Site Audit actually costs over one, two and three years, what Linkguard gives you for $24 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Ahrefs Site Audit actually costs you
At $99+/mo, one Ahrefs Site Audit subscription adds up to $1,188 every year — $3,564 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Linkguard is $24 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Linkguard | Ahrefs Site Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $24 once | $99+/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $24 | $1,188 |
| Cost after 2 years | $24 | $2,376 |
| Cost after 3 years | $24 | $3,564 |
Three years in, the gap is $3,540 — and every year after that adds another $1,188 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Linkguard vs Ahrefs Site Audit, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Linkguard | Ahrefs Site Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $24 once | $99+/mo |
| 1 year | $24 | $1,188+ |
| Broken link detection | Yes | Yes |
| Redirect chains + hop flagging | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduled re-checks + diff | Yes | Yes |
| Email alerts | Yes | Yes |
| CSV export | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted, data stays yours | Yes | No |
What you get for $24, once
Crawl your whole site for broken links and redirect chains, with scheduled re-checks and diffs. The highlights:
- 🕷️ Real crawler — Give it a start URL plus depth and page limits and it walks your internal pages with undici, no headless browser, checking every internal and external link it finds.
- 🔀 Redirect-chain analysis — Follows redirects hop by hop, stores the full chain, and flags anything over two hops so you catch link-equity leaks.
- 📋 Filterable results table — URL, status code, hops, link text and the pages each link was found on, filterable to broken, redirects, over two hops, or OK.
- 🔁 Scheduled re-crawls with diffs — Daily or weekly re-scans diffed against the last run, so you get new-broken-links-since-last-scan instead of a raw dump.
Less than one month of Ahrefs covers Linkguard outright, and it never bills you again no matter how many pages you crawl.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One payment of $24 gets you the packaged 1-click installer, or clone the MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/broken-link-checker-mvp and run it yourself for free.
- Deploy on your own server. Docker-compose onto a $5 VPS for scheduled monitoring, or run the desktop build for ad-hoc pre-deploy scans.
- Point it at your site. Add a start URL with depth and page limits, hit scan, and watch broken links, redirect chains and diffs land in a SQLite file you own.
When paying Ahrefs Site Audit is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Ahrefs Site Audit's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $99+/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Linkguard is $24, once. For the deeper dive, read the Linkguard vs Ahrefs Site Audit head-to-head.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. Linkguard is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/broken-link-checker-mvp and always will be. The $24 buys the packaged 1-click installer and setup; building from source is free.
Where does my scan data live?
In a SQLite file on your own server. Nothing is uploaded to us or anyone else, so your crawl data never leaves your infrastructure.
Is there a page or crawl limit?
No metered limit like the subscriptions charge for. Your crawl size is bounded only by your own hardware.
Is this a subscription in disguise?
No. $24 once, no renewal, no license server phoning home. Deploy it and it keeps working.
More on Ahrefs Site Audit pricing
Linkguard — product page, demo & full feature list · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Linkguard — $24, once
Crawl your whole site for broken links and redirect chains, with scheduled re-checks and diffs.