link-check-lite

Free tool that checks a list of links. It tells you which ones work, which are broken, and where redirects end up. Need sitemaps, speed checks, sketchy-domain warnings or CSV reports? The paid version does that: link-check on Gumroad

MIT license. Python 3.10 or newer, on Windows, Mac and Linux. The checker itself uses only Python's built-in tools.

Install

pip install link-check-lite

Or use pipx, which keeps it in its own space:

pipx install link-check-lite

Want the newest code from GitHub instead?

pip install git+https://github.com/tidybytetools/link-check-lite

Use it

Put your links in a text file, one per line. Lines that start with # are skipped.

link-check-lite links.txt
link-check-lite links.txt -w 3 --timeout 20   # gentler and more patient

Example run:

OK   200 https://example.com/
OK   200 https://httpbin.org/redirect/2  -> https://httpbin.org/get (2 redirects)
FAIL 404 https://example.com/old-page
FAIL --- https://no-such-site.example  ([Errno -2] Name or service not known)

4 checked, 2 ok, 2 broken

Exit code is 0 when every link works and 1 when any link is broken, so it works in a cron job or CI.

When you run it in a terminal it ends with one short line about the paid version. --quiet turns it off, and it never shows when output is piped.

Known limits

• Some sites block bots. They may answer 403 or 429 even when the page opens fine in a browser.
• No JavaScript. Redirects done with JavaScript are not followed.
• Text file only. No CSV input, no sitemaps, and results print to the screen.
• No robots.txt and no per-site rate limit. It checks 5 links at a time with a small pause. Don't point it at thousands of pages on one site.
• Not a safety check. It does not tell you if a link is a scam.

Lite vs paid

How it compares to other free tools

All of these are free. Pick what fits you.

If you need to crawl a big site or check links inside Markdown files, lychee and linkchecker are great.

Use it from Claude Desktop or Cursor (MCP)

There is a small free MCP server built in. It gives your AI app one tool, check_links. It needs uv.

uvx --from link-check-lite link-check-lite-mcp

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) or Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "link-check-lite": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "link-check-lite", "link-check-lite-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Tool: check_links(urls, timeout=10.0). Send up to 200 links. It returns one result per link.

Use it from Python

from link_check_lite import check_link
print(check_link("https://example.com"))
# {'url': 'https://example.com', 'status': 200, 'ok': True, 'final_url': 'https://example.com', 'redirects': [], 'error': None}

For AI agents

• Use when: you need to know if web links work and where their redirects end up.
• Don't use when: you need to know if a link is safe, need a whole site crawled, or need speed or https checks. Use the paid version for those.
• Input: a list of http(s) URLs (max 200 per MCP call), plus an optional timeout in seconds.
• Output: a list of {url, status, ok, final_url, redirects, error}. status is null when the link could not connect. ok is true for 200-399. redirects lists each hop as "CODE url".
• CLI exit code is 0 when all links work and 1 when any link is broken or on error. See also llms.txt.

Tests

pip install "mcp>=1.2,<2"
python3 -m unittest discover tests

The tests use a tiny local web server, so they don't need the internet.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.