HTML to Markdown
Turn HTML back into clean, readable Markdown.
Going backwards from HTML
Markdown converts to HTML cleanly because HTML can express everything Markdown can. The reverse is lossy, because HTML can express a great deal that Markdown cannot — and knowing what gets dropped is the difference between a useful conversion and a surprising one.
What converts cleanly
Headings, paragraphs, bold and italic, links, images, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, horizontal rules and simple tables all have direct Markdown equivalents and come across exactly.
What does not survive
Styling of any kind — classes, inline styles, colours, fonts. Layout elements such as <div> and <section> vanish, since Markdown has no concept of them. Nested tables, merged cells, and forms have no representation at all.
Complex HTML therefore comes back as its text content in reading order, which is often exactly what you want when the goal is to recover writing from a web page.
Where this is genuinely useful
Moving content out of a CMS into a static site or a documentation repository. Rescuing a draft from an email or a Google Doc export. Cleaning pasted rich text down to something a Markdown editor will accept. And feeding web content to tools that expect plain structured text.
Cleaning up afterwards
Expect a little tidying: escaped characters where the source contained literal asterisks or underscores, and occasional stray line breaks from the original formatting. A quick read-through is worth the few seconds.
The other direction
Switch the direction control to turn Markdown into HTML, which is the lossless half of the round trip.
Common questions
Which Markdown dialect?
GitHub Flavored Markdown — tables, strikethrough, task lists and autolinking included.
Why do my single line breaks become breaks?
That is deliberate. Strict Markdown treats a single newline as a space, which almost nobody expects.
Is the HTML safe to publish?
Markdown allows raw HTML, so Markdown from someone else can contain scripts. Sanitise before rendering untrusted input.
Can it convert HTML back?
Yes, but lossily — styling and layout have no Markdown equivalent and are dropped.
Is my text uploaded?
No, it is converted in your browser.