PDF to Markdown Converter
Turn a PDF into clean Markdown. Free and private: your PDF is converted on your own device.
- 1Choose your PDF
- 2Check the result
- 3Copy or download
Drop your PDF here
Works with PDFs that have selectable text. Your file stays on your device.
Converted Markdown Output
No content generated yet. Upload a document or enter text above.
Why Convert PDF to Markdown?
PDF is a visual presentation format designed for printing, meaning it stores text as positioned glyph coordinates rather than semantic structures. Converting to Markdown recovers the semantic structure (H1/H2, lists, bold emphasis, code blocks) making documents ideal for:
- LLM Context Ingestion: Giving documents to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as clean text, which uses fewer tokens and keeps the structure the model needs.
- Version Control in Git: Enabling clean line-by-line diffs and collaboration in GitHub/GitLab.
- Knowledge Bases: Importing seamlessly into Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, and static site generators.
How Text Hierarchy Detection Works
Our browser engine inspects font sizes, baseline coordinates, and typographical bounding boxes:
- Median Font Ratio: Text with font sizes 1.4x higher than median body text is classified as
## Heading 2. - Bullet Point Unification: Unicode bullet glyphs (•, ◦, ⁃) are normalized to standard Markdown dash lists (
- item). - Paragraph Healing: Hard line-breaks introduced by PDF column widths are healed into cohesive paragraphs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are my confidential PDF documents uploaded to a server?
No. All parsing happens inside your browser using JavaScript (pdf.js). The file is never uploaded to any server.
Can this converter process scanned image PDFs?
This tool specializes in text-based vector PDFs. If your PDF is a flat photograph or scanned page without embedded text, it will flag that OCR is required.
Step-by-step guides
What gets converted
| In your file | Becomes |
|---|---|
| Big or bold titles | # Heading |
| Bullet points | - item |
| Numbered lists | 1. item |
| Tables with clear columns | | table | |
| Paragraphs | Joined, clean text |
How to convert a PDF to Markdown
- Drop your PDF into the upload box, or click to choose a file.
- Keep heading and list detection on for most documents. Turn on page separators if you need to know where each page starts.
- Check the preview, fix anything by hand in the editor, then copy the Markdown or download it as a .md file.
Frequently asked questions
Does it keep tables from the PDF?
Yes, for tables with clear columns. Rows that line up in columns are turned into a Markdown table. Tables with merged cells or text that wraps inside a cell can come out as plain lines; paste those into the Markdown Table Generator to rebuild them quickly.
Does it work with two-column research papers?
Yes. When a page has two text columns, the left column is read first and then the right, so sentences stay in order. Very complex layouts with sidebars or text boxes may still need some tidying.
Can it convert Bangla (Bengali) PDFs?
Only partly. PDFs store Bangla letters in the order they are drawn, not the order they are read, so vowel signs and joined letters often come out mixed up. The tool warns you when this happens. If you have the original Word file, use the DOCX to Markdown converter instead: it gives clean Bangla text.
Is there a file size or page limit?
There is no fixed limit because your own device does the work. Very large PDFs (hundreds of pages) can take a while on older phones or laptops.
Why do some headings come out as normal text?
Headings are detected by font size. If a PDF uses bold text at body size for headings, it looks like normal text to the converter. Add the # marks in the editor before you copy.
Did a file convert badly or something not work? Report a problem. Your files are never uploaded, so a sample file helps us fix it.