Markdown to PDF

Convert your Markdown files to PDF, right here in your browser.

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... or drop files here

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Add a Markdown file to convert.

Frequently asked questions

What is actually inside a Markdown file?

A .md file is ordinary text with a handful of punctuation conventions standing in for formatting, which is why it stays readable even with nothing to render it.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. Your Markdown file is read and the PDF is built entirely inside your browser, so nothing ever leaves your device.

Can I convert several files at once?

Yes. Add as many Markdown files as you like and download the PDFs one by one, or all together as a ZIP archive.

Will the layout look exactly like the original?

The text, headings, lists and tables carry over and are laid out onto clean A4 pages. This is a content-faithful conversion rather than a pixel-perfect copy of the original formatting.

Is there a file size or file count limit?

No. Everything runs on your own device, so the only practical limit is how much memory your browser has available.

Do I need to install anything?

No. There is nothing to install and no account to create — the converter runs in any modern browser, on desktop and mobile alike.

Will the # symbols show up in my PDF?

No — that is the whole point. Heading markers are interpreted as structure and rendered as headings, not printed literally the way they would be if you printed the .md file from a text editor. The exception is a # inside a fenced code block, which is content and stays exactly as written.

Is code formatting preserved?

Yes. Triple-backtick fences are recognised and their contents set in a monospaced face with line breaks and indentation intact. The converter tracks whether it is inside a fence, so Markdown-like characters in your code — a shell comment, a YAML list, a diff — are treated as code rather than reinterpreted as markup.

Are Markdown tables rendered as tables?

Not as ruled grids. Pipe tables are a GitHub Flavored Markdown extension rather than part of the core syntax, and they come through as text. For a document where tables carry the content, converting to HTML first with a GFM-aware tool and then converting that HTML preserves more.

Do images in my Markdown appear?

No. Images in Markdown are references — a path or a URL — not embedded data, and this converter makes no network requests and reads no files other than the one you gave it. Fetching them would mean uploading your document's contents to fetch against, which is exactly what this tool exists not to do.

Does bold and italic text come through?

The text does; the styling does not. Emphasis is inline syntax and the layout here works at block level, so **bold** arrives as text rather than as bold type. Headings, lists and code blocks — the structure that makes a document navigable — are what is preserved.

Can I convert a README from a repository?

Yes, and it is one of the most common uses. Save the raw .md file and convert it. Anything the README pulls in from elsewhere — badge images, screenshots, linked files — will not appear, since those are network references rather than part of the document.

Markdown was written in 2004 as a way to make plain text that reads well as plain text and converts cleanly to something else. Twenty years on it is what most READMEs, most documentation, most technical notes and a good deal of everything else is written in — and the moment any of it has to be sent to someone outside the toolchain that renders it, it needs to become a PDF.

This converter reads the structural markup and renders it: `#` heading levels become headings, list items become bullets, and fenced code blocks become monospaced blocks that keep their spacing. What it does not do is treat your document as a page of raw text with hashes in it, which is what happens if you print a .md file directly.

The scope is deliberately the structural subset rather than every extension anyone has added since. What that covers, and what it leaves out, is set out below rather than left for you to discover.

How to convert Markdown to PDF

Add your .md files
Drop them in or choose them. Each becomes its own PDF, named after the original file.
Convert
The file is decoded as UTF-8 and read line by line, tracking whether it is inside a fenced code block, since text inside a fence is content rather than markup and must not be interpreted.
Download
Save the PDF. Nothing was uploaded; the file was read in your browser.

What is rendered

Headings: ATX headings — the `#` through `######` form — become real headings in the PDF, giving the document the hierarchy it was written with.
Fenced code blocks: Triple-backtick fences are recognised and their contents rendered in a monospaced face with the internal line breaks and indentation intact. Crucially, the fence is tracked as state, so a `#` inside a code sample stays a `#` rather than becoming a heading.
Lists: Bulleted and numbered items each come through on their own line. The item text is preserved; deep nesting flattens.
Paragraphs: Carried through as body text, with blank-line separation respected the way Markdown intends.
Inline emphasis: Not styled. Bold and italic markers are part of the inline syntax rather than the block structure, and the layout here works at block level; emphasised text comes through as text.
Tables and images: Pipe tables are not laid out as grids, and images referenced by URL or path are not fetched — a converter running entirely in your browser and deliberately making no network requests cannot go and download them.

Why code fences are the part that matters

Most Markdown that people need as a PDF is technical: a README, an API note, a runbook, a design document. All of it contains code, and code contains characters that look exactly like Markdown syntax. A shell prompt starts with `#`. A YAML file is full of `-` at the start of lines. A diff is nothing but `+` and `-`.

A converter that does not track fence state turns every one of those into a heading or a bullet, and the result is not slightly wrong but unreadable. Handling the fence properly — treating everything between the backticks as literal content — is the difference between a usable technical document and a mangled one, which is why it is the thing this converter is most careful about.

Markdown flavours

There is no single Markdown. CommonMark is the specification that pinned down the ambiguities in the original; GitHub Flavored Markdown adds tables, strikethrough, task lists and autolinking on top; and MDX, Obsidian, Pandoc and others each add more.

What is handled here is the structural core those flavours agree on — headings, lists, paragraphs, fenced code — which is the part that carries a document's shape. The extensions are where they diverge, and a syntax one tool renders as a table is literal text in another.

If your document depends on GFM tables or task lists, converting it to HTML first with a tool that speaks your flavour, then converting that HTML, will preserve more than converting the Markdown directly.

About the Markdown format

.md is the markup format John Gruber and Aaron Swartz introduced in 2004. It is published as an open specification under the name CommonMark, so a file can be read without the program that wrote it.

A .md file is ordinary text with a handful of punctuation conventions standing in for formatting, which is why it stays readable even with nothing to render it.

Files like this usually come out of Obsidian, Typora, VS Code, and GitHub.

What comes through

heading levels
bulleted and numbered lists
body text
table rows and columns
hyperlinks
reading order

What does not

embedded images
the exact page design

Worth knowing

Markdown syntax is rendered rather than printed: hash marks become real headings, asterisks become bold and italic text, and the punctuation itself disappears.

Information