Build a Free Broken Link Checker Tool with Cursor AI (No Coding Experience Needed)

Broken links quietly kill your SEO and your user experience, but you don't need a paid crawler subscription to catch them. In this build, we use Cursor AI to create a fully working broken link checker in about 10 minutes, complete with a GUI, CSV export, and the ability to scan both internal and external links on any website.

Why Build Your Own Broken Link Checker

Tools like Screaming Frog are great, but they come with a price tag and a learning curve. If you're an SEO professional, freelancer managing multiple client sites, or just someone who wants to keep more money in your pocket, building your own lightweight version of these tools is a solid alternative. Once you stack a few of these together, you end up with a free, custom SEO toolkit built exactly the way you want it.

This build is part of an ongoing series where we're putting together a complete free SEO toolkit from scratch. We've already covered a sitemap extractor and a keyword density tracker, and this broken link checker is the next piece of that stack.

What This Tool Actually Does

The broken link checker scans a website and flags both internal and external links that are broken. Instead of just staring at a terminal window, the tool comes with a simple GUI so it's easy to run a scan and see results without touching any code.

Once the scan finishes, results export automatically into a clean CSV file, named with the site's domain and a timestamp, so you can keep scans organized when you're checking multiple sites over time.

How the Build Works

The walkthrough covers exactly how to prompt Cursor to generate the Python script, build out the GUI, and get the export functionality working correctly. From there, we run a live scan on a real website to show the tool catching actual broken links in action.

We also cover converting the Python script into a standalone EXE application. That means the tool can run on any Windows machine without needing Python installed, which makes it easy to use yourself or hand off to a client or teammate.

Where This Tool Can Go Next

This version is just the starting point. A few ideas for leveling it up:

• Scheduling automated scans to run on a regular basis
• Using a JSON config file to run checks across multiple client sites at once
• Expanding the tool into a larger custom SEO tool stack over time

Key Takeaways

• You can build a working broken link checker with Cursor AI in about 10 minutes
• The tool scans both internal and external links on any site
• Results export automatically into a clean, organized CSV file
• The script can be converted into a standalone EXE, no Python installation required
• This is one piece of a larger free SEO toolkit being built out in this series

If you're building your own SEO tools or have ideas for what should come next in this series, drop your thoughts in the comments. Follow along for the next build as we keep growing this free SEO toolkit one tool at a time.