Free XML Sitemap Generator
Enter your URL and get a clean XML sitemap built from a real crawl of your site — ready to submit to Google Search Console. No signup required. Download in seconds.
What is an XML sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages on your website you want search engines to index. Each entry holds the page’s URL and, optionally, when it was last modified.
A sitemap points search engines straight to the pages that matter, so they can crawl and index them. Google also uses sitemaps as a canonicalization signal — a hint about which version of a page to show in search.
Why are sitemaps important?
Sitemaps help search engines discover the pages on your site. If Google cannot find a page, it cannot index it — and you cannot rank. A sitemap is best practice for every website, and it matters most when:
Your site is large
On big sites it is easy for search engines to miss new or recently updated pages. A sitemap gives them a complete list to work from.
Your site is new or has few backlinks
Search engines find pages by following links. A brand-new site with few external links is hard to discover, so a sitemap helps you get found faster.
Your internal linking is weak
Pages that are not linked from anywhere else on your site can go unnoticed. A sitemap surfaces these orphan pages to search engines.
You have a lot of media or archived content
Sitemaps can point search engines to content that is otherwise hard to crawl, and act as a canonicalization signal for which pages to prioritize.
How to add a sitemap to your website
Generate your sitemap
First check whether you already have one at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. If you do not have one, generate it with this tool: enter your domain and download the XML file we build from the pages Ahrefs has already crawled for your site.
Upload it to your site root
Name the file sitemap.xml and upload it to the root folder of your site, so it is reachable at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
Reference it in robots.txt
Open the robots.txt file in your root directory and add a line pointing to your sitemap: Sitemap: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Add one line per sitemap if you have more than one.
How to submit a sitemap to Google
Once your sitemap is live, tell Google about it. You only need to do this once.
Find your sitemap URL
Confirm where your sitemap lives, usually yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Open it in a browser to make sure it loads.
Open the Sitemaps report in Search Console
In Google Search Console, select your property and go to Indexing → Sitemaps.
Paste the location and submit
Enter your sitemap URL and click Submit. Google will fetch it and revisit it periodically to pick up new pages, so you do not need to resubmit each time you publish.
Watch for errors
Search Console reports most sitemap issues, such as a submitted URL being blocked by robots.txt. Adding your sitemap to robots.txt as well helps other search engines find it.
Powered by the Ahrefs crawler
Most free sitemap tools run a slow live crawl that stalls after a few hundred URLs. We build your sitemap from pages Ahrefs has already crawled, so it returns in seconds and scales to large sites.
pages crawled every 24 hours by the Ahrefs crawler, one of the most active web crawlers after Google.
URLs per sitemap on the free tool — double the 500-URL cap most free generators stop at.
to generate, because we read an existing index instead of crawling your site live while you wait.
What’s in your free sitemap
Enter a URL and you get a complete, submit-ready package. Here is what it includes:
A valid XML sitemap. Built to the sitemaps.org 0.9 spec Google uses, with absolute URLs in the loc tag, ready to upload and submit.
Last-modified dates where detectable. We add a lastmod date from the last time each page was crawled, so search engines know what to revisit.
A plain-text URL list. The same URLs as a simple text file — handy for spot checks, robots.txt or other tools.
Asset and query URLs filtered out. Images, scripts, feeds and tracking-parameter URLs are skipped, so your sitemap lists real pages, not clutter Google should ignore.
A count of pages we excluded. See how many crawled URLs were left out — your starting point for a deeper clean-up in Site Audit.
Want to fix what the sitemap reveals?
A sitemap lists your pages. Site Audit tells you which of them have problems and why search engines might ignore them.
Full technical audit
Crawl your whole site on demand and surface 170+ SEO and on-page issues across speed, HTML, links and more.
Indexability issues
Find pages blocked by noindex, robots.txt or canonical tags that are quietly kept out of Google.
Internal link map
Spot orphan pages and weak internal linking, then fix the structure so crawlers reach every page.
Audit your website 24/7
Catch critical SEO issues early, before they impact performance and cost you visibility.
Site Audit is included with Ahrefs Free ↗
Questions? We have answers
What is an XML sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages on your website you want search engines to index. Each entry contains the page’s URL and, optionally, a last-modified date. Search engines read it to discover and prioritize pages for crawling.Do I need a sitemap?
A sitemap is best practice for every site. It is most valuable when your site is large, new, has pages that are not well linked internally, or has a lot of media or content that is hard to discover by crawling links alone. Even small sites benefit, since a sitemap helps Google find pages and acts as a canonicalization signal.How do I submit my sitemap to Google?
Upload the XML file to the root of your site, usually at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, then open Google Search Console, go to the Sitemaps report, enter the sitemap URL and click Submit. You only need to do this once; Google revisits it periodically. You can also reference it in robots.txt with a line reading Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.What is the URL limit for a sitemap?
A single sitemap can list up to 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 50MB uncompressed, so the 1,000 URLs from this free tool always fit comfortably in one file. If your full site is bigger than that, you can split it across multiple sitemaps tied together with a sitemap index file.What file formats do I get?
You get a valid XML sitemap to submit to search engines, plus a plain-text list of the same URLs for quick reference.Why are some of my pages missing from the sitemap?
We deliberately leave out URLs that do not belong in a sitemap: redirects and error pages, non-HTML assets like images and scripts, and URLs with tracking parameters. We also build from pages Ahrefs has crawled, so a brand-new page may not appear until it has been discovered. The excluded count shows how many URLs were left out.How fresh is the data?
Your sitemap is built from the pages Ahrefs has already crawled for your site, not a slow live crawl that runs while you wait. That is what lets it return in seconds and handle large sites instead of stopping at a few hundred URLs. The Ahrefs crawler processes over 8 billion pages every 24 hours, so coverage is wide, but a page added in the last day or two may not appear until it has been discovered. Each entry carries a last-modified date from its most recent crawl, and you can regenerate any time to pick up newly crawled pages.How is this different from Site Audit?
This tool generates a sitemap: a clean list of your URLs to hand to Google. Site Audit crawls your whole site and tells you what is wrong with those pages: broken links, indexability problems, slow pages, orphan pages and 170+ other issues. Use the sitemap to get found; use Site Audit to get fixed.Is this tool really free?
Yes — free and no signup. Generate and download your sitemap in seconds. The full technical crawl, issue tracking and scheduled re-crawls live in Ahrefs Site Audit.