
[](https://lycheeverse.github.io)
[](https://github.com/marketplace/actions/lychee-broken-link-checker)
[](https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
[](https://docs.rs/lychee-lib)
[](https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/actions/workflows/links.yml)
[](https://hub.docker.com/r/lycheeverse/lychee)
⚡ A fast, async, stream-based 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 command-line utility, a library and a [GitHub Action](https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee-action).

## Table of Contents
- [Development](#development)
- [Installation](#installation)
- [Features](#features)
- [Commandline usage](#commandline-usage)
- [Library usage](#library-usage)
- [GitHub Action Usage](#github-action-usage)
- [Pre-commit Usage](#pre-commit-usage)
- [Contributing to lychee](#contributing-to-lychee)
- [Troubleshooting and Workarounds](#troubleshooting-and-workarounds)
- [Users](#users)
- [Credits](#credits)
- [License](#license)
## Development
After [installing Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install) use [Cargo](https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/) for building and testing.
On Linux the OpenSSL package [is required](https://github.com/seanmonstar/reqwest?tab=readme-ov-file#requirements) to compile `reqwest`, a dependency of lychee.
For Nix we provide a flake so you can use `nix develop` and `nix build`.
## Installation
### Arch Linux
```sh
pacman -S lychee
```
### OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
```sh
zypper in lychee
```
### macOS
Via [Homebrew](https://brew.sh):
```sh
brew install lychee
```
Via [MacPorts](https://www.macports.org):
```sh
sudo port install lychee
```
### Docker
```sh
docker pull lycheeverse/lychee
```
### NixOS
```sh
nix-env -iA nixos.lychee
```
### Nixpkgs
- [`lychee` package](https://search.nixos.org/packages?show=lychee&query=lychee) for configurations, Nix shells, etc.
- Let Nix check a packaged site with \
[`testers.lycheeLinkCheck`](https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#tester-lycheeLinkCheck) `{ site = …; }`
### FreeBSD
```sh
pkg install lychee
```
### Scoop
```sh
scoop install lychee
```
### Termux
```sh
pkg install lychee
```
### Alpine Linux
```sh
# available for Alpine Edge in testing repositories
apk add lychee
```
### Chocolatey (Windows)
```sh
choco install lychee
```
### Pre-built binaries
We provide binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows for every release. \
You can download them from the [releases page](https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/releases).
### Cargo
#### Build dependencies
On APT/dpkg-based Linux distros (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Kali Linux)
the following commands will install all required build dependencies, including
the Rust toolchain and `cargo`:
```sh
curl -sSf 'https://sh.rustup.rs' | sh
apt install gcc pkg-config libc6-dev libssl-dev
```
#### Compile and install lychee
```sh
cargo install lychee
```
#### Feature flags
Lychee supports several feature flags:
- `native-tls` enables the platform-native TLS crate [native-tls](https://crates.io/crates/native-tls).
- `vendored-openssl` compiles and statically links a copy of OpenSSL. See the corresponding feature of the [openssl](https://crates.io/crates/openssl) crate.
- `rustls-tls` enables the alternative TLS crate [rustls](https://crates.io/crates/rustls).
- `email-check` enables checking email addresses using the [check-if-email-exists](https://crates.io/crates/check-if-email-exists) crate. This feature requires the `native-tls` feature.
- `check_example_domains` allows checking example domains such as `example.com`. This feature is useful for testing.
By default, `native-tls` and `email-check` are enabled.
## Features
This comparison is made on a best-effort basis. Please create a PR to fix
outdated information.
| | lychee | [awesome_bot] | [muffet] | [broken-link-checker] | [linkinator] | [linkchecker] | [markdown-link-check] | [fink] |
| -------------------- | ------- | ------------- | -------- | --------------------- | ------------ | -------------------- | --------------------- | ------ |
| Language | Rust | Ruby | Go | JS | TypeScript | Python | JS | PHP |
| Async/Parallel | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| JSON output | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![maybe]1 | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Static binary | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ️![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Markdown files | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| HTML files | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Text files | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Website support | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| Chunked encodings | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![maybe] | ![maybe] | ![maybe] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| GZIP compression | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![maybe] | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![no] |
| Basic Auth | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Custom user agent | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Relative URLs | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Anchors/Fragments | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Skip relative URLs | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![maybe] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Include patterns | ![yes]️ | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Exclude patterns | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Handle redirects | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Ignore insecure SSL | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| File globbing | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Limit scheme | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] |
| [Custom headers] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Summary | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| `HEAD` requests | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Colored output | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![yes] | ![maybe] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| [Filter status code] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Custom timeout | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| E-mail links | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] |
| Progress bar | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| Retry and backoff | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Skip private domains | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
| [Use as library] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Quiet mode | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] |
| [Config file] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Cookies | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![no] | ![yes] |
| Recursion | ![no] | ![no] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![yes] | ![no] |
| Amazing lychee logo | ![yes] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] | ![no] |
[awesome_bot]: https://github.com/dkhamsing/awesome_bot
[muffet]: https://github.com/raviqqe/muffet
[broken-link-checker]: https://github.com/stevenvachon/broken-link-checker
[linkinator]: https://github.com/JustinBeckwith/linkinator
[linkchecker]: https://github.com/linkchecker/linkchecker
[markdown-link-check]: https://github.com/tcort/markdown-link-check
[fink]: https://github.com/dantleech/fink
[yes]: ./assets/yes.svg
[no]: ./assets/no.svg
[maybe]: ./assets/maybe.svg
[custom headers]: https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/788
[filter status code]: https://github.com/tcort/markdown-link-check/issues/94
[skip private domains]: https://github.com/appscodelabs/liche/blob/a5102b0bf90203b467a4f3b4597d22cd83d94f99/url_checker.go
[use as library]: https://github.com/raviqqe/liche/issues/13
[config file]: https://github.com/lycheeverse/lychee/blob/master/lychee.example.toml
1 Other machine-readable formats like CSV are supported.
## Commandline usage
Recursively check all links in supported files inside the current directory
```sh
lychee .
```
You can also specify various types of inputs:
```sh
# check links in specific local file(s):
lychee README.md
lychee test.html info.txt
# check links on a website:
lychee https://endler.dev
# check links in directory but block network requests
lychee --offline path/to/directory
# check links in a remote file:
lychee https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lycheeverse/lychee/master/README.md
# check links in local files via 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.*"
# check links from epub file (requires atool: https://www.nongnu.org/atool)
acat -F zip {file.epub} "*.xhtml" "*.html" | lychee -
```
lychee parses other file formats as plaintext and extracts links using [linkify](https://github.com/robinst/linkify).
This generally works well if there are no format or encoding specifics,
but in case you need dedicated support for a new file format, please consider creating an issue.
### Docker Usage
Here's how to mount a local directory into the container and check some input
with lychee.
- The `--init` parameter is passed so that lychee can be stopped from the terminal.
- We also pass `-it` to start an interactive terminal, which is required to show the progress bar.
- The `--rm` removes not used anymore container from the host after the run (self-cleanup).
- The `-w /input` points to `/input` as the default workspace
- The `-v $(pwd):/input` does local volume mounting to the container for lychee access.
> By default a Debian-based Docker image is used. If you want to run an Alpine-based image, use the `latest-alpine` tag.
> For example, `lycheeverse/lychee:latest-alpine`
#### Linux/macOS shell command
```sh
docker run --init -it --rm -w /input -v $(pwd):/input lycheeverse/lychee README.md
```
#### Windows PowerShell command
```powershell
docker run --init -it --rm -w /input -v ${PWD}:/input lycheeverse/lychee README.md
```
### GitHub Token
To avoid getting rate-limited while checking GitHub links, you can optionally
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.
[Here is an example config file][config file].
The token can be generated on your [GitHub account settings page](https://github.com/settings/tokens).
A personal access token with no extra permissions is enough to be able to check public repo links.
For more scalable organization-wide scenarios you can consider a [GitHub App][github-app-overview].
It has a higher rate limit than personal access tokens but requires additional configuration steps on your GitHub workflow.
Please follow the [GitHub App Setup][github-app-setup] example.
[github-app-overview]: https://docs.github.com/en/apps/overview
[github-app-setup]: https://github.com/github/combine-prs/blob/main/docs/github-app-setup.md#github-app-setup
### Commandline Parameters
There is an extensive list of command line parameters to customize the behavior.
See below for a full list.
```text
A fast, async link checker
Finds broken URLs and mail addresses inside Markdown, HTML, `reStructuredText`, websites and more!
Usage: lychee [OPTIONS] ...
Arguments:
...
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.com/README.md`) or standard input (`-`). NOTE: Use `--` to separate inputs from options that allow multiple arguments
Options:
-c, --config
Configuration file to use
[default: lychee.toml]
-v, --verbose...
Set verbosity level; more output per occurrence (e.g. `-v` or `-vv`)
-q, --quiet...
Less output per occurrence (e.g. `-q` or `-qq`)
-n, --no-progress
Do not show progress bar.
This is recommended for non-interactive shells (e.g. for continuous integration)
--extensions
Test the specified file extensions for URIs when checking files locally.
Multiple extensions can be separated by commas. Note that if you want to check filetypes,
which have multiple extensions, e.g. HTML files with both .html and .htm extensions, you need to
specify both extensions explicitly.
[default: md,mkd,mdx,mdown,mdwn,mkdn,mkdown,markdown,html,htm,txt]
--cache
Use request cache stored on disk at `.lycheecache`
--max-cache-age
Discard all cached requests older than this duration
[default: 1d]
--cache-exclude-status
A list of status codes that will be ignored from the cache
The following exclude range syntax is supported: [start]..[[=]end]|code. Some valid
examples are:
- 429 (excludes the 429 status code only)
- 500.. (excludes any status code >= 500)
- ..100 (excludes any status code < 100)
- 500..=599 (excludes any status code from 500 to 599 inclusive)
- 500..600 (excludes any status code from 500 to 600 excluding 600, same as 500..=599)
Use "lychee --cache-exclude-status '429, 500..502' ..." to provide a comma- separated
list of excluded status codes. This example will not cache results with a status code of 429, 500
and 501.
[default: ]
--dump
Don't perform any link checking. Instead, dump all the links extracted from inputs that would be checked
--dump-inputs
Don't perform any link extraction and checking. Instead, dump all input sources from which links would be collected
--archive
Specify the use of a specific web archive. Can be used in combination with `--suggest`
[possible values: wayback]
--suggest
Suggest link replacements for broken links, using a web archive. The web archive can be specified with `--archive`
-m, --max-redirects
Maximum number of allowed redirects
[default: 5]
--max-retries
Maximum number of retries per request
[default: 3]
--min-tls
Minimum accepted TLS Version
[possible values: TLSv1_0, TLSv1_1, TLSv1_2, TLSv1_3]
--max-concurrency
Maximum number of concurrent network requests
[default: 128]
-T, --threads
Number of threads to utilize. Defaults to number of cores available to the system
-u, --user-agent
User agent
[default: lychee/x.y.z]
-i, --insecure
Proceed for server connections considered insecure (invalid TLS)
-s, --scheme
Only test links with the given schemes (e.g. https). Omit to check links with any other scheme. At the moment, we support http, https, file, and mailto
--offline
Only check local files and block network requests
--include
URLs to check (supports regex). Has preference over all excludes
--exclude
Exclude URLs and mail addresses from checking (supports regex)
--exclude-file
Deprecated; use `--exclude-path` instead
--exclude-path
Exclude file path from getting checked
-E, --exclude-all-private
Exclude all private IPs from checking.
Equivalent to `--exclude-private --exclude-link-local --exclude-loopback`
--exclude-private
Exclude private IP address ranges from checking
--exclude-link-local
Exclude link-local IP address range from checking
--exclude-loopback
Exclude loopback IP address range and localhost from checking
--include-mail
Also check email addresses
--remap
Remap URI matching pattern to different URI
--fallback-extensions
Test the specified file extensions for URIs when checking files locally.
Multiple extensions can be separated by commas. Extensions will be checked in
order of appearance.
Example: --fallback-extensions html,htm,php,asp,aspx,jsp,cgi
-H, --header
Set custom header for requests
Some websites require custom headers to be passed in order to return valid responses.
You can specify custom headers in the format 'Name: Value'. For example, 'Accept: text/html'.
This is the same format that other tools like curl or wget use.
Multiple headers can be specified by using the flag multiple times.
-a, --accept
A List of accepted status codes for valid links
The following accept range syntax is supported: [start]..[[=]end]|code. Some valid
examples are:
- 200 (accepts the 200 status code only)
- ..204 (accepts any status code < 204)
- ..=204 (accepts any status code <= 204)
- 200..=204 (accepts any status code from 200 to 204 inclusive)
- 200..205 (accepts any status code from 200 to 205 excluding 205, same as 200..=204)
Use "lychee --accept '200..=204, 429, 500' ..." to provide a comma-
separated list of accepted status codes. This example will accept 200, 201,
202, 203, 204, 429, and 500 as valid status codes.
[default: 100..=103,200..=299]
--include-fragments
Enable the checking of fragments in links
-t, --timeout
Website timeout in seconds from connect to response finished
[default: 20]
-r, --retry-wait-time
Minimum wait time in seconds between retries of failed requests
[default: 1]
-X, --method
Request method
[default: get]
--base
Deprecated; use `--base-url` instead
-b, --base-url
Base URL used to resolve relative URLs during link checking Example:
--root-dir
Root path to use when checking absolute local links, must be an absolute path
--basic-auth
Basic authentication support. E.g. `http://example.com username:password`
--github-token
GitHub API token to use when checking github.com links, to avoid rate limiting
[env: GITHUB_TOKEN]
--skip-missing
Skip missing input files (default is to error if they don't exist)
--no-ignore
Do not skip files that would otherwise be ignored by '.gitignore', '.ignore', or the global ignore file
--hidden
Do not skip hidden directories and files
--include-verbatim
Find links in verbatim sections like `pre`- and `code` blocks
--glob-ignore-case
Ignore case when expanding filesystem path glob inputs
-o, --output