Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the 404 error on your sitemap. This can often be resolved by flushing your permalinks. Here’s how you can do it:
- Go to your WordPress admin area.
- Navigate to Settings → Permalinks.
- Click the Save Changes button, even if you didn’t make any changes on the page.

This should help fix the 404 error. If the issue persists, please check our dedicated article on Why the Sitemap_Index.xml is Throwing a 404 Error for more troubleshooting steps.
Thank you for raising this concern! If you need further assistance, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you.
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.
Your category sitemap seems to contain a different format.
Please follow the steps below:
1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
3. Apply the following filter code to your site.
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
Here’s how you can add filter to your WordPress site:https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/
Let us know how that goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.