Wikipedia is the largest publicly-readable knowledge base on the planet, but raw HTML scrapes turn into noise: edit links next to every section, citation markers like "[1][2][3]" cluttering paragraphs, navboxes at the bottom that swamp the article. Our converter handles the wiki idioms specifically — citations stay as proper Markdown footnotes, infoboxes become tables, navboxes are dropped.
Wiki-specific conversion
MediaWiki pages share enough structure across instances that we can apply targeted heuristics. Section [edit] links — gone. Inline citations like [1] — kept as Markdown footnote references ([^1]) with the footnote text emitted in the references section. Infoboxes (the right-rail summary tables) — extracted as a leading GFM table or as YAML front matter, your choice. Navboxes (the giant footer link grids) — dropped entirely. Talk pages and edit history — out of scope; we convert article content only.
Reference handling
Wikipedia's reference list at the bottom of every article is preserved as Markdown footnotes. The numbering matches the inline references. External link targets are kept verbatim, so anyone reading the converted Markdown can still verify sources. For citation-heavy AI workflows (knowledge graphs, RAG with provenance), this preserves the chain from claim to source.
Before / After
Before (PDF):
[Wikipedia article HTML]
<h2>History <span class="mw-editsection">[edit]</span></h2>
<p>The company was founded in 1976<sup id="cite_ref-1"><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup> by …</p>
<table class="infobox">… 30 rows of metadata …</table>
<div class="navbox">… 200 footer links …</div>
After (Markdown):
## History
The company was founded in 1976[^1] by …
[^1]: Smith, John. *A History of Computing*, MIT Press, 2003.
Frequently asked questions
Are Wikipedia citations preserved as footnotes?
Yes — inline citation markers like [1] become Markdown footnote references ([^1]), and the references section at the article's end is emitted as the corresponding footnote definitions. Numbering is preserved so cross-references stay intact. Renders correctly in Pandoc, Obsidian, MkDocs, and most other Markdown viewers.
How are infoboxes converted?
The default is a leading GFM table with the infobox's field/value pairs. Pass ?infobox=front_matter to get YAML front matter instead — useful when the converted Markdown feeds a static-site generator that wants structured metadata.
Do Fandom and other MediaWiki sites work?
Yes — Fandom, MediaWiki.org, GamePedia, and most community wikis use the standard MediaWiki HTML structure with theme variations. Our extractor recognises the wiki idioms (section edit markers, infoboxes, navboxes) regardless of the host.
Are tables in wiki articles preserved?
Yes — wiki tables (the {| ... |} syntax that renders as <table class="wikitable">) become GFM tables. Complex multi-row headers and merged cells are flattened the same way as in our PDF table converter — see PDF Tables to Markdown for the strategy.
Can I convert a Wikipedia article in a non-English language?
Yes — language is irrelevant to the extraction. CJK, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, and right-to-left scripts are preserved correctly in the Markdown output. The MediaWiki page structure is consistent across language editions.
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
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