Xenu's Link Sleuth

Find broken links before visitors do

Xenu's Link Sleuth is a practical Windows tool for checking websites for broken links, redirects, and related page resources. Its main job is simple: crawl a site, collect what it finds, and show which items work and which need attention.

The software checks more than standard page links. It can inspect URLs, images, backgrounds, frames, image maps, plug-ins, and scripts, giving site owners a broader view of what is sitting inside their pages. It also supports SSL and FTP sites, as well as gopher, which makes it useful for older or mixed web setups.

Using it is fairly straightforward. You enter a site address, choose how deeply the crawler should follow links, and let the program build a live list of results. Working links are shown in green, while problem links appear in red. You can double-click an entry to open it or view more details through its properties. Reports can show all discovered URLs or focus only on broken and redirected ones, including 404 errors.

Xenu's Link Sleuth is also helpful beyond basic link repair. By sorting results by file size, you can spot large images that may deserve optimization. Its crawl results can also reveal a site’s internal structure, including how many clicks it takes to reach deeper pages from the home page. That can help you understand whether important pages are buried too far down.

Performance is one of its strengths. It uses multithreading, with a default of 30 simultaneous links and the option to increase that number up to 100. It can check up to 100 links in less than a minute, though setting too many threads for a large site may cause timeouts.

The main limitation is that the results can be long and may feel dense for users unfamiliar with sitemaps, scripts, and site structure. Still, the interface is plain and approachable, with clear menus and icons.

Xenu's Link Sleuth is best for website owners, editors, SEO beginners, and small to medium organizations that need a free, focused way to find broken links and understand site resources without using a complex web auditing suite.