Sitemap URL Extractor – get every URL of a website, with lastmod

Extract all URLs listed in a website's sitemaps in seconds. Just enter a domain: the Actor finds the sitemaps on its own (robots.txt + common locations), follows nested sitemap indexes, reads .xml, .xml.gz and .txt sitemaps and returns a clean list with lastmod, changefreq and priority.

Built for SEO audits, content inventories, competitor monitoring, site migrations and feeding AI agents / RAG pipelines with the full list of pages of a site.

Why this Actor

• ⚡ Fast and cheap – sitemaps only, no page downloads. Thousands of URLs in a few seconds.
• 🔎 Automatic discovery – Sitemap: lines in robots.txt, then /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml, /sitemap.txt…
• 🧩 Handles real-world sitemaps – nested indexes (up to 5 levels), gzip, plain-text sitemaps, relative links, duplicates removed.
• 🗓️ "Modified after" filter – get only the pages changed since a date. Perfect to see what a competitor published or updated recently.
• 🎯 Include / exclude regex – e.g. keep only /blog/, drop /tag/|/author/.
• 🌐 Many sites in one run – with a global limit and an optional per-site limit.
• 📋 Per-site report – a SUMMARY record tells you, for every site, how many sitemaps and URLs were found, or why nothing was found (no_sitemap, blocked, unreachable).
• 🩺 Lastmod quality check – the report rates each site's dates (good, partial, missing, suspicious) and warns you when a site uses the same fake date for every page, so you know when the date filter can be trusted.
• ✅ Reliable – no fragile page parsing: sitemaps follow a stable standard.

How to use

1. Add one or more domains (example.com) or sitemap URLs (https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml).
2. Optionally set limits and filters.
3. Click Start and download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel or via API.

Input example

{
  "startUrls": [{ "url": "https://www.example.com" }],
  "maxUrls": 10000,
  "maxUrlsPerSite": 5000,
  "includePattern": "/blog/",
  "modifiedAfter": "2026-09-01"
}

Output example

{
  "url": "https://www.example.com/blog/new-product-launch",
  "lastmod": "2026-09-18T09:12:00+00:00",
  "changefreq": "weekly",
  "priority": 0.8,
  "sitemapUrl": "https://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml",
  "domain": "www.example.com",
  "extractedAt": "2026-09-27T18:00:00+00:00"
}

Field	Description
url	Page URL as listed in the sitemap
lastmod	Last modification date declared by the site (if present)
changefreq	Declared change frequency (if present)
priority	Declared priority 0.0–1.0 (if present)
sitemapUrl	The sitemap file where the URL was found
domain	Website domain
extractedAt	Extraction timestamp (UTC)

Use with AI agents

This Actor is a good first step for agents that need to know which pages a website has before reading them:

• Call it with a domain and get the full list of URLs in one structured dataset (JSON).
• Use modifiedAfter to fetch only pages changed since the agent's last visit.
• Use includePattern to focus on a section (e.g. /docs/ or /blog/).
• Every result has the same stable fields, so it is easy to pass to a scraper, a RAG pipeline or an LLM.

Works with the Apify API, Apify MCP server, Make, Zapier, n8n and LangChain integrations.

Pricing

Pay only for results: $1.00 per 1,000 URLs. No subscription. A run that returns 10,000 URLs costs about $10. Set Maximum cost per run in Run options to cap your spend.

FAQ

The site has no sitemap. What happens? The run ends normally and the SUMMARY record shows no_sitemap for that site. You are only charged for URLs actually returned.

Some sites return "blocked". A few websites refuse automated access even to their sitemap. This Actor respects that and never tries to bypass protections: it moves on to the next site and reports blocked.

Does it download the pages? No. It only reads robots.txt and sitemap files, which websites publish specifically for automated tools. That is why it is fast, cheap and gentle on websites.

The date filter returns nothing (or everything) for a site. Why? The filter relies on the <lastmod> dates the site declares. Some sites don't declare them, or put the same date on every page. Check lastmodQuality in the SUMMARY record: missing or suspicious means the site's dates can't be trusted. Enable "Keep URLs without lastmod" to not lose undated pages.

I need the latest articles, not all URLs. Use our RSS Feed Finder & Reader: it auto-discovers a site's RSS/Atom/JSON feeds and returns the newest articles with dates and summaries.

How do I check that every sitemap URL still works? Copy the Dataset ID of this run into our Bulk URL Status & Redirect Checker: it returns the status code, redirect chain and final URL of every URL, and flags 404s, redirect loops and temporary redirects.

How do I audit titles, meta descriptions and H1 of every page? Pass the Dataset ID of this run to our Bulk On-Page SEO Checker: it audits every URL and flags missing or too long titles and descriptions, missing H1, noindex, canonical problems and duplicate titles.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Create a Task with your input and add a schedule (for example weekly with "Modified after" = last week) to monitor new and updated pages.

Is it legal? Sitemaps are public files intended for crawlers, and the Actor respects robots.txt for any location it guesses. You are responsible for how you use the data.

Related Actors by kernfetch

• Bulk URL Status & Redirect Checker – status codes, redirect chains and final URLs for thousands of URLs.
• Bulk On-Page SEO Checker – titles, meta descriptions, H1, canonical, noindex, Open Graph and schema.org for thousands of pages, with ready-made SEO issues.
• RSS Feed Finder & Reader – discover the RSS, Atom and JSON feeds of any site and get the latest articles.

Support

Found a site that doesn't work as expected? Open an issue on the Issues tab with the URL: fixes are usually shipped within days.