pdfmd.orgNo document
Local
PDF
Drop a PDF here

Or choose a file. Digital PDFs are parsed on this device — nothing is uploaded.

How it works, benchmarks, and FAQ
Markdown

Markdown appears here once a PDF is loaded.

Select a block to trace it back to the page.
0 pages uploaded · Local
Why this converter

A free PDF to Markdown converter that shows its sources

This free online PDF to Markdown converter extracts the text layer on your own device with PDF.js, then renders clean Markdown you can copy, download, or send into Obsidian, MkDocs, GitHub, and RAG workflows.

Unlike a typical PDF to Markdown converter, it does not stop at plausible-looking text. Every output block keeps its page number, bounding box, reading order, extraction method, and confidence, so a dropped footnote or scrambled two-column page can be traced back to the source.

Simple digital PDFs — papers, manuals, contracts, exports from Word or LaTeX — convert locally and for free, with no upload and no account. Scanned pages, dense tables, and formulas are the cases where local extraction is not enough; those pages are flagged so you can approve OCR page by page instead of paying to reprocess a whole document.

Local-first — nothing leaves your device
Have a .docx instead? Use the Word to Markdown converterRead the PDF to Markdown quality guideSee how local-first conversion and provenance work
100%
Local text extraction for digital PDFs
0
Pages uploaded in local mode
5
Output profiles, from clean Markdown to source-map JSON

Prove it works on real documents

Each card loads an actual PDF through the same local converter used for your files.

View the benchmark

Financial statement

Audited statements, dense tables, and footnotes.

Original source · SEC EDGAR

Chinese technical report

Chinese headings, numbered sections, and punctuation.

Original source · MOST China
A better conversion loop

Fast by default. Precise when needed.

A reliable PDF to Markdown converter should inspect every page first. Text pages stay local; only pages with scans, tables, or formulas are proposed for Advanced OCR.

1

Inspect locally

Detect text layers, reading order, and difficult pages in your browser.

2

Approve upgrades

See which pages need OCR and the exact credit cost before anything uploads.

3

Verify the output

Click any Markdown block to return to its page and source location.

Local pages are free with no quota, and only the pages you approve for OCR are ever billed. See how cloud OCR is priced

Markdown that fits where it is going

Run the PDF to Markdown converter once, then export clean Markdown or a profile that preserves the metadata your workflow needs.

Public benchmark

Quality claims should be reproducible.

We publish the input, output, parser version, and known failures for every benchmark document.

Document classTextReading orderTablesSource links
Digital research paper99.1%98.6%94.2%100%
Scanned bilingual report96.8%95.4%91.7%100%
Financial statement98.4%97.1%93.8%100%

Prototype metrics illustrate the reporting format; production numbers will come from a published test corpus.

For developers

The same source map, over API.

Create jobs, choose an output profile, and receive Markdown plus page-level provenance.

REST + Webhooks MCP-ready Zero-retention option
curl
curl https://api.pdfmd.org/v1/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PDFMD_KEY" \
  -F "file=@paper.pdf" \
  -F "profile=source-linked"

→ { "status": "processing", "local_pages": 12,
    "advanced_pages": [8, 9] }
Guides

Learn from real inputs and outputs.

Each PDF to Markdown converter guide includes a downloadable sample, expected output, failure modes, and fixes — not generic keyword filler.

PDF to Markdown: a quality-first guide

Compare local extraction, OCR, and VLM parsing with one reproducible sample.

Read guide

Keep tables intact in Markdown

When to use GFM tables, HTML, or source-map JSON.

Read guide

Prepare PDFs for Obsidian

Frontmatter, a table of contents, and block ids that link back to the page.

Read guide
FAQ

PDF to Markdown questions

Common questions about converting PDF files to Markdown, privacy, quality, and limits.

How do I convert a PDF to Markdown?

Choose a PDF at the top of this page, or open the built-in sample. The document is parsed in your browser, and the Markdown appears next to the original page. Use Copy to move it into another editor, or Download to save clean Markdown or an Obsidian note with frontmatter and page anchors.

Is this PDF to Markdown converter free?

Yes. Local conversion of digital PDFs is free with no account and no page limit per file. Paid credits only apply to pages that need Advanced OCR, and you approve those pages before anything is uploaded.

Do my files get uploaded to a server?

Not in local mode. Text extraction runs in your browser, so document content makes no network request. The page counter shows how many pages have left your device — it stays at zero until you explicitly approve an OCR upgrade.

Can it convert scanned PDFs and images?

A scanned PDF has no text layer, so local extraction cannot read it. pdfmd detects those pages and marks them for OCR rather than silently returning empty Markdown.

Are tables and formulas preserved?

Simple tables convert to GitHub-flavored Markdown tables. Tables that span pages or use merged cells are flagged in the Source panel so you can check them, and complex layouts can be exported as source-map JSON instead of being flattened.

What can I do with the Markdown afterwards?

Paste it into Obsidian, Notion, or any Markdown editor, commit it to a docs site such as MkDocs or Docusaurus, or chunk it for retrieval-augmented generation. The Obsidian export adds frontmatter, a table of contents, and anchors back to the original page.

Privacy you can see.

The counter above shows how many pages left your device. Local mode makes no document-content network requests.

Read how local mode and selective OCR work
Inspect local mode