Is XML or CSV better for sitemap data?

XML is the canonical format — search engines like Google and Bing only consume sitemaps as XML, following the sitemaps.org protocol. CSV is for downstream analysis: dropping URLs into a spreadsheet, BigQuery table, n8n flow, or content audit. The two formats serve different audiences: XML is for crawlers, CSV is for humans and analytics. Convert XML → CSV when you want to inspect, filter, diff or pipe URLs into another tool. Convert CSV → XML when you're rebuilding a sitemap from a curated URL list (e.g. after pruning redirects or noindex pages) — xmlsitemapmaker.com's 'Clean XML' export does exactly that, emitting a valid urlset from any of our supported inputs.