Markdown to Plain Text
Strip Markdown formatting and get clean text. Free, in your browser.
.pdf · up to 2 GB
What it's for
Markdown to plain text without syntax
Compatible with all Markdown
Processes standard Markdown (CommonMark) and common extensions: GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown), tables, task lists, and strikethrough.
100% private
Your text is processed in the browser. Never sent to servers. Safe for confidential documents or private notes.
Clean text without noise
The result is readable plain text with separated paragraphs and no Markdown syntax characters.
Instant
Real-time conversion as you paste or type. No waiting, no server processing.
How it works
Three steps, no hassle
Paste your Markdown
Enter text with Markdown formatting: headings, bold, italic, lists, links, code blocks, or tables.
Automatic conversion
The tool strips all Markdown syntax and returns clean plain text, preserving the text content of each element.
Copy the clean text
Copy the result for use in email, SMS, systems that don't render Markdown, or for word counting without syntax noise.
FAQ
Got questions?
The tool removes all Markdown formatting syntax: headings (# H1, ## H2, etc.) keeping only the heading text, **bold** and *italic* keeping the text, [text](url) keeping only the link text, images  optionally replaced with alt text, code blocks (``` and `) keeping code as text, lists (-, *, 1.) keeping items as lines, blockquotes (>) removing the symbol, and tables converted to tab-separated text.
This conversion is useful in several scenarios: (1) Email — copying content from a README or documentation to send by email without asterisks and hash symbols appearing; (2) SMS and short messages — some messaging systems don't render Markdown; (3) Accessibility — screen readers handle plain text better than unrendered Markdown; (4) Accurate word count — counting words from actual content without including syntax; (5) Legacy systems that only accept plain text.
No. Converting Markdown to plain text is irreversible. By removing formatting syntax, structural information is lost: it's no longer possible to know which parts were headings, which text was bold, or which were lists or tables. The resulting plain text cannot be automatically converted back to Markdown equivalent to the original. If you need to preserve the original Markdown, save it before converting.
Fenced code blocks (triple backtick ```) and inline code (single backtick `) are handled specifically: the code content is preserved as plain text, but delimiters (``` and `) and optionally the language tag (```javascript, ```python) are removed. The result is clean source code without Markdown code block markers, useful when you want to extract code snippets from a document.
Yes, configurably. Markdown image syntax is ``. When converting to plain text, there are two options: (1) Preserve alt text — the alt text replaces the image, useful for accessibility and maintaining document semantic context; (2) Completely remove the image — no trace of the image element remains in plain text. The tool lets you choose your preferred behavior.
Markdown in content management, plain text for accessibility, and text extraction workflows
Markdown was created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz in 2004 with the goal of being a human-readable text format that could be converted to HTML. Gruber's original specification was intentionally vague, leading to multiple dialects: MultiMarkdown, GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), Pandoc Markdown, etc. In 2014, a group led by Jeff Atwood (Stack Overflow) and John MacFarlane attempted to create a unified specification initially called Standard Markdown and finally CommonMark.
Markdown has become the de facto format for technical documentation. GitHub uses it for README.md and project files. GitLab, Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, Notion, Obsidian, and dozens of other platforms support it. Language models like ChatGPT and Claude return responses in Markdown. The proliferation of Markdown has created a real need for tools that extract plain text when the target environment cannot render it.
In text processing workflows, converting Markdown to plain text is frequently a necessary step before NLP analysis (word counting, sentiment analysis, entity extraction), before copying content to legacy systems, before sending notifications via SMS or plain-text email, and for calculating the real word count of editorial content. Accessibility tools also benefit from clean plain text, as screen readers interpret text better without unrendered Markdown syntax.