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PDF to Markdown converter

Convert PDF to Markdown in your browser. Headings, paragraphs, lists and ruled tables carry over; scanned pages are read by an AI model on your own device.

Runs on your deviceFree, unlimitedAI text recognition, on your device

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Accepts .pdf · Up to 20 files at a time · up to 80 MB each "Upload" and "download" here mean your browser reading a file from this device and writing one back to it. Your file is never sent to a server — open your browser's network panel and watch: no request carries your file.

PDF to Markdown FAQ

What does the Markdown actually contain?

Headings, paragraphs, bullet lists and tables. Heading levels come from type size: the sizes that stand out above the body text are ranked largest first, and the first six of them become # through ######. A line that starts with a bullet character becomes a list item, because in a PDF the bullet is literally part of the text rather than a list structure. A table comes across when the PDF drew its borders — those lines are the only place the file says where the grid is — so a table laid out with spacing alone arrives as paragraphs. Pictures are not carried: Markdown is a single text file with nowhere to put them. Convert to Word if you need them.

Why is nothing bold or italic?

Because recovering emphasis would mean guessing. A PDF stores glyph runs and the font each was drawn in, not the idea of emphasis — a heading set in a bold face, a caption in a semibold one and a word genuinely emphasised mid-sentence are indistinguishable at that level. Marking the wrong things would produce output that looks careful and is wrong, which is worse than prose that is plainly prose.

What are the --- lines between sections?

Page boundaries. Markdown has no pages, so the only choice is to lose them or to show them, and a horizontal rule is the one construct every viewer renders and every parser round-trips. It is written only between pages, never at the top, so it can never be mistaken for a front-matter block.

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

Yes, through the same on-device recognition the other PDF text conversions use. If the pages carry no text layer, an AI model runs locally — a one-time download of about 21 MB, then a few seconds per page. The recognised line heights stand in for type sizes, so headings are still found.

Do tables survive?

Yes, when the PDF has a text layer. A table drawn with ruled lines comes out as a Markdown table, with its first row as the header — Markdown tables need one. Markdown cannot merge cells, so a cell spanning several columns is written into the first of them and the rest are left empty. A scanned page has no ruled lines to read, only pixels, so its tables come out as ordinary lines in reading order.

Why Markdown rather than Word?

Because it is text. It goes into a static site, a notes app, a wiki or a language model without carrying a format nothing else can read, and it diffs in version control. If the destination is Word, use PDF to Word instead — it takes the same route and the same structure, and writes a .docx at the end.

Is the result a MD file?

Yes. It is saved as .md, which opens in any program that opens MD files.

Is it really free?

Yes — every conversion on this site, with no account, no watermark and no daily cap. The work happens on your own device, so there is no server bill for us to pass on to you.

Do I need to install anything?

No. It runs in any modern browser, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. There is nothing to install and nothing to sign up for, and once you have converted a file on the page it keeps working with the network switched off.

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