The short version
A sitemap URL extractor reads a site's XML sitemaps, follows any sitemap index files to their children, and returns the full list of URLs they declare. It is the fastest way to see a site's own claimed page inventory, including pages you may have forgotten are published.
Why a flat list is more useful than it looks
A sitemap is a site's own statement about which pages matter. Pulling that into a plain list makes several problems visible in seconds that are otherwise invisible.
Count first. If the number is much larger than you expected, something is publishing pages you did not intend: old content, tag archives, paginated variants, or parameter URLs. If it is much smaller, something is filtering pages out, usually a plugin setting or a stray noindex tag.
Then scan the paths. Forgotten sections show up immediately in a flat list in a way they never do while clicking around a site. A folder of pages from a service you stopped offering, a staging area that was never removed, an old campaign landing page still being crawled.
Auditing your own site with it
Three checks worth running on your own list, in order of how often they find something.
Cross-reference against your internal links. Any URL in the sitemap that nothing on your site links to is an orphan. It is in your sitemap, so you are asking search engines to index it, while your own site treats it as unimportant. That contradiction is a real signal problem, and it was the exact issue on this site until recently, with over two hundred pages reachable only through the sitemap.
Look for near-duplicates. Two URLs whose paths differ only slightly, or the same article at two prefixes, means two pages competing for one keyword. That is cannibalisation, and it is common on sites that have been restructured.
Spot-check that the URLs resolve. A sitemap full of pages that redirect or 404 wastes crawl budget and undermines the sitemap as a signal.
- Orphans: in the sitemap, but nothing links to them
- Near-duplicates: two URLs for effectively one page
- Dead entries: listed URLs that redirect or return 404
- Surprises: sections you forgot were published
Looking at a competitor's list
The same list from a competitor tells you their content strategy faster than reading their site would.
The path structure gives away their clusters. A site with sixty URLs under /integrations/ and four under /blog/ has made a clear decision about where it expects traffic to come from. Counting each folder is a rough map of where they have invested.
It also reveals scale honestly. A competitor whose marketing implies a large operation, with a sitemap of eleven pages, is smaller than they look. One with several hundred pages of documentation has invested somewhere you may not have noticed.
This is all public information a site publishes deliberately for crawlers. There is nothing clever or underhand about reading it.
Where extraction gets incomplete
A few honest limits. This tool follows one level of sitemap index children and reads up to ten sitemaps, which covers almost every normal site and will truncate on very large ones.
It reports only what the sitemaps declare. Pages that exist and are not in any sitemap will not appear, so this is an inventory of intent rather than a complete crawl.
And a sitemap can be stale. Nothing forces a site to keep one current, so a URL appearing here is a claim rather than a guarantee. If accuracy matters, check that the ones you care about actually resolve.
Questions about this tool
How many URLs can it extract?+
Up to 5,000, across as many as ten sitemaps including index children. Larger sites will be truncated, and the result says so.
Does it find sitemaps that are not at the usual location?+
Yes. It reads the Sitemap directives in robots.txt as well as checking the conventional paths, then follows any sitemap index files it finds.
Are these all the pages on the site?+
No, only the ones its sitemaps declare. A page that exists but is not listed will not appear, which makes this an inventory of what the site claims matters rather than a full crawl.
Is it alright to run this on a competitor's site?+
A sitemap is published deliberately so crawlers can read it, and this makes a handful of ordinary requests for public files. It is no different to viewing them in a browser.
What is an orphan page and why does it matter?+
A page listed in the sitemap that nothing on the site links to. You are asking search engines to index it while your own site treats it as unimportant, and that contradiction usually shows up as poor rankings.