PDF to Markdown

Convert documents to clean Markdown for RAG and LLMs.

✨ Premium AI engine
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Drag and drop, or paste a screenshot

Image, PDF, Word (DOCX) or text - drop, browse, paste, or use a URL

🔒 Your files are processed privately and deleted automatically.

Convert PDF to Markdown that keeps the structure of your document instead of flattening it into one long string of text. OCR.chat reads each page with its premium AI engine and rebuilds the headings, bullet and numbered lists, tables, and reading order as clean, layout-aware Markdown you can use anywhere Markdown is supported.

This tool is built for anyone feeding documents into LLMs and RAG pipelines, where structure is what the model actually reasons over. It is just as useful for moving reports, manuals, contracts, and research papers into note apps like Obsidian, Notion, or a static-site repo, or for turning a scanned handout into editable Markdown you can clean up in seconds.

OCR.chat is free to try with no signup, and PDF to Markdown runs on the premium AI tier so complex layouts, multi-column pages, and embedded tables come through intact rather than scrambled. You see the recognized Markdown next to your original page with low-confidence spots flagged, so you can trust what you copy before it ever reaches your model or your notes.

How to pdf to markdown

1
Upload your document
Drag and drop a PDF or image onto the page, paste a screenshot, or pick a file from your device.
2
Let the AI engine read it
The premium AI tier processes every page, detecting headings, lists, and tables along with the correct reading order.
3
Review side by side
Check the generated Markdown next to your original, with low-confidence text flagged so nothing slips by unnoticed.
4
Download or copy the Markdown
Export a .md file or copy the Markdown straight to your clipboard for your RAG pipeline, repo, or note app.

Common uses

  • Prepare documents for RAG and LLM ingestion, where headings and lists give the model the structure it needs to retrieve and reason accurately.
  • Migrate reports, manuals, and PDFs into note apps like Obsidian or Notion without losing their outline.
  • Turn scanned research papers and articles into clean Markdown for citation, annotation, or rewriting.
  • Convert product docs and internal wikis into Markdown for a static-site generator or docs repo.
  • Extract structured text from contracts and policies so legal and compliance teams can search and quote them.
  • Digitize printed handouts and worksheets into editable Markdown for course materials and study notes.

Frequently asked questions

The premium AI engine is tuned for complex layouts and typically reproduces headings, lists, tables, and reading order faithfully. Every result is shown side by side with your original and low-confidence text is flagged, so you can verify anything before you use it.

You can upload PDF as well as PNG, JPG, WEBP, GIF, BMP, and TIFF images. The output is a Markdown (.md) file, and you can also copy the Markdown to your clipboard from the result screen.

Yes. Tables are reconstructed as real Markdown tables with aligned columns rather than misaligned runs of text, and nothing is silently dropped from the page.

Markdown keeps the document's structure, such as headings, lists, and tables, which LLMs use to understand context and retrieve the right passages. A raw text dump loses that structure and usually produces worse answers.

Yes. The premium AI tier detects multi-column layouts and reassembles them in the correct reading order instead of interleaving the columns line by line.

OCR.chat recognizes text in over 100 languages, including Latin, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Indic scripts. Foreign words are transcribed as written and never auto-translated.

Yes. Section titles become Markdown headings (# and ##) so your document keeps its outline, and monospaced or indented passages are wrapped as code blocks. That structure is what lets a RAG retriever chunk on headings and an LLM keep code snippets intact.

OCR.chat focuses on the text content, so charts, photos, and figures are not embedded as binary in the Markdown. Any text inside a figure, such as labels or captions, is still read and placed in reading order, which is usually what an LLM needs.

Inline symbols and simple expressions are transcribed as text, and the premium AI tier can render math as LaTeX so equations survive in a form an LLM can read. Very dense or hand-drawn notation should be checked against the side-by-side view.

It tends to. Markdown drops the layout noise and repeated whitespace of a raw PDF dump, so you send tighter, better-structured input. For very long PDFs you can split the resulting Markdown by heading to stay under a model's context window.

Single conversions run right in your browser, and larger or multi-file jobs process in the background. Free use comes with a monthly page allowance; paid plans from $5/mo add more pages (credits count as pages), batch processing, and a REST API so you can convert PDFs to Markdown straight from your own pipeline.

You can try it free with no signup. A free account gives you a monthly page allowance, and paid plans from $5/mo add more pages, batch processing, and API access. Files are processed for OCR only, then deleted automatically, and never sold or shared.

Use this via the API

Run this tool programmatically with a single POST. Authenticate with the API token from your account page.

curl -X POST https://ocr.chat/api/v1/ocr/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -F "file=@your-file.png" \
  -F "tool=pdf-to-markdown"

Files of 5 pages or fewer return the result inline; otherwise poll the job, then download it as md:

curl -L "https://ocr.chat/api/v1/ocr/JOB_UUID/download/?format=md" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" -o result.md
Read the API docs →

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