Online Tool Store
· 6 min read
3 XML Sitemap Generators, Compared Honestly
Manesh Jayawardhana
CIO & Co-founder
You’ve got a list of URLs — maybe pulled from a crawl, an export, or just typed out by hand — and you need a valid sitemap.xml you can drop in your site root and submit to Google Search Console. That’s the whole job: turn URLs into a sitemap with sensible lastmod, changefreq, and priority values, following the sitemaps.org protocol.
It shouldn’t be complicated, but a lot of the tools that show up for “sitemap generator” want to crawl your entire domain instead of just accepting a URL list, cap you at a small number of pages on the free tier, or ask for an account before you can download anything. If you already know your URLs, crawling is the wrong tool for the job.
How to judge a sitemap generator
Does it accept a URL list, or does it force a crawl? If you already have your URLs, a crawler is slower and can miss or mangle pages a simple list wouldn’t.
Is the free tier actually enough URLs? Some tools cap free output at 500 or so pages, which is fine for a small site and useless for a bigger one.
Does your list ever leave your machine? A crawler-based tool has to hit your live site from its servers. A paste-and-generate tool can often do the whole thing client-side.
Can you set changefreq, priority, and lastmod per URL, or only globally? Real control matters if some pages update daily and others are static.
The comparison
| Tool | Best for | Free tier | Watch out |
|---|---|---|---|
| XML-Sitemaps.com | Crawling a live site you don’t have a URL list for | Crawls up to 500 pages free | Caps out fast on larger sites; paid plans needed beyond that |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Deep technical SEO crawls with sitemap export as one feature among many | Free desktop app, crawl limit of 500 URLs | It’s a downloaded desktop crawler, not a paste-and-go web tool |
| SiteGPT XML Sitemap Generator | A quick browser-based sitemap from a crawled site, no signup | Free, no signup required | Built around crawling a domain, not pasting an existing URL list |
Facts checked August 2026; tools change their plans.
XML-Sitemaps.com
This is one of the longest-running free sitemap tools around — point it at a domain and it crawls the site, then generates a sitemap along with an HTML version and a basic validation report. For a site you don’t have a clean URL list for, it saves the trouble of assembling one by hand.
It isn’t built for pasting in URLs you already have — you’re paying for the crawl whether you need it or not — and the free crawl tops out at 500 pages, so anything bigger pushes you toward a paid plan.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog is a serious technical SEO crawler that happens to include XML sitemap generation as one of its export options, alongside broken link checks, redirect chains, and full site audits. If you’re already running it for other SEO work, generating a sitemap is a natural byproduct.
It’s a desktop application you install, not a browser tool, and the free version is limited to crawling 500 URLs per crawl. It’s overkill if a sitemap is the only thing you need.
SiteGPT XML Sitemap Generator
This is a straightforward browser tool: give it a domain, it crawls the site, and hands back a sitemap.xml with configurable priority, lastmod, and changefreq settings, no signup required. For someone who wants a sitemap without installing anything, it’s a fast option.
Like the others, it’s crawl-first. If your URL list is already assembled — say, from a CMS export or a spreadsheet — there’s no way to skip the crawl and just paste your list in.
Sitemap Generator
Sitemap Generator does the opposite: you paste your list of URLs directly, set changefreq, priority, and last-modified date, and it builds a standards-compliant XML sitemap right in your browser. Nothing you paste is uploaded anywhere, and there’s no signup or page cap tied to an account.
The real limitation is the flip side of that design — it doesn’t crawl your site to find URLs for you. If you don’t already have a list, you’ll need to assemble one first, from your CMS, your existing sitemap, or a crawler.
Which one to pick
If you already have a clean list of URLs — from a CMS export, a spreadsheet, or a previous sitemap — use Sitemap Generator; there’s no reason to crawl your own site when you already know what’s on it.
If you don’t have a URL list and need one built from scratch, XML-Sitemaps.com or SiteGPT’s tool will crawl the site for you, with SiteGPT being the faster no-signup option for smaller sites.
If you’re already deep in technical SEO work — broken links, redirects, crawl depth — Screaming Frog’s sitemap export is a reasonable byproduct of a tool you’re using anyway, not a reason to install it on its own.
If your site is large and you’re on a free plan, expect to hit crawl caps with the crawler-based tools before you hit any limit with a paste-based one.
How to do it with Sitemap Generator
- Gather your URLs into a plain list, one per line — from an export, a spreadsheet, or your existing sitemap.
- Open Sitemap Generator and paste the list in.
- Set change frequency, priority, and last-modified date for the URLs that need them.
- Download the finished
sitemap.xmland upload it to your site root.
Browse the full tools directory for more free, browser-based tools. For the full step-by-step, see how to generate a standards-compliant XML sitemap.
You might also need
A sitemap tells search engines what to crawl; a robots.txt file tells them what not to. If you’re setting up a sitemap for the first time, it’s worth checking your crawl rules too — Robots.txt Tester lets you paste your rules and test whether a specific path is actually crawlable before you submit anything to Search Console.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free XML sitemap generator that doesn’t need an account?
Yes. Sitemap Generator and SiteGPT’s tool both work with no signup. Sitemap Generator additionally runs entirely in your browser, so your URL list isn’t sent anywhere.
Do I need to crawl my site to build a sitemap?
Only if you don’t already know your URLs. If you have a list — from your CMS, an export, or an old sitemap — you can skip crawling entirely and paste the list straight into a generator.
How many URLs can a free sitemap generator handle?
It depends on the tool. Crawler-based free tiers like XML-Sitemaps.com and Screaming Frog typically cap out around 500 pages per crawl. Paste-based tools aren’t limited by a crawl budget in the same way, since you control the input list directly.
Final thought
If you already know your URLs, don’t pay a crawler to rediscover them — paste the list and generate the sitemap directly. Save the crawler-based tools for when you genuinely need one built from scratch.