How do I convert a PDF to Markdown for free?

Upload your PDF to mdisbetter.com, click Convert, and get clean structured Markdown in seconds. No signup, no installation — it works directly in your browser.

Why is Markdown better than PDF for AI?

Markdown reduces token usage by up to 95% compared to PDF when feeding documents to AI models like ChatGPT or Claude. PDF contains layout metadata, fonts, and binary data that waste tokens. Markdown preserves only the content structure that AI actually needs.

What file types can MDisBetter convert to Markdown?

MDisBetter converts PDF, Word (.docx), plain text, YouTube videos (transcript extraction), audio files (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC, WEBM), and any web page URL to clean Markdown.

Is MDisBetter free to use?

Yes, MDisBetter is completely free. You get 10 conversions per day with no signup required. All tools work directly in your browser.

How do I extract a YouTube transcript as Markdown?

Paste the YouTube video URL into the YouTube to Markdown tool on mdisbetter.com and click Convert. The tool extracts the transcript and structures it as clean, formatted Markdown with headings and timestamps.

Does the converter produce Jekyll-compatible Markdown?

Yes — the structured Markdown output works as-is in any Jekyll post. Add YAML frontmatter at the top, save with Jekyll's required filename convention, and jekyll build picks it up on the next run. The transcript renders through whatever post layout your theme provides.

How should I name files for the _posts directory?

Jekyll requires YYYY-MM-DD-title-slug.md . Use the publish date as the prefix (matches the post's sort order) and a hyphenated lowercase ASCII slug as the title portion. Most slugify libraries ( jekyll-slugify , python-slugify ) produce a Jekyll-safe slug from any string.

What about Liquid template tags in the transcript?

If the transcript happens to contain literal text that looks like Liquid ( {{ ... }} or {% ... %} ), Jekyll will try to evaluate it during build. Wrap such content in {% raw %} ... {% endraw %} blocks — usually only relevant for technical podcast episodes that quote Liquid syntax verbatim.

Can I add an audio player above the transcript?

Yes — in your post layout ( _layouts/post.html or a custom _layouts/episode.html ), include an HTML5 audio element pointing to the audio_url from frontmatter: <audio controls src="\{\{ page.audio_url \}\}"></audio> . The transcript renders below as the post body. Listeners can play and read in parallel.

How do I migrate a back catalogue of episodes?

For 5-30 episodes, the web tool plus copy-paste handles each in a few minutes — manageable in one sitting. For 100+ episodes, run a local OSS transcription pipeline (Whisper or faster-whisper) that emits structured Markdown, write each result into _posts/ with the right filename, commit. MDisBetter's web tool is designed for ongoing per-episode publication; bulk historical backfill is better served by OSS automation.

Audio to Markdown for Jekyll — Episode Posts

The episode-to-post workflow for Jekyll

For each episode: convert audio on Audio to Markdown, save as _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-episode-slug.md using the publish date and a slugified title. Prepend YAML frontmatter: layout: episode (or your theme's post layout), title, date, guests, tags, excerpt, audio_url. Jekyll's build picks up the new post on the next run.

For the layout, either use your theme's default post layout (works fine for most podcast themes) or create a custom episode layout that surfaces the audio player at the top, the transcript below, and per-episode metadata in a sidebar. Either approach takes the converted Markdown as the body content.

Filename conventions Jekyll requires

YYYY-MM-DD-title-slug.md with the date matching the actual publish date and the slug ASCII-only with hyphens. 2026-02-14-interview-with-sarah-chen.md is canonical. Jekyll uses the date prefix for ordering and URL generation; the slug becomes the URL path. Match the slug to the SEO-friendly form of the title for best discoverability.

Why publish full transcripts

Three benefits compound. SEO: Google indexes the page as a real text article and surfaces it for long-tail queries. Accessibility: deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors can access the content. Citation: listeners can quote specific passages with timestamps, link back to the source, drive new traffic. Pair with PDF to Markdown for Jekyll and URL to Markdown for Jekyll for non-audio content sources.

Tool	Cost	Unit
Text to MD, EPUB to MD, MD to PDF, MD Cleaner, Merger, Chunker, Token Counter, Context Builder	Free	—
Word to MD	0.5 credit	per page
Excel to MD	0.5 credit	per conversion
Single URL Scrape	0.5 credit	per call
Site Crawl	1 credit	per page
Translate	1 credit	per 10 000 chars (min 1, free re-translation on cache hit)
Prompt Optimizer	1 credit	per call
System Prompt Generator	1 credit	per call
Audio to MD	2 credits	per minute
Video to MD	2 credits	per minute
YouTube to MD	2 credits	per minute
Image OCR	4 credits	per image (0 on cache hit)
PDF to MD	4 credits	per page
PPTX to MD	4 credits	per slide

Audio to Markdown for Jekyll — Audio Content to Blog

The episode-to-post workflow for Jekyll

Filename conventions Jekyll requires

Why publish full transcripts

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