XML-Validator

Anyone working digitally with authorities and finance in Germany cannot avoid XML: the electronic tax return at ELSTER, electronic invoices per ZUGFeRD and XRechnung, SEPA transfers and direct debits, GoBD exports, DATEV booking batches. All of these are XML documents - and when one does not go through, you want to know quickly where the error is. That is exactly what the XML Validator is for.

One important point up front so it is clear what the tool does: the validator checks the well-formedness of your XML. That means it ensures all tags are correctly opened and closed, the nesting is right, quotes match and the document is syntactically clean. On an error it shows you what is wrong. What it deliberately does not do is a full check against an XSD schema - so it tells you whether your XML is structurally correct, not whether it meets every business rule of a particular schema.

Alongside checking comes preparing. The validator formats your XML with clean indentation and syntax highlighting, turning an unreadable line into a clear structure. The tree view goes further: instead of scrolling, you expand and collapse the elements that interest you and keep the overview even with large documents.

With XPath queries you pull out specific elements and values without navigating the tree by hand - handy when you only need the amounts in a long SEPA file or only certain figures in an ELSTER message. And if you prefer to work with JSON, you convert the XML in one click. A stats view reveals element count, depth and structure at a glance.

So you can start right away, the validator ships a large collection of ready templates for exactly the formats that matter in German everyday life: ELSTER tax data, ZUGFeRD and XRechnung invoices, SEPA pain.001 and pain.008, GoBD export, DATEV XML, property tax declaration, DEUEV report, commercial register filing as well as generic formats like sitemap, RSS and SVG. So you have a correct example to compare against and try out.

Everything runs client-side in your browser. No XML is uploaded - no tax data, no invoice, no bank details leaves your device. For documents that contain personal or business data that is the only sensible choice. No account, no signup, no data leaving your device.