How to Install linkinator: Find Every Broken Link on Your Site in Minutes (Free)

Somewhere on your site there's a button that says "See our pricing." It goes nowhere. A customer clicked it last Tuesday, hit a dead page, and left.

You'll never know. Unless you check every link. By hand. On every page.

Or you let a free tool do it in seconds. It's called linkinator, and here's how to use it.

Quick words (one line each):

• Broken link: a link that points at a page or image that isn't there anymore.

• 404: the "not found" error a server sends back for a missing page.

• Terminal: the text window where you type commands instead of clicking.

• npx: a command that downloads and runs a Node.js tool in one go.

• Crawl: when a tool follows links from page to page, like a very fast, very bored visitor.

Why this matters

Google's own Search Central team said it straight (Oct 28, 2026): a 404 does not hurt the rest of your site. But a dead link that real people click costs you real customers. That's the one worth fixing (0:02:40-0:03:00).

linkinator finds those dead links for you. You decide which ones matter.

Step 1: Do a 60-second safety check

Never install a GitHub tool blind. Here's what linkinator showed when we checked it on Oct 29, 2026:

1. Licence: MIT. Free to use, including for client work.

2. Last update: Oct 12, 2026 (a security update). Latest release v8.1.0.

3. Stars: 1,279 (as of Oct 29, 2026).

4. No install scripts. Its package file runs nothing extra when you install it.

5. No account, no API key, no paid parts.

6. Our test: we built a tiny 3-page test site with 2 planted mistakes (a link to a missing page and a missing image). linkinator found both, said which page each was on, and marked the good pages OK. It took about 3 seconds.

Step 2: Install Node.js

linkinator runs on Node.js. Download it from nodejs.org and install it like any other program. That's the hardest part. Seriously.

Step 3: Run it on your live site

Open a terminal and type:

npx linkinator https://example.com --recurse

Swap in your own site address. --recurse tells it to follow links inside your site, page after page, instead of checking just the homepage.

Want to install it once instead of downloading every time? Run npm install -g linkinator. The repo's Releases page also has ready-made program files for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Step 4: Save the results as a spreadsheet

Reading results in a terminal is no fun. Save them:

npx linkinator https://example.com --recurse --format csv > links.csv

Open links.csv in Excel or Google Sheets. Sort by status. Every broken link and the page it lives on, in one list.

Prefer JSON for another tool? Use --format json.

Step 5: Go easy on small hosting

A full crawl fires a lot of requests. On cheap hosting, that can trip a 429 error (the server saying "too many requests, slow down").

Turn it down with a lower --concurrency number. Google's team said a 429 gets treated like a server error and slows Google's crawling too (0:07:00-0:07:40). Don't cause your own traffic jam.

Step 6: Skip the noise

Some links you don't need checked (social share links, login pages). Leave them out:

npx linkinator https://example.com --recurse --skip "linkedin.com"

Heads up: some sites block bots and show up as "broken" when they work fine. Click those by hand before you "fix" anything.

Step 7: Fix only what matters

Google's three steps, straight from their 404 video (0:04:00-0:05:20):

1. There's a true replacement page? Point the old link (or a redirect) to it. One to one.

2. No replacement? Remove the link, and let the dead page return 404 or 410. Done.

3. Make a helpful custom 404 page for the strays: a friendly line, a search bar, links to your top categories.

And never send every dead link to your homepage. Google says it confuses people and muddies your data (0:03:20-0:03:40).

Step 8: Make it a habit

Run it again:

• Before you launch or hand over a site.

• After you delete, rename or unpublish pages.

• Once a month, because links rot while you sleep.

What it costs

Nothing. MIT licence, no keys, no paid upgrade.

Do this today

1. Install Node.js if you don't have it.

2. Run npx linkinator https://yoursite.com --recurse --format csv > links.csv.

3. Open the CSV and sort by status.

4. Fix the broken links on your 5 most-visited pages first.

5. Put a monthly reminder on your calendar to run it again.

Related reading

• Which 404 errors to fix and which to ignore

• How to install squirrelscan

• Prune and merge pages for AI search

Sources

• GitHub: JustinBeckwith/linkinator

• Google Search Central (Gary Illyes and Cherry Prommawin) - Should we be scared of a 404 status code? (2026-10-28)

Don't worry if this seems like it's a pain in the ass for someone who doesn't build websites. That's because it is. The good news: just click the link below, pull the trigger, and we'll take care of the rest.