SEO by Daniel vs Xenu Link Sleuth

Xenu Link Sleuth is a free Windows program for finding broken links. It has been around for a long time and has been largely unmaintained since around 2010, but it still runs, and people still use it. SEO by Daniel is a hosted audit that scores a site and produces a report. Xenu is a focused free tool; SEO by Daniel is a paid product with a deliverable attached.

Where Xenu Link Sleuth wins

• Free. No subscription, no account, no per-crawl limit.
• Runs on your machine, so nothing about the crawl leaves your desktop.
• Good at the one job it does: following links and listing the ones that break.
• Many SEOs still trust it, which counts for something after fifteen years.
• Lightweight and quick to start on Windows.

Where SEO by Daniel wins

• More than a link list. A 0-100 score, an executive summary, and issues grouped by severity.
• Browser-based and maintained, so it does not depend on a Windows install or a 2010-era TLS stack.
• Sitemap auto-discovery via robots.txt, nested indexes and gzipped sitemaps, so the crawl covers the whole site.
• A client-ready report with CSV export, which is a different artifact from a raw link list.
• Monitoring that re-checks on a schedule, rather than a scan you remember to run.

A real example

A freelance SEO on Windows is prepping a site migration for a client with about 2,000 URLs. Before the move, they want every broken internal link and every redirect spotted. Xenu is the obvious first call: free, fast, and it produces a CSV of links with status codes. For that specific job, there is no reason to pay anyone.

The problem comes after. The client's marketing lead asks for the audit as a document. Xenu gives a spreadsheet of URLs and status codes. That is useful to the freelancer and hard to read for anyone else. So the freelancer also runs SEO by Daniel on the production domain, gets a 0-100 score in about two seconds, and sends the scored report with the redirect issues already grouped by severity.

Nobody is pretending Xenu is a paid SaaS product. It is free, and it works. The difference is simple: one tool finds links and the other produces something a client will read. If the job is a link sweep, Xenu is a fine answer. If the job ends with a report and a follow-up check next month, the hosted tool is doing more.

There is a practical limit to an unmaintained crawler, too. Sites increasingly rely on JavaScript to render links, and a tool last updated around 2010 will miss what it cannot see in the raw HTML. That is not a knock on Xenu's history; it is just what happens when software stops changing and the web does not. For a plain HTML site the result is still solid. For a modern storefront, it is partial.

The verdict

| | Xenu Link Sleuth | SEO by Daniel | |---|---|---| | Price | Free | €19/mo | | Platform | Windows desktop | Browser | | Scope | Broken links | Full SEO issue set | | Client-ready report | No, raw list | Executive summary, severity, CSV | | Maintained | No, since ~2010 | Yes | | Ongoing monitoring | No | Yes |

When to pick which

Pick Xenu if you are on Windows and you need a free, focused broken-link check. It costs nothing, it runs locally, and it does the job. If your work stops at the link list, there is nothing to buy.

Pick SEO by Daniel when the crawl needs to become a scored report, when you do not want to depend on an unmaintained desktop app, and when the client expects a document rather than a CSV of status codes.

Run a free scan and see what a maintained crawler reports beyond broken links.

FAQ

Is Xenu still maintained? It has been largely unmaintained since around 2010. It still works for many sites, but do not expect updates when the web changes.

Can SEO by Daniel replace Xenu? For broken links, mostly. It reports link issues as part of a fuller audit and puts them in a scored, exportable report. Xenu gives you the raw list for free.

Is SEO by Daniel free? The quick scan is free and needs no account. Reports, monitoring and CSV export sit behind the €19/month plan.