---
title: "What is llms-full.txt and when to use it"
url: https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/what-is-llms-full-txt/
date: 2026-08-24
modified: 2026-08-25
lang: en
author: "Aditya Sharma"
description: "Understand the difference between llms.txt and llms-full.txt, decide which suits your site, and switch it on in RankReady."
word_count: 816
---

# What is llms-full.txt and when to use it

This page explains the difference between `/llms.txt` and `/llms-full.txt`, helps you decide whether the full file is worth serving on your site, and shows you how to switch it on and check it.

## The difference in one line

`/llms.txt` is an index of links. `/llms-full.txt` is the corpus itself, flattened into a single file.

With the index, a client reads a short description of your site and a list of pages, then decides what to fetch next. That is two or more requests before it has any content. With the full file, everything arrives in one request. There is nothing to follow and nothing to guess at.

## When the full file is the right choice

- **Small and medium sites.** If your whole site is a few dozen pages of text, one file is simpler for everyone and cheap to serve.
- **Documentation and reference content.** Content where the answer often sits across several pages benefits from arriving together.
- **Clients that will not follow links.** Some tools fetch one URL and stop. A single file is the only thing they will ever see.
- **Anything you paste by hand.** If you ever drop your own content into a chat window as context, one file is far less work than twenty.

## When to stay with the index only

- **Large archives.** A site with thousands of posts produces a file nobody wants to download and nothing wants to process in full.
- **Tight bandwidth or a metered host.** The full file is served on every request that asks for it.
- **Content that changes constantly.** A large file that changes hourly is expensive to regenerate and expensive to cache.

There is no rule that you must serve both. Many sites are better off with a good index and nothing else. Look at the size of your own file before deciding, which the verification step below shows you how to do.

## What it does not promise

Serving the file does not mean anything reads it. Neither file is an enforced standard. They are conventions that some clients follow and others ignore, and that can change at any time without notice. What you get is your content available in a clean, predictable form at a fixed address. Later, when you see requests for it in your logs, remember that a hit proves the file was fetched. It does not prove the content was used.

## Turn it on in RankReady

- In wp-admin, open **RankReady**.
- Go to the **AI Visibility** tab, which ends in `tab=crawlers`.
- Open the **llms.txt** subtab, `sub=llms`. Both files are managed from this one screen.
- Fill in [Brand Identity](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/brand-terms-setup/) first if you have not already. It is the `sub=brand` subtab in the same tab, and it supplies the site name and description at the top of the output.
- Switch on the full file option and save.

No [AI provider](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/choose-ai-provider-cost/) key is required. Both files are built from content already in your database, so there is no generation cost and no external service involved.

![RankReady llms.txt settings screen under the AI Visibility tab](https://hostmy.blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/rr-llms-txt-v2-scaled.png)llms.txt and llms-full.txt are both controlled from the llms.txt subtab.

## Verify it worked

Start with the status code and content type:

`curl -sI https://your-site.com/llms-full.txt`
You want `HTTP/2 200` and a `Content-Type` of `text/plain`. If you get a 404, see the troubleshooting section below.

Now check the size, because size is the decision you are really making here:

`curl -s https://your-site.com/llms-full.txt | wc -c`
That gives you the byte count. Compare it against the index:

`curl -s https://your-site.com/llms.txt | wc -c`
The index should be small. The full file will be much larger, and how much larger tells you whether serving it is sensible on your site. If the number looks alarming to you, it will look alarming to whatever is fetching it. Turn it off and keep the index.

Finally, read the start of the file to confirm the content is what you expect:

`curl -s https://your-site.com/llms-full.txt | head -40`
You should see your brand header, then post content in Markdown rather than raw HTML. If you see HTML tags or shortcode remnants, that is worth reporting.

## If you get a 404

- Go to **Settings, Permalinks** and click Save Changes. Nothing needs to be altered. Saving rebuilds the rewrite rules, which is the usual fix.
- Reload the URL.
- Clear any page cache or CDN in front of the site. A cached 404 outlives the fix that resolved it.

Endpoints can also 404 on some stacks, LiteSpeed with [Rank Math](https://hostmy.blog/docs/rankready/rankready-with-yoast-rankmath-aioseo/) in particular, when rewrite rules are intercepted before RankReady sees them. Version 1.3.0 added a raw request path fallback for that case, so make sure you are running 1.3.0 or later before spending time on it.

## Turning it off later

You can switch the full file off from the same screen. Earlier versions of RankReady left a raw 404 behind when a feature was disabled. Version 1.3.0 clears the stale rules when you turn something off, so the route stops answering cleanly.