🔗 Linkguard
The site-wide broken-link and redirect crawler you own forever.
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.
Linkguard screenshot is being captured — the app is shipped and real.
Features
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.
Email alerts only on new breaks
SMTP alerts fire only when new broken links appear, so there is no alert fatigue.
CSV export
Export any scan to CSV for client reports.
Polite by default
Respects robots.txt Disallow and Crawl-delay, with a configurable crawl-delay and a concurrency cap of 1 to 20.
Linkguard vs Ahrefs Site Audit
Ahrefs Site Audit at $99+/mo runs roughly $1188/year — $2,376 over two years. Linkguard is $24, once.
| 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 |
Less than one month of Ahrefs covers Linkguard outright, and it never bills you again no matter how many pages you crawl.
Three steps, no subscription
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 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.
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes. Linkguard is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/broken-link-checker 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.
Own Linkguard forever
$24 once. Deploy on your own server — your data never leaves it. No renewal, no account with us, no meter. Or build it yourself from the MIT source — it's the same app.