HTML to Markdown Converter

HTML to Markdown conversion is the process of transforming HTML markup into Markdown syntax — a lightweight, plain-text formatting language. Markdown uses simple characters like #, *, and - to represent headings, bold text, and lists instead of HTML tags like <h1>, <strong>, and <ul>.

This conversion is useful when migrating content between platforms, converting web pages to documentation formats, or extracting content from HTML emails and web scrapers into a more readable, portable format.

Markdown was created by John Gruber in 2004 as a way to write formatted text using a plain-text editor. Its syntax maps directly to common HTML elements: # for headings, **text** for bold, *text* for italic, [text](url) for links, and  for images.

Markdown has become the standard writing format for documentation (GitHub, GitLab), static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby), note-taking apps (Obsidian, Notion), and developer platforms. Its simplicity and readability make it ideal for technical and long-form writing.

Common scenarios for HTML-to-Markdown conversion include migrating a WordPress or CMS blog to a static site generator, extracting article content from web pages, converting HTML emails to readable plain text, cleaning up rich-text editor output, and preparing content for Markdown-based documentation platforms.

Automated conversion saves hours of manual reformatting and reduces the risk of errors. For large migration projects, programmatic conversion is the only practical approach.

When migrating content at scale, you typically need a pipeline: export HTML from the source platform, convert to Markdown, then import into the target system. This HTML-to-Markdown converter handles the middle step. For bulk conversion, you can adapt the same DOM-walking approach used here in a Node.js script.

Other useful tools in a migration workflow include JSON formatters for processing API exports, word counters for content auditing, and Markdown previews for validating the converted output before publishing.