Guide

Best sitemap generators in 2026: XML, visual and HTML

A plain comparison of real XML, visual and WordPress sitemap generators: what each one is for, who it suits, and where to check current pricing.

By Sunny Patel · Updated 2026-09-20

A sitemap generator is a tool that produces a list or a diagram of a website's pages, either as an XML file for search engines or as a visual layout for people. The tools below cover both jobs, plus the WordPress plugins that generate a sitemap as a side effect of their wider SEO features. Each entry states plainly what the tool is for and who it suits. None of them are rated against each other, and no pricing is stated beyond what each vendor publishes on its own site.

XML sitemap generators

An XML sitemap lists a site's URLs in a format search engines can parse directly. It does not describe the site's navigation or hierarchy the way a visual sitemap does. It exists purely to hand a crawler a list of pages to check.

XML-sitemaps.com

XML-sitemaps.com is a browser-based crawler that generates an XML sitemap from any URL you submit. It also produces an HTML sitemap and a plain-text list from the same crawl. It suits a site owner who needs a one-off sitemap file without installing anything. A free tier covers smaller sites with a page limit; larger sites and recurring generation sit behind paid plans. See the vendor's own site for current page limits and pricing, since both have changed over the tool's history.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (XML export)

Screaming Frog is a desktop crawler built for technical SEO audits. Generating an XML sitemap is one export option among many, not its primary purpose. It crawls a site the way a search bot does, following links and reporting status codes, redirects, and metadata along the way, then lets you export the crawled URLs as an XML sitemap with control over which URLs to include. It suits anyone who already runs Screaming Frog for audits and wants a sitemap built from the same crawl data, with no separate tool needed. The free version caps the crawl at 500 URLs; a paid licence removes that cap and unlocks the rest of the audit feature set. Check Screaming Frog's own site for the current licence price.

Google's own sitemap guidance

Google Search Central is not a generator, so it is not counted among the numbered tools in this guide or its ItemList. It is the authority worth checking before picking one, since it publishes the exact protocol a sitemap file needs to follow and the cases where Google recommends submitting one at all. Any generator's output is only as useful as its compliance with that specification, so validating a generated file against Google's documentation is worth doing once regardless of which tool produced it.

WordPress sitemap plugins

A WordPress site rarely needs a standalone sitemap generator, because the two most widely used SEO plugins build and maintain one automatically as part of a broader feature set.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO generates an XML sitemap automatically once activated, updating it as pages are published, unpublished or changed. Sitemap generation sits inside a much larger plugin covering on-page SEO, readability checks and schema output. The free version already includes the sitemap feature; the premium tier adds redirect management and additional content analysis unrelated to the sitemap itself. See Yoast's own site for current premium pricing.

Rank Math

Rank Math covers the same ground as Yoast: an automatically maintained XML sitemap bundled inside a full SEO plugin, with a free tier and a paid Pro tier that adds features outside the sitemap itself, such as additional schema types and analytics integrations. The choice between Yoast and Rank Math for sitemap purposes alone rarely matters, since both keep the file current without manual regeneration. The rest of each plugin's feature set is a more useful basis for choosing between them.

Visual sitemap planning tools

These tools build a diagram of a site's structure from a plan you create, which suits a site that has not launched yet or a redesign still being worked out on a whiteboard. None of the three below crawl a live site.

Octopus.do

Octopus.do is a drag-and-drop visual sitemap builder aimed at planning a new site's structure or restructuring an existing one before development starts. Pages, hierarchy and notes are added by hand; nothing here is pulled from a live crawl. It suits designers, IA consultants and marketing teams mapping out a site before a build begins. A free plan exists alongside paid tiers; check Octopus.do's own pricing page for current limits.

Rarchy

Rarchy is another visual sitemap and information architecture tool built for planning, not crawling. It supports collaborative editing of a proposed site structure, which suits teams working through a redesign together before anything goes live. Like Octopus.do, it builds its diagram from a manually created plan, not from an existing site's link graph. See Rarchy's own site for current plans and pricing.

GlooMaps

GlooMaps is another drag-and-drop visual sitemap builder for planning a site's structure before or during a redesign, in the same category as Octopus.do and Rarchy, not a crawler. Pages and hierarchy are added by hand from a plan, not pulled from a live site. See GlooMaps' own site for its current free trial terms and paid pricing.

sitemap.digital: a visual sitemap from a live crawl

Disclosure: sitemap.digital is the tool this guide is published on, so read this entry with that in mind. Unlike the three planning tools above, it builds its diagram by crawling a live site, not from a plan typed in by hand, and renders the result as an interactive tree, flow diagram or list built from the actual link graph the crawl finds. Alongside the visual sitemap it flags orphan pages, pages more than four hops deep, and broken internal links from the same crawl data, and generates an XML sitemap and an llms.txt file as fix outputs. A scan is free with no signup for up to 20 pages, 50 pages with a free email unlock, and a site with a usable sitemap listing 150 pages or fewer is crawled to completion instead of stopping at a cap; a site with no sitemap, crawled by following links, stays at the 20 or 50 page cap. It suits anyone who wants a real diagram of what a site's structure actually is right now, alongside the technical issues sitting inside that structure. The diagram reflects the site as it exists today, not a plan for later. How well the pages behind that structure read to an AI crawler is a separate check covered in the AI crawlability score guide.

Which one to use

Pick by job, not by category. If you run WordPress and just need an XML sitemap kept current, Yoast or Rank Math already does that without any extra step. If you already run Screaming Frog for technical audits, exporting a sitemap from the same crawl saves running a second tool for a small extra task. If you need a one-off XML file for a site outside WordPress, XML-sitemaps.com covers that directly. If you are planning a site that has not launched yet, Octopus.do, Rarchy or GlooMaps fit that job because all three work from a plan and need no live site to crawl. If you want to see what an existing site's structure actually looks like, including the orphan pages and broken links a plan-based tool cannot show you because they only exist once a site goes live, sitemap.digital crawls for that diagram and pairs it with a free structural check of the same crawl.

A sitemap on its own does not guarantee every page in it gets found. A page can sit inside a submitted XML sitemap and still have zero internal links pointing to it, which is exactly the failure the orphan pages guide covers. Whichever generator you use, treat the sitemap as one input into a wider crawl and link check rather than the whole job.

For a fuller technical read on a site than any sitemap file alone can give you, including crawl budget, structure and AI readiness together, the full site audit covers that ground in one report.

Frequently asked questions