XML Formatter

What is the XML Formatter?

The XML Formatter is a free online tool that takes raw, messy, or minified XML and turns it into clean, properly indented, readable text. It also checks your input on the fly: if the document is not well-formed, it tells you the exact line and column of the first problem instead of just saying "invalid." In one page you can beautify XML for debugging, minify it for production, or simply confirm a payload is well-formed before you ship it.

Well-formedness, explained

XML has strict rules. A document is well-formed when it has exactly one root element, every tag is closed and correctly nested, attribute values are quoted, and special characters such as ampersands and angle brackets are escaped. Unlike HTML, a browser will not quietly fix sloppy XML — a single unclosed tag breaks the whole document. This tool uses the browser's native parser, so a valid result here means your XML will parse anywhere a standards-compliant XML reader is used.

Beautify vs. minify

Beautifying expands the document with line breaks and indentation so the nesting is obvious at a glance — ideal while reading or debugging. Minifying strips the whitespace between tags to make the file as small as possible — ideal for storage, transfer, or embedding in a string. The tool shows the byte size before and after minifying so you can see exactly how much you saved.

How to use it

1. Paste or type your XML into the input box — for example a SOAP response, an RSS feed, a sitemap, or an SVG file.
2. The tool checks it as you type. If it is well-formed, the result appears immediately; if not, you get a message pointing to the offending line.
3. Click Beautify to indent it, or Minify to compress it.
4. Pick your indentation — 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tabs — to match your project.
5. Click Copy to grab the result. Done — no account, no upload, no waiting.

The method behind it

The tool parses your input with the browser's native DOMParser into a real document tree, then walks that tree and re-serializes it with consistent indentation. Because parsing relies on the same XML engine the browser uses everywhere, well-formedness checking is exact rather than a guess: if the parser reports an error, the tool reads the line and column and shows them to you. Beautifying joins the serialized nodes with newlines and indentation; minifying joins them with nothing, collapsing the document to its smallest equivalent form while preserving any XML declaration at the top.

Examples

Beautify a one-line element

Input: <note><to>Ada</to><from>Grace</from></note>

Output:

<note>
  <to>Ada</to>
  <from>Grace</from>
</note>

Minify a config for production

Input: a pretty-printed config with lots of indentation. Output: a single compact line with the whitespace between tags removed, ready to drop into an environment variable.

Catch a tag mismatch

Input: <a><b></a>. Output: an error reporting an opening and ending tag mismatch at the exact line and column, so you know precisely what to fix.

Common use cases

• API and SOAP debugging — read a raw response without squinting at one long line.
• Feeds and sitemaps — clean up RSS or Atom feeds and sitemap.xml before publishing.
• SVG and config files — beautify a hand-edited SVG or app config to spot the structure.
• Validating payloads — confirm a request body is well-formed before sending it.
• Shrinking for transfer — minify large XML to cut payload size for storage or network calls.

Why use this one

Most options make you jump between a separate formatter, validator, and minifier. This tool does all three in one place, with one-click copy and indentation control. More importantly, everything runs entirely in your browser, so your XML never touches a server — which matters because real documents often carry tokens, credentials, or customer data. It is fast (no round-trip to a server), works on mobile, and needs no signup. Working with other formats too? Use the JSON Formatter, the HTML Formatter, or compare two versions with the Text Diff Checker.

Frequently asked questions