A question we get every now and then: is there a maximum size for a sitemap? There is. One sitemap file can hold at most 50,000 URLs and may be at most 50 MB before compression. The size limit used to be 10 MB; Google, Bing and the other search engines raised it in 2016.
Bigger site? Then you split it up:
- Make several sitemaps, each within the limits, for example one per section of your site.
- List them in a sitemap index: a small XML file with the addresses of your sitemaps. One index can list up to 50,000 sitemaps.
- Submit only the index to the search engines; they find the sitemaps from there.
You may compress a sitemap with gzip (sitemap.xml.gz) to save bandwidth, but the limits still count for the uncompressed file.
Most sites stay far below these numbers, so for most of you one sitemap file is all you need.