Every broken-link checker hands you a list of what's dead and leaves the rest to you. Link Scanner goes and finds an archived copy of the page that used to be there — and puts it back everywhere it appeared, in one click.
Free forever, unlimited links · No credit card to install
Most of the time the page you linked to still exists — as an archived snapshot taken before it disappeared. Link Scanner looks for it, shows you what it found, and rewrites the link across your whole site once you approve it.
When a link is confirmed dead, Link Scanner queries the Wayback Machine for the last working copy of that exact page and tells you the date it was captured.
Preview the archived page first. If it isn't the right one — or there's a better destination you'd rather use — paste your own replacement URL instead.
The replacement is written into every post and page where that dead link appears. No hunting through the editor, no missed occurrences.
The same lookup, run across every broken link on the site in one pass. You get a review table — each dead link, what we found for it, how many pages it affects — and nothing changes until you tick the rows you approve. No archived copy for one of them? Type your own URL into that row; that counts as approving it.
Every replacement is recorded as one batch and undone with a single click, however many pages it touched. If a page has been edited since the fix — by you or anyone else — undo leaves that page alone rather than overwriting the newer work, and tells you it did.
Scanning, verdicts and ignoring links are free forever. The archive lookup, the bulk pass and the undo are part of Pro — that's the part worth paying for here, and we'd rather say so plainly than bury it.
If a link you pointed to is protected by Cloudflare, Akamai, Incapsula, PerimeterX, DataDome, or Sucuri, those firewalls often reject an automated checker with a 403, 503, or a "checking your browser" page — and most plugins report that as broken, even though a real visitor gets the page just fine. Link Scanner tells the two apart.
The page is actually gone — a genuine 404/410, or the domain no longer resolves.
The request was rejected by a firewall or bot-protection service, not because the page is gone.
A timeout, server error, or SSL issue worth trying again before calling it either way.
Responded normally, including redirects that land somewhere that still works.
The opposite problem, and the one nobody checks for. A status code of 200 means the server replied — not that the page you linked to is still there. Pro reads what actually came back, and flags the four ways a link can be dead while looking perfectly healthy.
The server answers 200 while the page itself says the content is gone. A status-code checker counts this as working — forever.
The product or article you linked to no longer exists, so the site quietly forwards visitors to its front page instead of admitting it.
Whoever owned that domain when you linked to it doesn't own it any more. The link resolves. It just isn't the site you meant.
The address now serves ad-farm content from a different owner — with your recommendation still pointing at it.
Affiliate links get flagged first. When any of these happens to a link carrying an affiliate or referral tag, what broke isn't the link — it's the income. Nothing looks wrong, the clicks keep going through, and the commission quietly stops. That's the one we put at the top of the list.
The actual admin screen — nothing staged, this is what you get.
The main screen: broken, blocked, and working links at a glance, with a live link-health score.
Pro’s "Find a fix" — we look up an archived copy, show you the date it was captured, and rewrite the link everywhere it appears in one click. Or paste your own replacement URL instead.
The links that answer "OK" but aren’t working: soft 404s, silent homepage redirects, parked domains. Each one says what we saw, in plain language — and affiliate links come first.
"Fix all" does the whole list in one pass. You review the suggestions and tick what you approve — nothing changes until you do, and all of it undoes together.
Link Scanner scans your published posts and pages for links, including ones rendered by page builders and dynamic blocks.
Every link is checked in the background on WordPress's own cron — never inline while a page loads, so it never slows your site down.
The admin screen surfaces what actually needs attention first, with one-click re-checks and bulk actions for cleaning up a whole list at once.
The full verdict engine — including firewall/bot-protection detection — is in the free version. Not held back for a paid tier. Free tells you what's broken; Pro is the part that fixes it and can take the fix back.
✓ 7-day money-back guarantee on every paid plan, no questions asked.
Exact pricing and site counts are shown at checkout. 7-day money-back guarantee on every paid plan.
Every other broken-link checker we tried treated a firewall's "go away" the same as an actual dead page — which meant every report was half false alarms. Link Scanner is our attempt to fix that one specific, annoying problem properly: tell you what's actually broken, and what just looks that way to a bot.
It's a small, focused tool. If it saves you from chasing a link that was never actually broken, it's done its job.
No FTP, no command line — the free plugin installs straight from your own WordPress admin, like any other plugin from the directory. Everyone starts with the free plugin, even if you've already bought Pro — Pro is a small add-on that sits on top of it, not a replacement.
In your admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin and type Snagbane Link Scanner into the search box. It comes up first.
Click Install Now, then Activate Plugin once it finishes. It'll show up in your Plugins list, active and ready.
A new Link Scanner item appears in your admin sidebar. Your first scan starts automatically within about 10 seconds.
Pro is not on WordPress.org — right after checkout, Freemius emails you the Pro .zip and a license key. In your admin, go to Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin, choose that .zip, then install and activate it. An "Activate License" box appears; paste the key from that email in and you are done.
This is what you'll see if Pro is installed before you activate your license — paste your key in and it clears, unlocking Pro.
Requires WordPress 5.8+ and PHP 7.4+. If your host blocks direct .zip uploads, that only affects the Pro step — ask them to raise the upload_max_filesize limit; the file is well under 2 MB.
Activation only needs that license key pasted in — nothing is tied to your email automatically. Lost the email? Recover your key anytime from the Freemius Customer Portal.
Free to install, unlimited links, no credit card required.
Now live on WordPress.org — install it straight from your WordPress admin.
Link Scanner