Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO platforms in the world, and its Site Audit feature includes broken link detection. But at $99/month for the entry-level plan, is it the right tool when your main goal is finding and fixing broken links? Let's compare Ahrefs Site Audit with Broken Link Scan to see which makes more sense for link checking specifically. (For a wider comparison, see our best broken link checkers in 2026 roundup.)

What each tool does

Broken Link Scan

Broken Link Scan is a purpose-built broken link checker. You enter a URL, it crawls your site, and it returns a clear report of every broken link — internal and external — along with the source pages where those links appear. It's designed to do one job exceptionally well.

Ahrefs Site Audit

Ahrefs Site Audit is one module within a comprehensive SEO platform. It crawls your site and checks for over 100 technical SEO issues, including broken links. Broken link detection is one feature among many, sitting alongside duplicate content checks, page speed analysis, structured data validation, and more.

Accuracy for broken link detection

Both tools are accurate at identifying broken links. However, their approaches differ in important ways.

Broken Link Scan is optimized specifically for link validation. Its crawler is tuned to correctly handle redirects, timeouts, and edge cases that affect link status. Because link checking is its only job, every part of the tool is designed around this workflow. See our features page for specifics.

Ahrefs crawls for dozens of purposes simultaneously. While its broken link detection is solid, the results are mixed in with hundreds of other audit findings. Finding your broken links means navigating through a multi-layered dashboard, filtering by issue type, and understanding Ahrefs' categorization system.

Speed to results

With Broken Link Scan, you go from entering a URL to seeing broken link results in minutes. No account creation, no project setup, no crawl configuration. The time-to-value is measured in seconds.

With Ahrefs, you first need an account (starting at $99/month). Then you create a project, configure crawl settings, initiate a site audit, wait for the crawl to complete, navigate to the correct report section, and filter for broken links. The time-to-value is measured in hours for new users.

Pricing: the elephant in the room

This is where the comparison becomes most stark:

Broken Link Scan — free for on-demand scans. Paid plans for automated monitoring are a fraction of Ahrefs' cost.
Ahrefs Lite — $99/month ($1,188/year) with crawl limits of 10,000 pages per project.
Ahrefs Standard — $199/month for higher crawl limits.
Ahrefs Advanced — $399/month for enterprise-level crawling.

If you're paying for Ahrefs primarily to check broken links, you're spending over $1,000 per year on a feature you can get for free. That's like buying a Swiss Army knife when you only need scissors.

When Ahrefs makes sense

Ahrefs is a genuinely powerful platform. If you're an SEO professional who uses it daily for keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor tracking, and content gap analysis, then using its built-in site audit for broken links is perfectly reasonable. You're already paying for the tool, and the broken link data integrates with your broader SEO workflow.

Ahrefs also excels at finding broken external links pointing to your site from other websites. Its massive backlink index lets you discover 404 pages on your domain that other sites link to — valuable for reclaiming lost link equity. This is a different use case from scanning your own site for outgoing broken links.

When Broken Link Scan makes sense

Broken Link Scan is the better choice in several common scenarios:

You don't have an Ahrefs subscription — and you shouldn't need one just to check links.
You want instant results — no project setup, no waiting for a full audit to complete.
You need to scan client sites quickly — freelancers and agencies can scan any URL without adding it as a project.
You're a developer or content manager — you need broken link data, not a full SEO audit.
You want automated monitoring — scheduled scans with alerts, without an expensive subscription.

Can you use both?

Absolutely. Many SEO professionals use Ahrefs for strategic SEO work — keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor monitoring — and Broken Link Scan for fast, dedicated broken link detection. The tools complement each other well because they solve different problems.

Use Ahrefs to understand your SEO landscape. Use Broken Link Scan to keep your links healthy. There's no conflict, and using a focused tool for a specific job almost always produces better results than using a general-purpose platform.

The bottom line

If you already pay for Ahrefs, you can certainly use its broken link detection as part of your existing workflow. But if you're evaluating tools specifically for finding and fixing broken links, Broken Link Scan delivers faster results, simpler reporting, and zero cost for on-demand scans. Don't pay $99/month for something you can do for free. Check our pricing and full comparison page for more detail.

Broken Link Scan vs Ahrefs Site Audit: Focused Tool vs Suite