Redirect Chain Analyzer

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Trace HTTP redirect chains for any URL. Shows every hop with status codes, headers, and final destination. Detects issues like redirect loops, unnecessary 302s, HTTPS downgrades, and missing canonical redirects.

What does Redirect Chain Analyzer do?

This actor follows HTTP redirects step-by-step and reports the full chain for any list of URLs. It shows every hop with the URL, status code, and relevant headers. It also tests HTTP-to-HTTPS and www/non-www variants to verify canonical redirects are properly configured. Use it for SEO migration audits, redirect debugging, or monitoring redirect health across your domains.

Technical SEO monitoring workflow

Use Redirect Chain Analyzer as the redirect-health step in a technical SEO workflow. It checks each submitted URL and optional HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www variants during the run, reporting every hop, final destination, status code, redirect loop, HTTPS downgrade, missing Location header, and likely temporary 302 issue. To monitor over time, save the same input and schedule recurring runs so you can compare datasets between audits.

For a complete domain, redirect, robots.txt, and sitemap workflow, combine it with:

• Domain Age Checker to check domain registration age, creation date, expiration date, registrar, nameservers, and status codes.
• Robots.txt & Sitemap Analyzer to verify crawl rules, sitemap declarations, crawl-delay directives, and sitemap URL counts.
• Sitemap URL Extractor to export sitemap URLs that should be covered by redirect mapping during migrations.
• Sitemap Diff Tool to confirm sitemap changes before and after migrations, releases, or content updates.

Features

• Full redirect chain -- every hop with URL, status code, and relevant headers
• HTTP/HTTPS testing -- automatically tests if HTTP redirects to HTTPS
• WWW/non-www testing -- checks canonical redirect configuration
• Issue detection -- finds redirect loops, 302s (should be 301), HTTPS downgrades, missing Location headers
• Bulk analysis -- process hundreds of URLs in a single run
• Configurable depth -- set max redirect hops (1-50)

Use cases

• SEO specialists -- verify redirect chains after domain or URL migrations to ensure link equity is preserved with 301 redirects
• DevOps engineers -- confirm all HTTP URLs redirect to HTTPS and that www/non-www canonical redirects are properly configured
• Web developers -- debug redirect loops and misconfigured redirects during development and staging
• Marketing teams -- verify that campaign landing page URLs resolve correctly and do not pass through excessive redirect hops
• Security analysts -- detect HTTPS downgrades where a secure URL redirects to an insecure HTTP destination
• Site reliability engineers -- monitor redirect health over time to detect configuration drift or unexpected changes

Why use Redirect Chain Analyzer?

• Complete chain visibility -- see every redirect hop with URL, status code, status message, and headers at each step
• Automatic variant testing -- tests HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www variants to give you a full picture of redirect behavior
• Issue detection -- automatically flags common problems like redirect loops, unnecessary 302s, and HTTPS downgrades
• Configurable depth -- set the maximum number of redirect hops to follow (1-50) to match your needs
• Batch processing -- analyze hundreds of URLs in a single run with structured results for each
• Pay-per-event pricing -- only $0.001 per URL variant traced, keeping costs predictable

Input parameters

{
"urls":["http://google.com","http://github.com","apify.com"],
"maxRedirects":20,
"checkHttpToHttps":true,
"checkWwwToNonWww":true
}

Output example

{
"url":"http://google.com",
"finalUrl":"https://www.google.com/",
"redirectCount":2,
"chain":[
{
"url":"http://google.com",
"statusCode":301,
"statusMessage":"Moved Permanently",
"headers":{"location":"http://www.google.com/"}
},
{
"url":"http://www.google.com/",
"statusCode":301,
"statusMessage":"Moved Permanently",
"headers":{"location":"https://www.google.com/"}
},
{
"url":"https://www.google.com/",
"statusCode":200,
"statusMessage":"OK",
"headers":{}
}
],
"finalStatusCode":200,
"issues":[],
"isHttpsRedirect":true,
"isWwwRedirect":true,
"totalTimeMs":342,
"error":null,
"checkedAt":"2026-03-01T12:00:00.000Z"
}

How much does it cost to analyze redirect chains?

With both HTTP and www checks enabled (default), each input URL generates 3 checks.

Example costs:

• 5 URLs (15 checks): $0.035 + 15 x $0.001 = $0.05
• 50 URLs (150 checks): $0.035 + 150 x $0.001 = $0.185
• 500 URLs (1,500 checks): $0.035 + 1,500 x $0.001 = $1.535

How to analyze redirect chains

1. Go to the Redirect Chain Analyzer page on Apify
2. Enter one or more URLs in the URLs field (e.g., http://google.com, apify.com)
3. Choose whether to enable HTTP-to-HTTPS and www/non-www variant checks
4. Set the Max Redirects depth if needed (default is 20)
5. Click Start and wait for results
6. Download the redirect chain data as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Using the Apify API

You can start Redirect Chain Analyzer programmatically from your own applications using the Apify API. The following examples show how to run the actor and retrieve results.

Node.js

import{ ApifyClient }from'apify-client';
const client =newApifyClient({token:'YOUR_TOKEN'});
const run =await client.actor('automation-lab/redirect-chain-analyzer').call({
urls:['http://google.com','http://github.com'],
});
const{ items }=await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/redirect-chain-analyzer').call(run_input={
'urls':['http://google.com','http://github.com'],
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl"https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~redirect-chain-analyzer/runs"\
-X POST \
-H"Content-Type: application/json"\
-H"Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"\
-d'{"urls": ["http://google.com", "http://github.com"]}'

Use with AI agents via MCP

Redirect Chain Analyzer is available as a tool for AI assistants via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Setup for Claude Code

$claude mcp add--transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/redirect-chain-analyzer"

Setup for Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code

{
"mcpServers":{
"apify":{
"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/redirect-chain-analyzer"
}
}
}

Example prompts

• "Trace the redirect chain for this URL"
• "Check if these URLs have redirect loops"

Learn more in the Apify MCP documentation.

Integrations

Redirect Chain Analyzer works with all major integration platforms supported by Apify. Connect it to Make (formerly Integromat), Zapier, n8n, or Slack to build automated redirect monitoring workflows. Export results directly to Google Sheets for collaborative SEO auditing or use webhooks to get notified when redirect issues are detected. You can also chain this actor with the HTTP Status Checker for a comprehensive URL health assessment.

Tips and best practices

• Use HTTP URLs as input -- start with http:// URLs to test the full redirect path from HTTP to HTTPS. If you input https:// URLs, you will miss the HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect check.
• Watch for 302s that should be 301s -- temporary redirects (302) do not pass SEO link equity. If a redirect is permanent, it should use 301. The actor flags this as an issue.
• Reduce costs by disabling variant checks -- if you only need the direct redirect chain, set checkHttpToHttps and checkWwwToNonWww to false to reduce the number of checks from 3 per URL to 1.
• Monitor after migrations -- schedule this actor to run weekly after a site migration to catch redirect chains that break or degrade over time.
• Check redirect chain length -- long redirect chains (3+ hops) slow down page loads and may cause search engines to stop following. Aim for a single redirect from source to destination.

Legality

This tool analyzes publicly accessible web content. Automated analysis of public web resources is standard practice in SEO and web development. Always respect robots.txt directives and rate limits when analyzing third-party websites. For personal data processing, ensure compliance with applicable privacy regulations.

FAQ

What is the difference between a 301 and 302 redirect? A 301 (Moved Permanently) tells browsers and search engines that the URL has permanently moved. It passes SEO link equity to the destination. A 302 (Found/Temporary Redirect) indicates a temporary move and does not pass full link equity. For permanent URL changes, always use 301 redirects.

What is a redirect loop? A redirect loop occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects back to URL A (or through a longer chain that eventually returns to a previous URL). The actor detects these loops and reports them in the issues array.

The redirect chain differs from what I see in my browser. Why? Browsers may follow redirects differently based on cached HSTS policies, saved cookies, or browser-specific behavior. The actor makes fresh HTTP requests without any cached state, cookies, or HSTS preload lists. This shows the raw server-side redirect behavior that new visitors and search engine crawlers experience.

Why does each input URL generate 3 checks? By default, the actor tests three variants of each URL: the original URL, the HTTP/HTTPS alternate version, and the www/non-www alternate version. This ensures comprehensive coverage of canonical redirect configuration. You can disable variant checks to reduce costs.

Other SEO tools

• Robots.txt & Sitemap Analyzer — parse robots.txt rules and count sitemap URLs
• Broken Link Checker — find broken links across your website
• HTTP Status Checker — check HTTP status codes for a list of URLs
• Sitemap URL Extractor — extract all URLs from XML sitemaps
• Website Health Report — comprehensive website health audit