Extract text from any PDF directly in your browser. No upload, no server, no privacy risk. Paste the result into any AI tool instantly.
Three steps. Five seconds.
Drop your PDF onto the converter or click to browse. Any text-layer PDF works.
PDF.js parses the document in your browser. No upload, no waiting for a server.
Copy the markdown to your clipboard or download as a .md file.
Your documents are sensitive. They should never leave your device.
PDF.js runs entirely client-side. Your file is parsed in memory and never uploaded to any server.
This is an architectural guarantee, not a policy. There is no server endpoint, no upload mechanism, no logging. The file is read by the File API, parsed by PDF.js in a web worker, and the text is returned directly to your browser tab. Nothing leaves your device.
PDF.js (Mozilla) extracts the full text layer from your PDF in seconds — ready to paste into any AI tool or editor.
PDF.js is the same engine that powers PDF viewing in Firefox and Chrome. It is battle-tested against millions of PDFs and handles multi-column layouts, headers, footers, and complex document structures. Most PDFs extract in under 2 seconds.
Once the page loads, PDF extraction requires zero internet connection. Perfect for sensitive documents.
Because everything runs in your browser, you can disconnect from WiFi, switch to airplane mode, or work in a restricted network environment — the converter still works. No CDN dependencies, no API calls.
Copy the extracted markdown to your clipboard in one click, or download it as a .md file named after your PDF.
The output is plain markdown — paragraphs with page breaks as horizontal rules. Paste directly into ChatGPT, Claude, Notion, Obsidian, or any markdown-aware tool. Or download and open in VS Code, Typora, or your editor of choice.
Anyone who needs to get text out of a PDF and into a modern tool.
Extract text from research papers, reports, or contracts and paste directly into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for analysis, summarisation, or Q&A.
Turn static PDFs into editable markdown you can restructure, annotate, and re-export as a new document using MarkdownTools.
Extract text from PDFs and paste into your knowledge base. Far faster than manual copying with perfect formatting.
Convert contracts, specifications, or compliance documents into markdown for version-controlled archives in Git.
If the PDF has a text layer (not just scanned images), you can extract the full content even if copy-paste is disabled in the viewer.
Extract clean text from PDFs as the first step in building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines for AI applications.
PDFs contain two types of content: a text layer (the actual characters and words) and a rendering layer (positions, fonts, and visual layout). Most PDFs created by word processors, AI tools, or document editors have a full text layer. PDFs created by scanning physical documents may only have images with no text layer.
MarkdownTools uses PDF.js — the open-source PDF engine developed by Mozilla and used in Firefox — to parse the text layer directly in your browser. Each page is processed independently, and the extracted text is joined into a single markdown document with pages separated by horizontal rules (`---`).
The result is clean, readable text in markdown format. Paragraphs, sentences, and words are preserved exactly as they appear in the PDF. However, visual formatting like font sizes, bold/italic, and complex table layouts are not preserved — PDF text extraction gives you the words, not the design.
Most PDF-to-markdown tools require you to upload your file to a server. This means your document — which may contain confidential, personal, or proprietary information — is transmitted over the internet, processed on someone else's computer, and potentially stored or logged. For legal documents, financial reports, or AI-generated content you haven't published, this is a significant privacy risk.
MarkdownTools is different. The entire conversion runs in your browser using PDF.js as a web worker. Your file is never uploaded anywhere. There is no server-side processing. The conversion is as private as reading a PDF in your browser — which is exactly what it is.
For developers building RAG pipelines or document processing workflows, our approach also means you can verify exactly what happens to your data: read the open-source PDF.js library, inspect the browser network tab (you'll see zero PDF-related requests), and run the conversion in any air-gapped environment.
PDF to markdown conversion has inherent limitations worth understanding. PDF.js extracts text content — it does not reconstruct semantic structure. Headings in a PDF are visually larger, but the extraction does not know they are headings. Bullet points in a PDF are visual characters, not markdown list items. Tables in a PDF are positioned text, not structured data.
The output is best described as "the full text content of your PDF, formatted as readable markdown paragraphs." It is excellent for feeding into AI tools, searching, editing, and archival. It is not a perfect document-to-document conversion that preserves visual formatting.
Scanned PDFs (image-only, no text layer) are not supported — PDF.js can only extract text that exists as a text layer. If your PDF was created by scanning a physical document and was not run through OCR, the extraction will return empty or minimal content.
Everything you need to know.
Yes, completely free with no limits. PDF extraction runs entirely in your browser using PDF.js — it costs nothing to run, so there is no reason to charge for it. No signup, no account, unlimited conversions.
Drop your PDF above. Get clean markdown. Feed it into any AI tool.