XML is a markup language that stores data using custom tags, while JSON is a lightweight text format that stores data as key–value pairs and arrays; JSON is shorter and faster to parse, XML is more expressive and supports schemas, attributes and namespaces.
Same data in both formats:
<student>
<name>Asha</name>
<age>20</age>
</student>{ "student": { "name": "Asha", "age": 20 } }| Point | XML | JSON |
|---|---|---|
| Full form | eXtensible Markup Language | JavaScript Object Notation |
| Type | Markup language | Data-interchange format |
| Structure | Tree of tags with opening and closing tags | Objects {} (key–value) and arrays [] |
| Size | Verbose, larger files | Compact, smaller files |
| Data types | Everything is text (types via schema) | String, number, boolean, null, array, object |
| Arrays | No direct array; repeated elements | Native array support |
| Attributes / namespaces | Supported | Not supported |
| Comments | Allowed | Not allowed |
| Parsing | Needs XML parser (DOM/SAX) | JSON.parse() in JavaScript; faster |
| Validation | DTD, XML Schema (XSD) | JSON Schema (optional) |
| Querying | XPath, XQuery, XSLT | Accessed directly as objects |
| Typical use | Configuration files, SOAP web services, documents (SVG, RSS) | REST APIs, web and mobile apps, NoSQL databases |