# Sitemap Extractor: Website → All URLs (sitemap.xml parser) (`boxbox10/sitemap-extractor`) Actor

Give it a website. Get every URL from its sitemap — loc, lastmod, changefreq, priority — as one clean record per URL. Auto-discovers sitemap.xml, robots.txt Sitemap: directives, and nested sitemap indexes. Perfect for SEO audits, crawl seeding, and URL discovery.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/boxbox10/sitemap-extractor.md
- **Developed by:** [Marvin Eguilos](https://apify.com/boxbox10) (community)
- **Categories:** AI, Developer tools, Automation
- **Features:** Limited permissions
- **Stats:** 64 total users, 35 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

Pay per usage

This Actor is paid per platform usage. The Actor is free to use, and you only pay for the Apify platform usage, which gets cheaper the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-usage

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Sitemap Extractor — Website → All URLs (sitemap.xml parser)

**Give it a website. Get back every URL from its sitemap.** For each site the Actor auto-discovers the sitemap, parses it, follows nested sitemap indexes, and returns one clean record per URL — `sourceSite`, `url`, `lastmod`, `changefreq`, `priority`. Perfect for SEO audits, seeding a crawler, and fast URL discovery across an entire domain.

> Point it at a domain. Walk away with the site's full URL inventory — no scraping, no rendering, no guesswork.

***

### ✨ What it does

- **Auto-discovers the sitemap** — tries `/sitemap.xml`, reads `Sitemap:` directives from `robots.txt`, and uses direct sitemap URLs if you pass them.
- **Handles sitemap indexes** — recurses into nested `<sitemapindex>` files (and their children) to gather every child sitemap's URLs.
- **One record per URL** — each `<url><loc>` entry becomes one dataset item with its `lastmod`, `changefreq`, and `priority` when present.
- **Robust by design** — a site with no sitemap or a fetch error never kills the run: it's routed to a separate `failures` dataset and **never charged**.
- **Safe by default** — a `maxUrls` cap bounds run size; recursion depth is capped and loops are de-duplicated so a malformed index can't run away.
- **Fast & lightweight** — pure HTTP + a streaming XML parser (`fast-xml-parser`). No browser, no rendering.

***

### 🎯 Use cases

| You want to… | This Actor gives you… |
|---|---|
| **Run an SEO audit** | Every indexed URL with `lastmod` / `changefreq` / `priority` for coverage & freshness checks. |
| **Seed a crawler / scraper** | A ready-made URL frontier for your own extraction pipeline — no link discovery needed. |
| **Discover a site's structure** | The full URL inventory of a domain, straight from its own sitemap. |
| **Monitor content changes** | `lastmod` timestamps to detect new or updated pages between runs. |
| **Feed a RAG / AI pipeline** | A clean list of canonical page URLs to fetch and embed downstream. |

***

### 📥 Input

| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `urls` | string\[] | — **(required)** | One or more website URLs (or direct `sitemap.xml` URLs). Each discovered URL is one result. |
| `maxUrls` | integer | `5000` | Safety cap on how many discovered URLs are emitted per run (across all sites). |
| `includeLastmod` | boolean | `true` | Include `lastmod`, `changefreq`, and `priority` fields in each result when present. |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.apify.com",
    "https://example.com"
  ],
  "maxUrls": 5000,
  "includeLastmod": true
}
```

***

### 📤 Output

One dataset item per discovered URL:

```json
{
  "sourceSite": "https://www.apify.com/",
  "url": "https://apify.com/store",
  "lastmod": "2024-01-15",
  "changefreq": "daily",
  "priority": "0.8"
}
```

Sites that fail (no sitemap / fetch error) go to a separate `failures` dataset and are **never charged**:

```json
{
  "sourceSite": "https://no-sitemap-here.example/",
  "error": "No usable sitemap found (tried: https://no-sitemap-here.example/sitemap.xml)",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-07-19T02:17:19.831Z"
}
```

***

### 🔌 Call it from code (Apify API)

```bash
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~sitemap-extractor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls":["https://www.apify.com"]}'
```

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const { defaultDatasetId } = await client
    .actor('YOUR_USERNAME/sitemap-extractor')
    .call({ urls: ['https://www.apify.com'] });
const { items } = await client.dataset(defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`${items.length} URLs discovered`);
```

***

### 💸 Pricing (Pay-Per-Event)

| Event | Price |
|---|---|
| Actor start | **$0.05** per run |
| URL found | **$0.0005** per discovered URL |

- **You only pay for URLs actually discovered** — sites with no sitemap or a fetch error are never charged.
- Per-URL pricing is deliberately low because a single sitemap can yield thousands of URLs.
- **🎁 Free tier:** free-plan users' platform usage is covered by Apify, so you can try it and run small jobs at **no cost** before scaling up.

***

### ⚖️ Acceptable use

This is a general-purpose sitemap-parsing tool: **you supply the URLs and are responsible for having the right to crawl and use the content you submit.** It only reads the public `robots.txt` and sitemap files each site voluntarily publishes. It does not render pages, does not target any single platform's private API, and does not harvest personal data. Please use responsibly and comply with each site's terms of service and applicable law.

***

### 🧱 Under the hood

Node.js · [got-scraping](https://github.com/apify/got-scraping) · [fast-xml-parser](https://github.com/NaturalIntelligence/fast-xml-parser) · Apify SDK. Stateless — nothing is stored between runs.

# Actor input Schema

## `urls` (type: `array`):

One or more website URLs (or direct sitemap.xml URLs). For each site the Actor discovers its sitemap and emits every URL it contains. Each discovered URL is one billable result.

## `maxUrls` (type: `integer`):

Safety cap on how many discovered URLs are emitted in a single run (across all sites).

## `includeLastmod` (type: `boolean`):

Include the optional sitemap fields (lastmod, changefreq, priority) in each result when present.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.apify.com"
  ],
  "maxUrls": 5000,
  "includeLastmod": true
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "urls": [
        "https://www.apify.com",
        "https://example.com"
    ]
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("boxbox10/sitemap-extractor").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "urls": [
        "https://www.apify.com",
        "https://example.com",
    ] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("boxbox10/sitemap-extractor").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.apify.com",
    "https://example.com"
  ]
}' |
apify call boxbox10/sitemap-extractor --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,boxbox10/sitemap-extractor"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/4PwuQ9YmC9EkzF3ld/builds/F7ojNeaIaaXIhLaww/openapi.json