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.

How is this different from a YouTube transcript browser extension?

Browser extensions scrape YouTube's built-in caption sidebar, so you're stuck with auto-caption quality (flat, often inaccurate on technical content or accented speech, missing entirely on un-captioned videos). mdisbetter runs server-side Whisper-class speech recognition directly on the video's audio — more accurate, works on un-captioned videos, gives you a clean downloadable file. No extension to install, no permission grants, just paste the URL.

Does it work on YouTube Shorts?

Yes — YouTube Shorts are just short videos technically. Paste the Shorts URL, get the transcript back. The output is just a few lines for a typical 30-60 second Short, but the workflow is identical to long-form video. Useful for capturing creator quotes from Shorts you want to reference.

Will it work on age-restricted or members-only YouTube videos?

Public videos work directly via URL. Age-restricted and members-only content requires you to download the video first (yt-dlp handles auth-gated content if you're a legitimate viewer with valid cookies/credentials) and upload the resulting file to the video converter. The text output is identical either way; the difference is just whether mdisbetter's URL workflow can resolve the content directly.

How accurate is the transcription compared to YouTube's auto-captions?

Whisper-class models typically outperform YouTube's auto-captions, especially on technical content (95%+ vs YouTube's often-poor performance on jargon), accented speech (consistent quality across accents vs YouTube's English-bias), and audio with mild background noise. For straightforward English content with clean audio, both are similar quality. The mdisbetter advantage compounds when the video is technical, accented, or has imperfect audio — exactly the cases where YouTube's auto-captions struggle most.

Can I batch-convert many YouTube URLs at once?

Not via the web tool — mdisbetter is one-URL-at-a-time. For batch YouTube-to-text on many videos (a whole playlist, a channel's archive), use yt-dlp to download the audio in bulk (one command for a whole playlist) then faster-whisper to transcribe locally. Both MIT-licensed, free, processes hundreds of hours overnight on a GPU. mdisbetter's web tool is for one-off conversions where the per-URL workflow is acceptable.

YouTube to Text — Free Online Converter

Why "YouTube to Text" matters

Most useful information from YouTube isn't in YouTube itself — it's in the words being spoken. The video is the delivery vehicle; the substance is text trapped inside an audio track. Converting to text turns a 45-minute video into something you can skim in 5 minutes, ctrl-F across, paste into a document, feed to an AI, or cite in research. The text is the actual content; the video is the container.

What we do differently than browser extensions

Most "YouTube to text" browser extensions scrape YouTube's built-in caption sidebar — so you're stuck with whatever quality YouTube's auto-captions provide (flat, often inaccurate, missing entirely on un-captioned videos). mdisbetter runs server-side speech recognition (Whisper-class) directly on the video's audio, so the output is more accurate, works on un-captioned videos, and you get a clean downloadable text file rather than copy-paste from a sidebar.

Workflow

Paste the YouTube URL into the converter, click Convert, wait a few minutes (depends on video length), download the .txt file. No browser extension to install, no YouTube account to link, no caption-sidebar scraping. Works equally on YouTube, YouTube Music, YouTube Shorts, and YouTube live VODs (after the livestream has finished processing into a regular video).

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

YouTube to Text — Convert YouTube Videos to Text Free

Why "YouTube to Text" matters

What we do differently than browser extensions

Workflow

Frequently asked questions

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Tools

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How credits work

Questions

Stop feeding garbageto your AI

Tools

Stop sending PDFs to your AI.

How does it work?

Frequently Asked Questions

Master any tool without watching a single YouTube video

Choose your plan

How credits work

Questions

Stop feeding garbage
to your AI