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Sitemap Validator — Check Your XML Sitemap

Validate and check your XML sitemap in seconds. This free sitemap validator and checker fetches a live sitemap or reads pasted XML, flags errors and warnings with line numbers, finds a site's sitemap, tests URL status, checks hreflang and exports the URL list. No account needed.

Paste mode runs entirely in your browser. In URL and domain mode our server only fetches the sitemap (and robots.txt) you point it at — nothing is stored or tied to an account.

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs of a website so search engines can discover and crawl them. Each entry holds a location and optional hints such as lastmod, changefreq and priority. A valid sitemap uses the sitemaps.org 0.9 namespace and may hold up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed — larger sites split their URLs across several sitemaps referenced by a sitemap index.

This xml sitemap validator parses the file, checks it against the protocol and Google's requirements, and shows every issue with its line number. Use it as a sitemap viewer to inspect what a sitemap actually contains, or as a sitemap tester before you submit it to Google Search Console.

How this sitemap checker works

Paste your XML or enter a sitemap URL and the sitemap checker fetches it, decompresses .gz files, and validates it in your browser. Errors block a sitemap — malformed XML, a missing or wrong namespace, relative or missing URLs, an invalid changefreq, a priority outside 0.0 to 1.0, or exceeding the 50,000-URL / 50 MB limits. Warnings are advisory, such as a lastmod that is not in W3C format (which Google silently ignores), duplicates, near-duplicates or mixed domains.

For image, video and news sitemaps the checker also verifies the required fields of each namespace, and it optionally tests the live HTTP status of the listed URLs so you can spot broken links and redirects before crawlers do.

Sitemap finder: locate any site's sitemap

Not sure where a sitemap lives? Switch to the domain mode and the built-in sitemap finder reads the site's robots.txt and probes the common paths (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml and more) to find the sitemap for you. It is the quickest way to find a sitemap you can then validate, view or export.

For the full specification, see the official sitemaps protocol: sitemaps.org — protocol.

Image, video and news sitemaps

The validator recognises the image, video and news namespaces and checks their required fields: an image needs image:loc; a video needs video:thumbnail_loc, video:title, video:description and one of content_loc or player_loc; a news entry needs news:publication, news:publication_date and news:title. Missing required fields are reported as errors so your media sitemap is accepted by Google.

Frequently asked questions

What is an XML sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists a website's URLs so search engines can find and crawl them efficiently. Beyond the URL itself, each entry can carry optional signals like the last modification date. It does not guarantee indexing, but it helps crawlers discover pages, especially on large sites or pages that are not well linked internally.
How do I find the sitemap of a website?
Try the domain mode above: it reads the site's robots.txt, which usually contains a Sitemap line, and probes common locations such as /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml. Most sitemaps sit at the domain root. If none of those work, check the CMS documentation — WordPress, for example, serves /wp-sitemap.xml by default.
What are the limits for a sitemap?
A single sitemap may contain at most 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50 MB uncompressed. If your site is larger, split the URLs across several sitemaps and list those files in a sitemap index, which itself may reference up to 50,000 sitemaps. The validator flags a file that crosses either limit.
Why does Google ignore my lastmod?
Google only trusts lastmod when it is in a valid W3C date format, such as 2026-01-15 or a full timestamp with a time zone. Formats like 01/15/2026 are silently ignored, as are dates in the future or values that are obviously unreliable. The validator flags non-W3C and future dates so you can fix them.
What is a sitemap index?
A sitemap index is a special sitemap that lists other sitemap files instead of page URLs. It lets large sites stay within the per-file limits while exposing all their URLs through one entry point. This tool detects an index, lists its sub-sitemaps, and can optionally validate up to ten of them in one run.
Which priority values make sense?
The priority value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and only expresses the relative importance of a URL within your own site — it does not affect your ranking against other sites. In practice most crawlers, including Google, largely ignore it. If you set it at all, keep it consistent; a whole sitemap of 1.0 tells a crawler nothing.
Does changefreq affect crawling?
changefreq is only a hint, and Google has said it does not use it for scheduling crawls; it relies on its own signals and on lastmod instead. Bing treats it as a weak hint at most. It is still validated here because an invalid value is a syntax error, but do not expect it to change how often your pages are crawled.
How do I submit my sitemap to Google?
Add a Sitemap line to your robots.txt and submit the sitemap URL in Google Search Console under Sitemaps. Search Console then reports how many URLs were discovered and any parsing errors. Validating the file here first means you fix formatting problems before Google flags them.
How do hreflang and sitemaps work together?
Instead of adding hreflang tags to every page's HTML, you can declare language and region alternates directly in the sitemap using xhtml:link entries. Every URL in a language set must list all alternates, including itself, and the links must be reciprocal. This validator checks self-reference and reciprocity for hreflang in the sitemap.

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