You want the words from a website, not the entire site experience. Strip a URL down to its main-content text — no menus, no cookie bars, no "subscribe to our newsletter" pop-ups, no related-articles widgets, no ad slots. Useful for piping web content into a script, a search index, an NLP pipeline, or anywhere that wants flat UTF-8 strings.
How "Website to Text" actually works here
Paste a URL into the input. The page renders in a headless browser so JavaScript-rendered content actually loads, then a Mozilla-Readability-style extraction pass identifies the main content area, then a final flattening step strips structural markers (no # for headings, no * for lists, no fenced code blocks — just the words). The result is plain UTF-8, copy-paste-ready, search-indexable, ready for any tool that wants string input.
Single page or whole site
Paste one URL for a single-page extraction — the most common use case. For converting many pages of a site to text, run the same workflow URL-by-URL through the web tool, or use an OSS pipeline locally (Trafilatura's trafilatura --sitemap command crawls a site and emits one text file per page, MIT-licensed). MDisBetter is a web tool today, no programmatic API; the OSS path is what makes the multi-page case scale.
If structure matters: use Markdown instead
Plain text is fine for search indexing, NLP token streams, and grep-style scripts. For AI input — feeding the page content to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini — Markdown reads more accurately and at lower token cost because the model can use the heading hierarchy to navigate. See /convert/url-to-markdown for the structure-preserving alternative.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between Website to Text and URL to Markdown?
Website to Text gives you flat UTF-8 — no structural markers, no headings, no list bullets. URL to Markdown preserves the page's heading hierarchy, lists, tables, and code blocks as Markdown syntax. Use Text for search indexing, NLP token pipelines, or plain-text scripts that don't care about structure; use Markdown when structure matters (AI input, wikis, docs sites, anything humans will read with formatting).
Does this handle JavaScript-rendered single-page apps?
Yes — pages render in a headless browser before extraction, so SPAs (React, Vue, Svelte sites) load their actual content first. A naive curl URL would return the empty shell; we wait for hydration and read the rendered DOM.
Are nav menus, cookie banners, and ads removed?
Yes — readability-style extraction detects the main content area and discards site furniture (nav, side rails, footer, cookie consent, newsletter pop-ups, related-posts widgets, comment threads). What's left is the article body. The whole point of converting away from the raw HTML is to lose the chrome and keep the words.
Can I extract text from multiple URLs in one go?
Through the web tool, you convert one URL at a time — paste, click, download, repeat. For genuine batch work across many URLs, an OSS pipeline locally is the right path: install trafilatura (MIT-licensed Python library), point it at a sitemap with trafilatura --sitemap https://example.com/sitemap.xml --output-dir ./out, get one text file per page in the output folder. MDisBetter doesn't expose a programmatic batch API today.
Does this respect robots.txt?
Single-page extraction in the web tool fetches one URL you already know about — same as opening the page in your browser. For multi-page crawls via the OSS path (Trafilatura), respect robots.txt by default: it's the polite default and respects the site owner's intent. Don't use any text extractor (ours or OSS) to bulk-scrape sites whose terms of service forbid it.
Your AI doesn't read PDFs directly. It first has to extract the text, decode the layout, ignore the metadata — before it can even start answering. A Markdown file removes all of those steps. Your AI reads it instantly. So you get faster responses, more accurate results, and zero information lost along the way.
Size-wise, it's 100 to 500 times lighter for the same content. A 15 MB PDF becomes a 30 KB .md file. So your AI knowledge base can hold hundreds of documents instead of a handful.
MDisBetter brings 19 free tools together for that — documents, videos, audio, web pages and prompts.
How does it work?
Drop a PDF, a video, an audio file or a URL. MDisBetter extracts the content and gives you a clean Markdown file. So you can send it to your AI, add it to your project files, or store it in your knowledge base — without losing anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I convert a PDF to Markdown for free?
Upload your PDF to MDisBetter, click Convert, and get structured Markdown in seconds. No signup, no installation — it works directly in your browser. The free plan includes 50 credits per month.
Why is Markdown better than PDF for AI?
Markdown reduces token usage by up to 95% compared to PDF. AI models like ChatGPT and Claude process Markdown far more efficiently because it contains only content structure — no fonts, no layout data, no binary overhead.
What file types can MDisBetter convert?
MDisBetter converts PDF, Word (.docx), plain text, YouTube videos (transcript), audio files (MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG, FLAC, WEBM), and any web page URL to clean Markdown.
Is MDisBetter free?
Yes, free to start. The free plan includes 50 credits per month. All processing happens securely — your files are never stored.
Can I extract a YouTube transcript as Markdown?
Yes. Paste the YouTube video URL, click Convert, and get the full transcript structured as Markdown with headings and timestamps. Perfect for feeding video content to AI tools.
PDF → Markdown
Faithful and structured conversion of your documents
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
Questions
Yes! You get 50 credits every month to use any tool. Basic tools like MD Cleaner or Token Counter cost just 0.5 credit per use. When you run out, credits reset the next month or you can upgrade for more.
Wait for your monthly reset or upgrade to a higher plan. Credits renew on your billing date each month.
Yes, cancel anytime with one click. No questions asked. You keep access until the end of your billing period.
Pro gives you 30,000 credits for $29 — that's 30x more credits than Starter for just 3x the price. Every credit costs less, so you get far more value per dollar.