Convert PDF to Markdown Online
Turn a PDF into clean Markdown with headings, bold and italic text, lists, tables, code blocks, links and optional images. Free, private and done in your browser.
How to convert a PDF to Markdown
PDF is made for printing, Markdown is made for writing, editing and reusing. WoowPDF's PDF to Markdown converter rebuilds the structure of your document as clean, readable Markdown that you can paste into GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, Notion, a static site generator, a wiki, or an AI assistant. It keeps headings, emphasis, lists, tables, code blocks and links, and it throws away the page headers, footers and page numbers that clutter text copied from a PDF. Everything runs in your browser, so your files stay on your device.
How to convert a PDF to Markdown
- Add your PDF. Drop one or more files onto the page or click Choose files.
- Choose what to detect. Headings, tables and header/footer removal are on by default. Turn on Extract images if you want the pictures too.
- Fine-tune if needed. In the advanced options you can mark page breaks with a horizontal rule or an HTML comment, add YAML front matter with the title and author, or convert only a page range.
- Convert and download. Click Convert to Markdown and download your .md file (or a ZIP with the images folder).
Structure, not just text
Copying text out of a PDF usually gives you broken lines, lost headings and page numbers in the middle of sentences. This converter works from the position and font of every piece of text instead. Lines are grouped into paragraphs and hyphenated words split across lines are joined again. The body text size is measured, and larger lines become #, ## or ### headings. Bold and italic words keep their emphasis, monospaced text becomes an inline code span or a fenced code block, and link annotations are kept as proper Markdown links.
Lists and tables
Bullet characters such as •, ▪, – and * become Markdown list items, numbered items stay numbered, and indented items are nested. Rows of text that are split into aligned columns are rebuilt as GitHub-flavored Markdown tables with a header row, which renders nicely on GitHub, in Obsidian and in most documentation tools. For tables with merged cells, check the result and adjust it by hand.
Clean output from real-world documents
Reports, papers and manuals repeat the same header, footer and page number on every page. WoowPDF detects this repeated page furniture and removes it, so your paragraphs flow without interruption and a sentence that continues on the next page is kept together. Two-column layouts, common in scientific papers and newsletters, are read column by column rather than line by line across the page.
Images in a ready-to-use folder
With Extract images turned on, you receive a ZIP file containing the Markdown document and an images folder. Each picture is linked with a relative path at the place where it appears in the PDF, so the document displays correctly as soon as you unzip it. Logos repeated on every page are skipped.
Perfect for AI, docs and notes
Markdown is compact and keeps meaning that plain text loses, which makes it an excellent format for feeding documents to ChatGPT, Claude or a retrieval (RAG) pipeline. It is also the native format of knowledge bases like Obsidian and Logseq, of README files and of documentation sites built with Docusaurus, MkDocs or Hugo.
Tips for the best result
- Scanned document? Make it searchable first with PDF OCR, then convert it.
- Need plain text without formatting? Use the PDF text extractor. For a web page, try PDF to HTML; for an editable document, PDF to Word.
- Only need the pictures? Extract images from the PDF directly.
- Going the other way? Paste your text into Text to PDF.
Features
- Headings detected from font sizes and mapped to #, ## and ###
- Bold, italic and inline code kept as Markdown emphasis
- Bulleted and numbered lists, including nested items
- Tables rebuilt as GitHub-flavored Markdown tables
- Monospaced text turned into fenced code blocks
- Links kept, repeated headers, footers and page numbers removed
- Two-column layouts read in the right order
- Optional image extraction into a ZIP with an images folder
- Private: the PDF is converted in your browser, never uploaded
Frequently asked questions
What is Markdown?
Markdown is a plain-text format that uses simple symbols for structure: # for headings, * for emphasis, - for list items and | for tables. It is used by GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian, Notion, static site generators, documentation tools and AI assistants.
Which parts of my PDF are kept?
Headings, paragraphs, bold and italic text, bulleted and numbered lists, simple tables, monospaced code, links and, if you enable it, images. Repeated page headers, footers and page numbers are removed so they do not interrupt the text.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The conversion runs completely in your browser. Your file never leaves your device, which makes the tool safe for confidential documents.
Does it work with scanned PDFs?
A scanned PDF only contains pictures of text. Run it through our PDF OCR tool first to add a text layer, then convert the result to Markdown.
How are headings detected?
The converter finds the font size used by most of the body text. Larger lines become headings: the largest size becomes #, the next ##, and smaller heading sizes ###. You can switch heading detection off if you only want plain paragraphs.
Can it convert tables?
Yes. Rows whose text is split into aligned columns are rebuilt as Markdown tables with a header row. Very complex tables with merged cells may need some manual touch-up.
What happens to images?
By default only text is converted. Turn on Extract images to get a ZIP containing the .md file and an images folder; each image is linked at the position where it appears in the document.
Can I use the result with ChatGPT, Claude or other AI tools?
Yes. Markdown is one of the best formats for feeding documents to language models because it keeps the structure while staying compact, so it is a popular way to prepare PDFs for AI and RAG pipelines.
Does it handle two-column documents?
Yes. When a page has two columns of text, the converter reads the left column before the right one instead of mixing lines from both columns.
Can I convert several PDFs at once?
Yes. Add multiple files and each is converted with the same settings. Download them individually or together in a ZIP file.