Markdown to Plain Text — Strip Markdown Formatting Online Free
Strip Markdown formatting to clean plain text. Remove headings, links, code blocks, images, bold, italic, and formatting. All processing runs in your browser — your text never leaves your device.
Markdown is everywhere — READMEs, GitHub issues, Slack messages, Notion pages, documentation sites — and it is designed to be readable as plain text. But the formatting syntax that makes it readable also adds noise when you need to extract just the words. Links carry URLs; headings carry hash marks; bold text carries asterisks; code blocks are syntax, not prose. The Markdown to Plain Text tool strips all of that in a single pass: code blocks and fenced blocks are removed; images keep only their alt text; links keep only their display text; headings, blockquotes, lists, and horizontal rules are reduced to their textual content; and every inline formatting marker is erased.
The tool is the inverse of a Markdown renderer. A renderer turns Markdown into HTML — richer, more structured, carrying semantic tags. The stripper turns Markdown into the simplest possible representation — bare text with no markup, no metadata, no syntax. The output is clean enough for a word counter, a plain-text email, a text-to-speech pipeline, or a full-text search index. It is the right tool when Markdown is the input format but not the desired output.
The most common workflow: you have written a README in Markdown and need to count its words for a documentation budget. You paste it into the stripper, copy the plain text, and paste that into the word counter. The word count is now accurate — no hash marks, no link URLs, no code fence noise. The second most common workflow: you receive a Markdown newsletter and want to forward the text as a plain-text email. The stripper removes the formatting so the email client doesn’t render raw Markdown syntax as broken formatting. Every character of processing stays in your browser — your text is read locally by the FileReader or the textarea and never transmitted to any server.
How to use
Paste your Markdown
Paste or type Markdown text into the input area. The tool accepts standard CommonMark — headings, bold, italic, links, images, code blocks (fenced and indented), blockquotes, ordered and unordered lists, and horizontal rules.
Convert to plain text
Click Convert. The tool strips all Markdown formatting in a single pass: headings lose their `#` markers but keep the title text; bold and italic markers are removed; links keep their display text and drop the URL; images keep their alt text; code blocks are removed entirely; list markers are stripped; and blockquote markers are removed.
Copy or download
The output is clean, readable plain text suitable for word counting, pasting into a plain-text email, or feeding into a text analysis pipeline. Download as `.txt` or copy to clipboard.
Frequently asked
What gets removed and what is kept?
Code blocks (fenced and indented) are removed entirely — code is not prose. Images lose their URL but keep their alt text, so `` becomes `diagram`. Links keep their display text: `[click here](url)` becomes `click here`. All inline formatting markers (bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code backticks) are stripped. Headings, blockquotes, and list markers are removed but their text content is preserved.
Does it keep the link text?
Yes. Links like `[click here](https://example.com)` become just `click here`. The URL is discarded but the human-readable label is preserved. This is the correct default because the link text was written to be read; the URL is machine metadata. Reference-style links `[text][ref]` are also stripped, keeping the display text.
What about HTML in Markdown?
Raw HTML tags embedded in Markdown are preserved as-is. The stripper only handles Markdown syntax, not HTML. If your Markdown contains HTML markup (e.g. `<div>`, `<span style='...'>`), those tags will pass through unchanged. For that case, run the output through an HTML-to-plain-text converter or strip HTML tags separately.
Why would I use this instead of a Markdown renderer?
A Markdown renderer produces HTML, which carries its own syntax. This tool produces plain text — no tags, no formatting characters, no markup. Use it when you need clean text for a word count, a plain-text email body, a text analysis pipeline, or a search index. The output is the minimum viable representation of the content.
How does it handle tables?
Table markup is partially stripped. The pipe characters and alignment dashes are removed, but the cell text is preserved and separated by whitespace. Complex tables may lose their column alignment. For structured tabular data, convert the Markdown to CSV first or extract the table with a Markdown table parser.
Limitations
- No rendering logicThis tool strips Markdown syntax — it does not resolve references, interpret link definitions at the bottom of the document, or process footnote definitions. Those elements may leave behind syntax artifacts in the output.
- Code blocks are removedBoth fenced code blocks (```) and indented code blocks are removed entirely. This is intentional — code is not prose and would clutter the plain-text output. Use a Markdown renderer if you need to preserve code in the output.
- No nested format resolutionComplex nested formatting like `**[linked *italic* text](url)**` may not be stripped perfectly. The stripper applies transformations in sequence and deeply nested patterns can leave residual syntax markers.
Platform notes
- macOS
- Use `pandoc -f markdown -t plain input.md` for a more sophisticated CLI alternative that handles reference links, pipe tables, and footnotes correctly. The browser tool is faster for quick one-off conversions.
- Windows
- Paste Markdown from any Windows application — VS Code, Notion, GitHub, Teams. The browser clipboard API reads the formatted text and the textarea accepts it as plain Markdown.
- Linux
- `pandoc` and `commonmark` are the CLI alternatives. The browser tool is convenient when pandoc isn't installed or when you need to strip formatting from text that is already on your clipboard rather than in a file.
- Web
- Runs entirely in the browser. No text content is sent to a server. Useful for stripping formatting from sensitive documents — legal briefs, internal reports, contract drafts — without exposing the content to a third-party conversion service.