The Best HTML to Markdown Conversion Tools & Libraries

Looking for a reliable HTML to Markdown converter? Look no further! We've identified the best online converters and development libraries to help you convert HTML to Markdown.

From intuitive web interfaces to robust packages that offer advanced features, you'll find the right tool for you – no matter what your workflow demands.

What Is Markdown?

Markdown is a lightweight markup language with a plain-text formatting syntax. It was originally designed as a better markup language for reading and writing in plain text. Markdown is often converted to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) before publication.

It has gained considerable popularity among web writers, developers, and technical writers because of its ease of use, readability and the simplicity of the plain text format it employs.

Unlike HTML, a more complex markup language used for creating web pages with structured parts and formatting, Markdown enables straightforward content creation in an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain-text format.

What Is a HTML to MD Converter?

A HTML to Markdown converter is a tool that allows you to transform HTML markup into the Markdown markup language. The process begins by uploading an HTML file or pasting HTML code. The converter then processes the input data and generates the corresponding Markdown code.

The Best Tools for Converting HTML to Markdown

Whether you need to convert a simple snippet quickly or automate the conversion of huge amounts of scraped HTML, we've got the Markdown conversion tool for you.

The Best Web to MD Converter: CodeBeautify

CodeBeautify's converter stands among the best online tools for HTML to Markdown conversion. This tool is not only convenient but also efficient and reliable, ensuring that users have a smooth conversion experience.

Like most online converters, CodeBeautify lets you directly paste HTML into the tool's text editor. But one key feature of CodeBeautify's tool is support for loading HTML from a URL or file upload.

CodeBeautify uses client-side technology to perform conversions entirely in your browser without sending your code to a server, ensuring data privacy and security.

The Best HTML to Markdown Browser Extension: Copy as Markdown

Copy as Markdown is a practical browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that streamlines the process of converting HTML to Markdown.

• Copy text, links, and images as Markdown
• Retain the formatting of text styles and reference images via links
• Convert unordered lists, ordered lists, task lists, and tables
• Fenced code block support with language detection

Copy as Markdown provides a convenient, user-friendly interface for converting content to Markdown from the browser. It's available as both a Chrome extension and Firefox add-on.

The Best VS Code Extension: HTML to Markdown by Yangtang Wu

The HTML to Markdown extension for Visual Studio Code is an invaluable tool designed to streamline the conversion process when working with text in your code editor.

You can convert the currently opened HTML file in VS Code, or the selected snippet of markup. Use the Command Palette to execute the extension's conversion command.

The Best HTML to Markdown Converter for JavaScript: Turndown

Turndown is your go-to tool for transforming HTML into Markdown using JavaScript. Turndown is available for both Node.js and browser environments.

Here are some key features that make Turndown stand out:

1. HTML Handling: Turndown can accept DOM nodes as input, ranging from element nodes and document nodes to document fragment nodes. This makes it easier to select and convert specific portions of the HTML document.
2. RequireJS & UMD Versions: Turndown comes equipped with UMD versions for both Node.js and browser usage. These are located in lib/turndown.umd.js and lib/turndown.browser.umd.js respectively, which are crucial for usage with RequireJS.

An understanding of JavaScript is essential to best utilize Turndown, but its straightforward implementation means even beginners can quickly adapt. Turndown can be installed via npm using npm install turndown.

The Best HTML to Markdown Converter for Python: Markdownify

Markdownify is a Python library for converting HTML to Markdown. It offers a streamlined, straightforward approach. Its features include:

• Efficiency: Being a lightweight package, Markdownify performs fast and accurate conversion from HTML data to Markdown format.
• User-Friendly: Markdownify has a simplified syntax, which makes it easy to achieve smooth conversions.
• Flexibility: You can use markdownify to convert whole web pages or small HTML snippets into Markdown, providing a wide range of use case scenarios.

Whether you need to convert extensive HTML data or tiny snippets, Markdownify remains a powerful tool capable of delivering clear, readable Markdown text.

The Best High-Performance Node.js Converter: node-html-markdown

node-html-markdown is an efficient Node.js package for converting HTML to Markdown. It's all about extreme performance, and is optimized using JIT.

Designed to keep up with massive volumes of HTML data, NHM is a great option for converting scraped HTML quickly. The tool offers impressive benchmarks:

• 100KB of HTML: 17 ms.
• 1MB of HTML: 176 ms.
• 50MB of HTML: 8.8 seconds.
• 1GB of HTML: 3 minutes.
• A hefty 50GB of HTML: Approximately 2.5 hours.

Some libraries produce output that is challenging to read outside of a Markdown viewer, but NHM aims for a clean, concise, and readable result with consistent spacing rules.

Install node-html-markdown with yarn, npm, or pnpm:

<yarn|npm|pnpm> add node-html-markdown

The Best Python Web Scraper with Markdown Support: Trafilatura

Trafilatura is a powerful Python package and command-line tool constructed to retrieve and process textual content from the web. Excelling in crawling, scraping, and extracting text from the web, it's a go-to tool for data scientists, researchers, and business analysts alike.

Output can be effortlessly converted into various formats, including Markdown.

Here are some of Trafilatura's significant Markdown-related features:

1. Text Processing Components: Convert raw HTML into structural blocks, sorting out text from recurring elements like headers, footers, and links.
2. Metadata Extraction: Extract and preserve all sorts of metadata, including title, author, timestamps, categories, and tags.
3. Robust, Fast Processing: Even when dealing with extensive datasets, Trafilatura runs in production swiftly.

Trafilatura is the ideal Python web scraper for users who want clean, enriched Markdown output.

The Best HTML to Markdown Converter for Go: html-to-markdown

The html-to-markdown package by Johannes Kaufmann is a conversion tool for Go programmers. Using an HTML parser, it handles complex cases and irregular input scenarios well. This package's key feature is its adaptability - it is versatile enough to cater to any conversion requirement.

Some of its key features include:

1. HTML Parser Integration: Makes the tool more robust by enabling it to handle unusual and unexpected input scenarios efficiently.
2. Usability with Goquery: The package can convert a selection into markdown if you're already using goquery.
3. Command Line Interface: The tool can be used on the command line without any Go coding, thanks to a CLI wrapper that includes built-in plugins and options.
4. Customization with md.Options: You can personalize the package's functionality, such as modifying the encasing characters around bold text, by utilizing md.Options.
5. Rules: The tool allows you to add custom conversion rules for specific HTML elements.
6. Plugin Support: The package supports the use of plugins, such as GitHub Flavored Markdown.

By combining versatility, customizability, and advanced features, the html-to-markdown package makes the conversion process seamless and effective.

The Best HTML to Markdown Converter for C#: ReverseMarkdown

ReverseMarkdown is an advanced, reliable library for converting HTML to Markdown in C#. It traverses the HTML Document Object Model (DOM) using the dependable HtmlAgilityPack (HAP) library. This ensures a thorough, accurate conversion process.

ReverseMarkdown allows users to customize the conversion process, and several configuration options are available. A few examples:

• Strip out comment tags from input HTML
• Decide how smart handling of href attributes works
• Use GitHub Flavored Markdown
• Set the default code block language
• Change the bullet character used

You can install ReverseMarkdown using the NuGet package manager.

The Most Flexible Markup Conversion Library: Pandoc

Pandoc is widely renowned as the Swiss-army knife of document conversion. It is a powerful, open-source utility designed for transforming files from one markup format to another.

Pandoc supports a diverse array of markup types, including (but not limited to) HTML, Markdown, MS Word, LaTeX, and more.

Pandoc offers the following Markdown-related advantages:

1. Efficient File Conversion: Pandoc can efficiently translate HTML files into Markdown. It's great for users who need to convert large amounts of content into Markdown.
2. Markdown to Multiple Formats: Convert Markdown documents to numerous formats, such as HTML, PDF, MS Word, and LaTeX (and back again).
3. Customization Options: Create a personalized and adaptable conversion process by designing filters. Manage different formats or customize existing ones to fit your needs.

Creating a Markdown text file from a URL is as simple as a terminal command:

pandoc -s -r html http://www.gnu.org/software/make/ -o example12.text

The Pandoc website provides a comprehensive list of file types it supports for conversion, offering a high degree of versatility.

Conclusion

Markdown is a wonderful markup language for both day-to-day use and archival. It encourages streamlined content creation and sharing across systems and platforms.

Today, Markdown is essential for all sorts of knowledge workers - developers, content creators, technical writers, and educators. Popular tools such as Pandoc, Markdownify, Turndown, and Copy as Markdown can help you ensure your text ends up formatted in this versatile markup language, no matter where it comes from.

Whether you want to convert a snippet quickly or programmatically convert gigabytes of data, there's a tool here for you!

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