Redirect Chain Checker
Follow every hop between a URL and its destination, with the status code and timing for each one.
Free and instant — results appear in seconds. No sign-up, no limits, and nothing you type is stored.
Enter a URL and this follows it hop by hop, reporting the status code and response time at each step until it reaches something that is not a redirect.
It is the quickest way to answer three questions that come up constantly during migrations: where does this actually end up, how many jumps does it take, and is anything using the wrong status code.
A worked example
Tracing http://example.com/blog/old-post:
Hop 1 — 301, 84 ms
http://example.com/blog/old-post → HTTPS rule fires.
Hop 2 — 301, 61 ms
https://example.com/blog/old-post → canonical host rule adds www.
Hop 3 — 302, 58 ms
https://www.example.com/blog/old-post → application-level rule points at the new slug.
Hop 4 — 200, 210 ms
https://www.example.com/blog/new-post — destination reached.
What to fix
Three redirects and roughly 200 ms of latency before the real request begins. Two problems worth addressing.
First, hop 3 is a 302. The post slug changed permanently, so search engines are being told to keep the old URL indexed. That should be a 301.
Second, the chain is longer than it needs to be. Adding a rule that sends http://example.com/blog/old-post straight to the final HTTPS www URL collapses three hops into one. Keep the intermediate rules for other traffic, but the known old URLs should jump directly.
Why chains matter
Every hop is a full round trip — DNS, connection, request, response — before the browser even starts fetching the real page. Two hops on a fast connection is barely noticeable. Four hops on mobile in a weak signal area is the difference between a page loading and a visitor leaving.
Search engines follow chains too, but they do it grudgingly and they do not follow them forever. Long chains waste crawl budget and, past a certain length, simply get abandoned.
301 versus 302, and why it keeps going wrong
A 301 says this moved permanently, update your records. A 302 or 307 says this is temporary, keep checking the original.
The error is almost always the same: a permanent move implemented with a 302 because that is the framework default. Search engines keep the old URL indexed, ranking signals do not consolidate, and months later somebody wonders why the new URLs never gained traction.
If the move is permanent, use 301 or 308. If you genuinely do not know, it is permanent — temporary redirects are rarer in practice than their usage suggests.
Chains that should be one hop
The classic accumulation looks like this:
http://example.com/old-page → https://example.com/old-page → https://www.example.com/old-page → https://www.example.com/new-page
Three hops, each added by a different rule at a different time, none of them wrong individually. The fix is to make the first rule point at the final destination directly. One hop, same outcome.
Loops
A redirect loop returns nothing at all — the browser gives up and shows an error. They usually come from two rules disagreeing: one forcing www, another stripping it, each undoing the other. This tool detects a repeat visit to the same URL and stops, so you can see exactly which two URLs are bouncing.
Frequently asked questions
How many redirects are too many?
Aim for one. Two is acceptable. Past three you are wasting time on every request and risking crawlers giving up before they reach the destination. Google follows a handful of hops but does not commit to a specific number, so treating three as the ceiling is sensible.
What is the difference between 301 and 308?
Both are permanent. The difference is that 308 guarantees the request method is preserved — a POST stays a POST. For ordinary page redirects the practical effect is identical, and 301 has broader historical support.
Do redirects lose link equity?
Google has stated that PageRank is not diluted through 301 redirects. That said, chains still cost crawl budget and latency, and every extra hop is another rule that can break later. Fewer is better for reasons beyond ranking.
Why does the tool show 0 for a status code?
No response at all — the host did not answer, the connection timed out, or the server rejects HEAD requests. Some servers respond to GET but not HEAD, which is unusual but legal.
I have a redirect loop. Where do I start?
Look for two rules that disagree about a single thing, usually www or trailing slashes. One rule adds it, another removes it, and each triggers the other. Disable one and the loop resolves immediately.
Should I redirect an old page to the homepage?
Only if there is genuinely no closer match. Google treats a redirect to an irrelevant page as a soft 404, so the redirect gains you nothing and costs the visitor a click. A relevant page, or an honest 410, both beat a homepage dump.
Reviews
No reviews yet. If this tool solved something for you, yours would be the first — and it helps other people decide whether it is worth their time.