⚡ A fast, async, resource-friendly link checker written in Rust.
Finds broken hyperlinks and mail addresses inside Markdown, HTML, reStructuredText, or any other text file or website!
Available as a CLI utility and as a GitHub Action: lycheeverse/lychee-action.
This comparison is made on a best-effort basis. Please create a PR to fix outdated information. use
lychee | awesome_bot | muffet | broken-link-checker | linkinator | linkchecker | markdown-link-check | fink | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Rust | Ruby | Go | JS | TypeScript | Python | JS | PHP |
Async/Parallel | ||||||||
JSON output | ||||||||
Static binary | ️ |
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Markdown files | ️ |
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HTML files | ||||||||
Text files | ||||||||
Website support | ||||||||
Chunked encodings | ||||||||
GZIP compression | ||||||||
Basic Auth | ||||||||
Custom user agent | ||||||||
Relative URLs | ||||||||
Skip relative URLs | ||||||||
Include patterns | ||||||||
Exclude patterns | ||||||||
Handle redirects | ||||||||
Ignore insecure SSL | ||||||||
File globbing | ||||||||
Limit scheme | ||||||||
Custom headers | ||||||||
Summary | ||||||||
HEAD requests |
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Colored output | ||||||||
Filter status code | ||||||||
Custom timeout | ||||||||
E-mail links | ||||||||
Progress bar | ||||||||
Retry and backoff | ||||||||
Skip private domains | ||||||||
Use as library | ||||||||
Quiet mode | ||||||||
Config file | ||||||||
Recursion | ||||||||
Amazing lychee logo |
1 Other machine-readable formats like CSV are supported.
We'd be thankful for any contribution.
We try to keep the issue-tracker up-to-date so you can quickly find a task to work on.
Try one of these links to get started:
You can run lychee directly from the commandline.
cargo install lychee
docker pull lycheeverse/lychee
We provide binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows for every release.
You can download them from the releases page.
Run it inside a repository with a README.md
:
lychee
You can also specify various types of inputs:
# check links on a website:
lychee https://endler.dev/
# check links in a remote file:
lychee https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lycheeverse/lychee/master/README.md
# check links in local file(s):
lychee README.md
lychee test.html info.txt
# check links in local files (by shell glob):
lychee ~/projects/*/README.md
# check links in local files (lychee supports advanced globbing and ~ expansion):
lychee "~/projects/big_project/**/README.*"
# ignore case when globbing and check result for each link:
lychee --glob-ignore-case --verbose "~/projects/**/[r]eadme.*"
Optionally, to avoid getting rate-limited while checking GitHub links, you can
set an environment variable with your Github token like so GITHUB_TOKEN=xxxx
,
or use the --github-token
CLI option. It can also be set in the config file.
The token can be generated in your GitHub account settings page. A personal token with no extra permissions is enough to be able to check public repos links.
There is an extensive list of commandline parameters to customize the behavior, see below for a full list.
USAGE:
lychee [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] [--] [inputs]...
FLAGS:
-E, --exclude-all-private Exclude all private IPs from checking. Equivalent to `--exclude-private --exclude-link-
local --exclude-loopback`
--exclude-link-local Exclude link-local IP address range from checking
--exclude-loopback Exclude loopback IP address range from checking
--exclude-mail Exclude all mail addresses from checking
--exclude-private Exclude private IP address ranges from checking
--glob-ignore-case Ignore case when expanding filesystem path glob inputs
--help Prints help information
-i, --insecure Proceed for server connections considered insecure (invalid TLS)
-n, --no-progress Do not show progress bar. This is recommended for non-interactive shells (e.g. for
continuous integration)
--skip-missing Skip missing input files (default is to error if they don't exist)
-V, --version Prints version information
-v, --verbose Verbose program output
OPTIONS:
-a, --accept <accept> Comma-separated list of accepted status codes for valid links
-b, --base-url <base-url> Base URL to check relative URLs
--basic-auth <basic-auth> Basic authentication support. E.g. `username:password`
-c, --config <config-file> Configuration file to use [default: ./lychee.toml]
--exclude <exclude>... Exclude URLs from checking (supports regex)
-f, --format <format> Output file format of status report (json, string) [default: string]
--github-token <github-token> GitHub API token to use when checking github.com links, to avoid rate
limiting [env: GITHUB_TOKEN=]
-h, --headers <headers>... Custom request headers
--include <include>... URLs to check (supports regex). Has preference over all excludes
--max-concurrency <max-concurrency> Maximum number of concurrent network requests [default: 128]
-m, --max-redirects <max-redirects> Maximum number of allowed redirects [default: 10]
-X, --method <method> Request method [default: get]
-o, --output <output> Output file of status report
-s, --scheme <scheme> Only test links with the given scheme (e.g. https)
-T, --threads <threads> Number of threads to utilize. Defaults to number of cores available to
the system
-t, --timeout <timeout> Website timeout from connect to response finished [default: 20]
-u, --user-agent <user-agent> User agent [default: lychee/0.6.0]
ARGS:
<inputs>... The inputs (where to get links to check from). These can be: files (e.g. `README.md`), file globs
(e.g. `"~/git/*/README.md"`), remote URLs (e.g. `https://example.org/README.md`) or standard
input (`-`). Prefix with `--` to separate inputs from options that allow multiple arguments
[default: README.md]
0
for success (all links checked successfully or excluded/skipped as configured)1
for missing inputs and any unexpected runtime failures or config errors2
for link check failures (if any non-excluded link failed the check)
You can use lychee as a library for your own projects. Here is a "hello world" example:
use std::error::Error;
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
let response = lychee::check("https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee").await?;
println!("{}", response);
Ok(())
}
This is equivalent to the following snippet, in which we build our own client:
use lychee::{ClientBuilder, Status};
use std::error::Error;
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
let client = ClientBuilder::default().build()?;
let response = client.check("https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee").await?;
assert!(matches!(response.status, Status::Ok(_)));
Ok(())
}
The client builder is very customizable:
let client = lychee::ClientBuilder::default()
.includes(includes)
.excludes(excludes)
.max_redirects(cfg.max_redirects)
.user_agent(cfg.user_agent)
.allow_insecure(cfg.insecure)
.custom_headers(headers)
.method(method)
.timeout(timeout)
.verbose(cfg.verbose)
.github_token(cfg.github_token)
.scheme(cfg.scheme)
.accepted(accepted)
.build()?;
All options that you set will be used for all link checks. See the builder documentation for all options.
A GitHub Action that uses lychee is available as a separate repository: lycheeverse/lychee-action which includes usage instructions.
We collect a list of common workarounds for various websites in our troubleshooting guide.
- https://github.com/pawroman/links
- https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/static-analysis
- https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/dynamic-analysis
- https://github.com/mre/idiomatic-rust
- https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee (yes, the lychee docs are checked with lychee 🤯)
If you are using lychee for your project, we'd be delighted to hear about it.
lychee is licensed under either of
- Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
- MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
The first prototype of lychee was built in episode 10 of Hello Rust. Thanks to all Github- and Patreon sponsors for supporting the development since the beginning. Also, thanks to all the great contributors who have since made this project more mature.