Comparison of XML editors

This is a list of XML editors. Note that any text editor can edit XML, so this page only lists software programs that specialize in this task. It doesn't include text editors that merely do simple syntax coloring or expanding and collapsing of nodes.

Desktop applications

Name Latest release Active Software license Type Windows macOS Linux Textual editor? Tree view editor? Graphical editor? WYSIWYG editor? XML Schema editor? Syntax highlighting Tag folding Autocomplete using schema XPath search XML diff/merge Payment model Full-featured free trial period
QXmlEdit 0.9.18, January 2023 Yes LGPL 2 Standalone Yes installer downloaded from SourceForge or PortableApps Yes dmg installer from SourceForge, Homebrew, (Macports not available as of 2023-02) Yes RPM, DEB, other formats in distribution package repositories, Snap, Flatpak. (AppImage not available as of 2024-02) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes configurable XML and XML Schema Comparison. ? merge function — is free libre open source software. — You get a free, full-featured version for as long as you like.
Adobe FrameMaker 2019 Yes Proprietary Standalone Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes
BaseX 2023 (10.7) Yes BSD-3-Clause Standalone Yes Yes Yes[1] Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes via add-on module — —
CAM Editor 2015 (3.2.2) No MPL-2.0 Standalone Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No ? No Yes No — —
GNU Emacs/
nxml-mode 		2023 (29.1) Yes GPL-3.0-or-later Major mode Yes Yes Yes Yes ? No No ? Yes Yes Yes No Yes (Ediff) — —
GNU Emacs/
psgml-mode, xml-mode 		2023 (29.1) Yes GPL-2.0-or-later Major mode Yes Yes Yes Yes sgml-show-structure No No dtd-mode Yes Yes Yes No Yes (Ediff) — —
MadCap Flare 2019 Yes Proprietary Standalone Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Perpetual and Subscription Yes
Liquid XML Studio 2020 (18.0.4) Yes Proprietary Standalone + Visual Studio Plugin Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes
Oxygen XML Editor 2021 (24.0) Yes Proprietary Standalone + Eclipse Plugin[2] Web-App Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? 30 days
Quark Author Web Edition on Quark Publishing Platform 2014 (10.5) Yes Proprietary Web-App Yes Yes Yes No Sections Only Yes Yes ? No No No ? —
Stylus Studio 2014 (X15 R2) Yes Proprietary Standalone Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes
Xeditor August 2023 (6.15) Yes Proprietary Web-app Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes via add-on module Subscription Yes
Xerlin 2005 (1.3) No Open Source Standalone Yes Yes Yes ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? — ?
XMetaL 2021 (16.0) Yes Proprietary Standalone Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No ? Yes
XML Notepad 2023 (2.9.0.7) Yes MIT Standalone Yes No No Yes Yes Yes ? ? ? ? Yes ? Yes
XMLSpy 2025 Yes Proprietary Standalone
Eclipse Plugin, Visual Studio Plugin 		Yes No[3] No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Perpetual Yes

See also

Commentary

Spring Tools Suite and Eclipse have a variety of built-in and free plugins matching or exceeding the quality of the paid versions. They come with a content assist tool that completes tags and can search for classes in any java classpath. They also include validation, bean creation, and commit tools.

A plugin for Notepad++ named XML Tools is available.[4] It contains many features including manual/automatic validation using both DTDs and XSDs, XPath evaluation, auto-completion, pretty print, and text conversion in addition to being able to work on multiple files at once. Other tools are available to edit XHTML.

References

  1. ^ Also BSD
  2. ^ Older Eclipse plugin versions work in current (Indigo) Eclipse.
  3. ^ Plugin version
  4. ^ "Notepad++ Plugins - Browse /XML Tools/XML Tools 2.4.2 r1057 Unicode at SourceForge.net".

Further reading