HTML to Markdown Converter — Free Online Tool
Paste any HTML and get clean, GitHub-Flavored Markdown instantly. No account, no server upload — converts entirely in your browser.
What Is HTML to Markdown Conversion?
HTML and Markdown represent the same fundamental content — headings, lists, links, emphasis, code — using two different syntaxes. HTML is machine-authored and verbose; Markdown is human-authored and minimal. Converting from HTML to Markdown produces a file that is easier to read, edit, version-control, and publish across any platform that renders Markdown.
The conversion is powered by Turndown, an MIT-licensed open-source library that maps HTML elements to their Markdown equivalents with precision. Configured here with the GFM (GitHub-Flavored Markdown) plugin, it handles pipe tables, fenced code blocks, and strikethrough in addition to standard Markdown — the same subset used by GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, Notion, and most static site generators.
What HTML Gets Preserved?
Turndown maps semantic HTML to Markdown and strips presentational markup. Here's what each element becomes:
Headings h1–h6
→ # through ###### (ATX style)
Bold / italic
→ **bold** and _italic_
Links
→ [link text](url)
Images
→ 
Unordered lists
→ - item (with nested indent)
Ordered lists
→ 1. item (preserves nesting)
Tables
→ GFM pipe tables | Col | Col |
Inline code
→ `backtick-wrapped code`
Code blocks
→ triple-backtick fenced blocks
Blockquotes
→ > quoted paragraph
What gets stripped: Inline styles, class names, data attributes, <div> wrappers, <span> tags without semantic meaning, scripts, and any element with no Markdown equivalent. The result is clean, portable plain text.
Common Use Cases
CMS content migration
Exporting content from WordPress, Contentful, or Webflow produces HTML. Convert it to Markdown to import into a new CMS, static site generator (Astro, Hugo, Jekyll), or docs platform (Docusaurus, MkDocs).
Email HTML to documentation
Newsletter and email marketing HTML is notoriously messy — full of inline styles and table-based layouts. Paste it here to extract the semantic content as clean Markdown for archiving or repurposing.
AI context window preparation
Feeding raw HTML to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini wastes tokens on tags. Converting to Markdown first reduces token count and gives the model cleaner semantic signals for better output.
Developer documentation
API documentation, README files, and wiki pages often start as rendered HTML. Convert to Markdown to bring them into a version-controlled repo or documentation system.
Web scraping cleanup
When scraping web pages for content, the raw HTML contains navigation, ads, and structural markup. Extract the main article HTML and convert to Markdown to get readable, structured text.
How the Conversion Works
When you type or paste HTML into the left pane, the tool passes it to Turndown — configured for GitHub-Flavored Markdown with ATX-style headings (# H1), dash bullet lists, and fenced code blocks. The conversion fires automatically as you type, with a 300ms debounce to keep the UI responsive for large documents.
All processing happens synchronously in JavaScript inside your browser tab. There's no server round-trip, no API call, and no file upload. The Markdown output appears in the right pane and stays fully editable — you can copy it to clipboard with one click or download it as a .md file.
Related tools you might also need:
- → Word to Markdown Converter — convert .docx files directly (skips the HTML step)
- → Keyword Density Checker — analyze keyword frequency in your converted content
- → Robots.txt Validator — ensure your documentation pages are crawlable after migration
Frequently Asked Questions
HTML to Markdown conversion takes structured HTML markup and transforms it into equivalent Markdown syntax — a lightweight, human-readable plain-text format. Where HTML uses tags like <h1> and <strong>, Markdown uses # Heading and **bold**.
It's used to clean up CMS exports, convert email HTML for documentation, migrate web content to static site generators, or prepare text for AI context windows where Markdown is more token-efficient than raw HTML.
This tool converts the most common semantic HTML elements to their Markdown equivalents:
- Headings — <h1> through <h6> → # through ######
- Paragraphs — <p> → plain text with blank-line separation
- Bold & italic — <strong>/<b> → **bold**, <em>/<i> → _italic_
- Links — <a href="..."> → [text](url)
- Images — <img> → 
- Lists — <ul>/<ol>/<li> → - or 1. lists, including nested
- Tables — <table> → GFM pipe tables (| Col | Col |)
- Code — <code> → `inline`, <pre><code> → fenced blocks
- Blockquotes — <blockquote> → > quoted text
- Horizontal rules — <hr> → ---
Presentational HTML (inline styles, classes, data attributes, scripts, and layout divs) is stripped — only semantic content is preserved.
Tables convert correctly when they use standard HTML table structure: a <table> with <tr>, <th>, and <td> elements. Common issues:
- Merged cells (colspan/rowspan) — not supported in GFM pipe tables; cells merge into one column
- Tables built with CSS divs — not parsed as tables since there's no <table> element
- Missing <th> header row — GFM tables require a header row; add one or the output may be malformed
Yes — this is one of the most common use cases. CMS platforms (WordPress, Contentful, Webflow) and email tools (Mailchimp, HubSpot) export HTML that is full of inline styles, class names, and presentational markup. Turndown strips all of that and preserves only the semantic structure.
For best results with CMS HTML: paste the raw HTML source (not the rendered page), and expect to do minor cleanup on any content that uses CSS-based formatting instead of semantic tags like <strong> or <h2>.
| Col1 | Col2 |), fenced code blocks with triple backticks, and strikethrough. The output renders correctly on GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, Notion, and all major Markdown platforms.