PDF to Markdown Converter: Free, In Your Browser

1. Choose files

Drop a PDF here or click to browse Converted in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Up to 50 MB per file. PDFDOCXHTMLXLSXPPTXCSVTSVTXTJSON

or paste rich text or HTML

HTML: keep main content only (drop nav, header, footer) Add YAML front matter (title, source, date) PDF: mark page breaks

Coming soon OCR for scanned PDFs and images · AI cleanup of messy layouts

2. Markdown output (editable)

PDF files store positioned text, not structure, so headings are inferred from font size and paragraphs from line spacing. Check headings and tables in long or multi-column PDFs. Token counts use a rough 4-characters-per-token estimate. Excel dates are converted when the cell is formatted as a date; formulas show their last saved value.

How PDF to Markdown conversion works

A PDF does not store headings or paragraphs. It stores pieces of text at positions on a page. The converter reads that text layer with pdf.js, groups the pieces into lines by their position, and then rebuilds structure from the layout:

Headings come from font size. The size used for most of the text is treated as body text, and larger sizes become Markdown headings, largest first.
Paragraphs are rebuilt by joining wrapped lines until the vertical gap grows, and words hyphenated across a line break are rejoined.
Lists are detected from bullet characters and numbering such as 1. or a).
Running headers, footers and page numbers that repeat on most pages are removed, so they do not interrupt the text.

What converts well, and what does not

Reports, papers, manuals and exported documents with selectable text convert well. Three kinds of PDF need care:

Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages with no text layer, so there is nothing to extract. OCR for scanned PDFs is coming soon.
Tables come through as lines of text, not Markdown tables, because a PDF has no record of which text belongs to which cell. If you have the original Word or Excel file, convert that instead with the Word to Markdown or Excel to Markdown converter.
Multi-column layouts can interleave lines from neighbouring columns. Check the output and move paragraphs if needed.

For a full walkthrough of preparing documents for retrieval, see how to convert PDF and Word files to Markdown for RAG.

Questions and answers

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

No. The PDF is read and converted in your browser with pdf.js, which is hosted on this site. Nothing is sent to a server or stored.

Can it convert a scanned PDF?

Not yet. A scanned PDF contains images of text rather than text, which needs OCR. OCR for scanned PDFs is coming soon. The converter warns you when a PDF has very little extractable text.

Does it keep tables from the PDF?

Table text is kept, but as lines of text rather than a Markdown table, because PDFs do not record table cells. Converting the original DOCX or XLSX file keeps real tables.

Is there a page or size limit?

Files up to 50 MB are accepted and there is no page limit. Long PDFs take longer because every page is read in your browser.