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XML Sitemap Generator — Create a sitemap.xml

Create an XML sitemap for search engines in a few clicks. Enter your domain and this free sitemap generator crawls your website, respects robots.txt, skips noindex pages, follows canonicals and redirects, and builds a ready-to-submit sitemap.xml — plus an HTML sitemap and a plain URL list. It runs on our server; nothing is stored.

Only crawl websites you own or are authorised to crawl. The generator fetches pages from the domain you enter, respecting its robots.txt.

Wildcards: * matches any characters. Matched against the path and query, e.g. /cart/* or *?ref=.

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. It does not guarantee indexing, but it helps crawlers find pages — especially on large sites or pages that are poorly linked internally.

Note: this tool builds an XML sitemap for search engines (a sitemap.xml file), not a visual sitemap or site-structure diagram like the flowcharts made in Figma, Canva or Lucidchart. If you are planning a site's page hierarchy visually, this is not the right tool.

How to create a sitemap.xml

Enter your start URL, set the maximum number of pages (up to 200) and the crawl depth, then start the crawl. The generator fetches your pages in small batches with a progress bar you can stop at any time — the pages found so far are kept. It reads your robots.txt and skips disallowed paths, drops noindex pages, follows redirects to their final address, and when a page canonicalises to another URL it keeps only the canonical one. Broken pages and 404s are left out.

When the crawl finishes you get three outputs: the sitemap.xml itself, an HTML sitemap and a plain text URL list — each copyable and downloadable. Every row in the results table can be deselected, and its priority and changefreq overridden individually, before you export.

XML sitemap and HTML sitemap

The XML sitemap is for search engines; an HTML sitemap is a plain page of links for human visitors that also helps crawlers reach deeper pages. This generator produces both from the same crawl, so you can submit the sitemap.xml to search engines and paste the HTML sitemap into your site.

Priority, changefreq and lastmod

priority (0.0–1.0) only expresses the relative importance of a URL within your own site and is largely ignored by Google; here it defaults to the click depth (homepage 1.0, then lower) and stays overridable per URL. changefreq is a weak hint at most; set it globally or per URL. lastmod is read from the real content in this order — JSON-LD dateModified (or datePublished), an article:modified_time meta tag, og:updated_time, then the Last-Modified header — and the results table shows which source each date came from. If none is available it is left out. It is never set to today's date for every page, because a sitemap where every lastmod is identical looks unreliable and gets ignored — most other generators do exactly that; we deliberately do not.

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

Frequently asked questions

What is an XML sitemap and what is it for?
An XML sitemap is a file listing your site's URLs so search engines can discover and crawl them, together with optional hints like the last modification date. It does not force indexing, but it helps search engines find pages efficiently — valuable for large sites, new sites with few backlinks, and pages that are not well linked internally.
Where do I put the sitemap.xml?
Upload it to the root of your domain so it is reachable at https://example.com/sitemap.xml. It can technically live elsewhere, but the root is the convention and it can then cover all URLs on the host. After uploading, reference it from your robots.txt with a Sitemap line and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
How do I submit my sitemap to Google and Bing?
In Google Search Console open Sitemaps, enter the sitemap URL and submit; Search Console then reports discovered URLs and any errors. In Bing Webmaster Tools use Sitemaps to submit the same URL. Adding a Sitemap line to robots.txt also lets crawlers find it on their own, without any account.
What do priority and changefreq really mean?
priority (0.0–1.0) is only a relative hint about importance within your own site; it does not affect ranking against other sites and Google largely ignores it. changefreq suggests how often a page changes, but Google has said it does not use it for crawl scheduling and relies on its own signals and lastmod instead. Keep both consistent, but do not expect them to change crawling.
Why should lastmod be a real date?
Google only trusts lastmod when it reflects the actual last content change and is in a valid W3C date format. If every URL shows the same date — for example the last deploy time — the signal looks automated and unreliable, and Google ignores it. That is why this generator derives lastmod from the real content, trying JSON-LD dateModified or datePublished, then article:modified_time, then og:updated_time, then the Last-Modified header, and leaves it out when none is available. Many hosts (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare) send no Last-Modified header, so most generators just stamp today's date — we read the content instead and show you the source.
What if my site has more than 200 pages?
The crawl is capped at 200 pages to stay fast and polite. A single sitemap may hold up to 50,000 URLs, so for larger sites you split the URLs across several sitemap files and list those files in a sitemap index (sitemap_index.xml). You can run the generator on different sections and combine the results, or use a server-side export from your CMS for very large sites.
Do I also need an HTML sitemap?
It is optional. An XML sitemap is for search engines; an HTML sitemap is a page of links for human visitors that also gives crawlers extra paths to deeper pages. Small sites rarely need one, but on larger sites it can help both usability and discovery. This tool generates both from the same crawl, so adding one costs nothing extra.
Why are some pages missing from my sitemap?
A page is left out if it is blocked by robots.txt, carries a noindex tag, canonicalises to a different URL (only the canonical is kept), returns a 404 or error, sits deeper than your maximum depth, matches an exclusion pattern, or falls beyond the 200-page limit. The results table shows exactly which URLs were collected so you can spot gaps.
What is the difference between an XML sitemap and a visual sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file (sitemap.xml) that lists URLs for search engines. A visual sitemap is a diagram of a site's page hierarchy used for planning, made in tools like Figma, Lucidchart or Octopus. They share a name but serve different purposes — this generator produces the XML file for search engines, not a planning diagram.

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