PDF to Markdown
Your PDF becomes structured text, ready for a Markdown editor.
Your files never leave your deviceDrop your PDF here
Conversion starts automatically as soon as you drop the file
How to convert a PDF to Markdown, step by step
The PDF’s text is rebuilt as Markdown from its visual formatting — font sizes, bullet or numbered lines — directly in your browser.
Drop in the PDF
Drag the file onto the drop area, or click to browse your files. Conversion starts automatically, page by page.
Watch the progress
A message shows the page currently being processed (“Page n of total”) while VellumPDF groups the text into headings, lists and paragraphs.
Choose whether pages are separated
The “Separate pages with a --- line” checkbox, on by default, inserts a separator line between each page; turn it off for a continuous document with no page markers.
Read the Markdown shown on screen
The result appears in a scrolling box, with the character count just above it.
Download or copy the result
“Download .md” saves a Markdown file; “Copy” places it on the clipboard.
As with plain text extraction, a password-protected PDF is refused right away: remove the protection first with the unlock tool.
Frequently asked questions
How does VellumPDF decide on the headings in the Markdown file?
The tool analyzes the font sizes in the PDF to spot a visual hierarchy and infer level 1, 2 or 3 headings from it. On a document without a clear typographic hierarchy, the result stays plain text.
Are tables and multi-column layouts preserved?
No, tables are not rebuilt as Markdown, and a multi-column layout may be read in an unexpected order, since the analysis works line by line rather than by page region. The result works best for a document with a simple text flow.
What happens if my PDF is a scanned document?
If no text can be extracted, the PDF is probably made up of scanned images. Run it through VellumPDF’s OCR tool first before converting it to Markdown. The conversion itself is free and runs in your browser.
Which signals are headings recognised from?
A PDF never declares “this is a heading”: it has to be guessed. The tool relies on a single signal, font size, compared with the dominant body-text size across the whole document. Sizes that are clearly larger (at least 15% more) form heading tiers: the largest becomes a level-1 heading, the next a level-2, and all the rest level-3. The tool does not look at font weight, position on the page, or words like “Chapter” or “Article”.
Can I correct the suggested hierarchy?
Not inside the tool: VellumPDF produces the Markdown in a single pass, with no list of headings to adjust before export. Detection gives a starting point, and corrections happen afterwards in any text editor — which is exactly what the format is for. Conversion starts automatically as soon as the file is dropped; the only setting that exists, shown once the result is ready, is the checkbox that adds or removes a --- line between pages.
What is the point of exporting a PDF to Markdown?
To get the text back in a form that keeps the structure and can be read anywhere: a code repository, a note-taking app, a site generator, a language model. Unlike a plain-text export, headings stay headings, so the document’s outline survives.