Best Broken Link Checker Chrome Extensions in 2026, Compared
Search the Chrome Web Store for "broken link checker" and you get a wall of near-identical listings — several literally sharing the same name. Most are abandoned, a few are good, and one of them is ours. This page compares the extensions actually worth installing in 2026, on the criteria that separate a useful checker from a red-highlighter: accuracy, false positives, reporting, and exports. We also say plainly when an extension is the wrong tool.
The comparison at a glance
| Extension | Users / rating | Separates blocked from broken | Export | Stand-out feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broken Link Checker (this site) | new in 2026 | ✅ | CSV + copy broken URLs | Side panel with filters, response times, "Locate" |
| Check My Links | ~90,000 · 4.4★ | ❌ | Report download | Checks links in Google Docs & Sheets |
| Broken Link Checker (SEO tool) | ~30,000 · 4.1★ | ❌ | — | Finds 404s and redirects across all frames |
1. Broken Link Checker — best for accurate triage
Yes, ours — the reasoning, so you can judge it. The single biggest time-sink with link checkers is false positives: sites behind Cloudflare, LinkedIn, anything rate-limited answers automated checks with 403 or 429 while working fine for humans. Most checkers paint those red; you waste an afternoon "fixing" working links. This extension puts them in a separate "blocked" category, so red means dead: 404/410, server errors, timeouts, unreachable hosts. (Why those codes lie: HTTP status codes for link checking.)
Beyond that: results open in a side panel with problems sorted first, status code and response time per link, filters and search, a "Locate" button that scrolls to each broken link on the page, CSV export, 52 interface languages, and configurable timeouts. It's free with no account, and everything runs locally — no link data leaves the browser. The honest downside: it's new. The listing has no decade of reviews behind it, and it checks web pages only — no Google Docs.
2. Check My Links — best for Google Docs workflows
The incumbent, and deservedly so: about a decade old, roughly 90,000 users, 4.4 stars, open source. One click scans the page and color-codes every link — valid, redirected, warning, broken — with customizable highlight colors, downloadable reports, and the option to exclude page sections (say, the site-wide footer) from a scan.
Its killer feature in 2026 is Google Docs and Sheets support: it can test links inside a Doc before the article ships to the CMS. If your editorial pipeline lives in Docs, install Check My Links regardless of what else you use — nothing on this list replaces that. The trade-off is triage: no blocked-vs-broken separation and no response times, so on external-link-heavy pages expect to spot-check some "broken" results by hand. Full head-to-head: Broken Link Checker vs Check My Links.
3. Broken Link Checker (SEO tool) — best for frame-heavy pages
A different extension that shares our name (~30,000 users, 4.1 stars). Its pitch is scanning for 404s and redirect chains (301/307/308) across all frames on a page — relevant for older sites and page builders that still assemble pages from iframes. It's a capable, focused checker; compared to the two above it offers less around the results themselves — no blocked category and no export pipeline — so it fits best as a quick visual check rather than an audit tool.
What didn't make the list
The Web Store has dozens more link checkers. Most fell to one of three filters: abandoned (no updates for years — a checker that predates current bot-protection paints half the web red), trivially small user bases with no track record, or listings that request permissions far beyond what link checking needs. If you're evaluating one we skipped, apply the same three filters before installing.
When an extension is the wrong tool
Every extension here shares one boundary: it checks the page you're looking at. Three jobs need different tooling:
- Whole-site coverage. Hundreds of pages can't be checked one by one. Use a crawler — we compare the extension vs Dr. Link Check here, and free options in how to find broken links.
- Inbound 404s. Links from other sites to pages you deleted never appear in your own HTML. Google Search Console's Indexing → Pages report is the only free window into those — and fixing them is the highest-ROI repair in the list.
- Continuous monitoring. Extensions run when you click. If nobody clicks, nothing is checked — external links keep dying at link rot's background rate regardless. Scheduled crawls or a calendar reminder, pick one.
Bottom line
All three extensions are free, so the cost of a wrong choice is one uninstall. Our recommendation: Broken Link Checker as the daily driver for accuracy and triage speed, Check My Links alongside it if Google Docs is part of your workflow, and a site crawler the day your site outgrows page-by-page checking. Then put the result to work — finding broken links only matters if you fix them.