Free Online XML Formatter

The XML remains a pillar of the web and information systems: RSS feeds, server configurations, service exchanges, sitemaps, business documents. A well-formed XML is readable by every machine, but not necessarily by humans: that is where the XML formatter from Volade, which pretty-prints, minifies, and validates your document without it ever leaving your browser.

Pretty-printing: why format XML?

A machine-generated document often arrives on a single line, impossible to read. The pretty-printing reorganizes tags onto separate lines and indents children under their parent, making the structure visible at a glance. Formatting is the first reflex before reviewing a configuration file, comparing two versions of a feed, or fixing a syntax error.

Indentation: 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tab

There is no official XML indentation: each team picks its style. The formatter offers the three most common conventions — 2 spaces (compact, the web project standard), 4 spaces (more airy, readable on wide screens) and the tab (preferred by some code editors). The choice applies in real time and is remembered for your next visit.

Minifying XML: lighter without losing anything

The minification is the opposite operation: it removes the indentation spaces, tabs, and line breaks that served only humans. The parser sees no difference — only significant spaces inside text elements are kept. The result: a lighter file to transmit, ideal for SOAP APIs, feeds and configuration files deployed in bulk.

Well-formed vs valid: two distinct notions

A well-formed document follows XML's basic grammar: a single root, correctly paired tags, escaped attributes. A valid document additionally follows a schema — DTD, XSD, or RELAX NG — describing the allowed vocabulary. The Volade formatter checks well-formedness and reports the first error with its line and column, which covers the vast majority of cases: most XML errors are syntax errors.

Comments, CDATA, and declarations

The comments (<!-- ... -->) are kept when formatting, or stripped in one go when preparing a machine-to-machine payload. The CDATA sections let you embed raw text (JavaScript, CSS, embedded XML) without escaping: the formatter restores them unchanged. The XML declaration (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>) and the DOCTYPE are preserved at the top of the document.

Document tree and depth

The Tree mode offers an alternative view: every element expanded with its attributes and children, like in a file explorer. It is the fastest way to grasp an unknown document's structure, spot repeated tag loops, or count an element's occurrences. The stats under the editor — elements, attributes, depth, lines, characters — complete this reading.

When to format your XML?

In practice: after a database export, before committing a Maven configuration, Ant or pom.xml, when reading a sitemap.xml or an RSS/Atom feed, when an API returns compact JSON converted to XML… In short, wherever XML travels between a machine and a developer. For the other family of formats, Volade's JSON formatter applies the same philosophy to JSON documents.

A free, private tool that works everywhere

The formatter runs on desktop and mobile alike, with no installation or sign-up. The document you paste never leaves your browser : formatting is done locally, and the content is never sent to a server. To complete your text workflow, Volade's character counter measures your content, and the text comparator compares two versions of a document.