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pdfmarkdown.app
Turn PDFs into AI-ready Markdown, right in your browser
Turn PDFs into AI-ready Markdown without uploading your files to a server. Tables, formulas, and images stay usable, while a side-by-side view lets you check the output against the original before trusting it. It also handles scanned and encrypted PDFs. Free, no signup, and everything runs in your browser.
I use Obsidian to manage much of my personal knowledge. Markdown notes are easy to search, link, edit, and reuse with AI. PDFs are the awkward exception.
Research papers, books, reports, and manuals often arrive as PDFs, but they don’t fit naturally into a Markdown knowledge base. Every small question means parsing the whole PDF again and burning more tokens.
I kept looking for a better way to convert them.
Some open-source tools are genuinely powerful, but they require a command line and a fresh setup on every computer. Most aren’t directly accessible from a phone, and I couldn’t easily hand them to a non-technical family member.
Simpler web tools often upload the PDF to a server. That may be fine for a public paper, but not for medical records, tax documents, or anything else I want to keep private.
👉 So I built pdfmarkdown.app: a PDF-to-Markdown tool that runs directly in your browser.
What makes it different:
→ Keep the document, not just the words It reconstructs tables, formulas, and reading order instead of flattening everything into plain text. Images are cropped, kept in place, and bundled with the Markdown for easy Obsidian import.
→ See it before your AI does The PDF and Markdown stay side-by-side and scroll in sync in either direction. Click any part of the Markdown to jump to its source in the PDF, making it faster to verify the result before using it in your knowledge base or AI workflow.
→ Private without the setup Everything runs on your device, including OCR for scanned pages. There’s no server upload, account, installation, or command line. Open the site on a computer or phone and start converting.
It also handles encrypted PDFs and CJK documents, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text.
The hardest part wasn’t extracting words. PDFs store where content is drawn, not how it should be read. Reconstructing columns, tables, formulas, and image placement took far more work than I expected.
pdfmarkdown.app is free to use. I’d especially love feedback from Obsidian users, researchers, and anyone building a personal knowledge base.
Try one of the real examples on the homepage, or give it the hardest PDF you have. I’d love to hear what you’re bringing into your knowledge base and how the conversion holds up.
No comment highlights available yet. Please check back later!
About pdfmarkdown.app on Product Hunt
“Turn PDFs into AI-ready Markdown, right in your browser”
pdfmarkdown.app was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 2 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #160 on the daily leaderboard. Turn PDFs into AI-ready Markdown without uploading your files to a server. Tables, formulas, and images stay usable, while a side-by-side view lets you check the output against the original before trusting it. It also handles scanned and encrypted PDFs. Free, no signup, and everything runs in your browser.
pdfmarkdown.app was featured in Productivity (656.7k followers), Writing (59.3k followers) and Artificial Intelligence (474.3k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 268.4k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted pdfmarkdown.app?
pdfmarkdown.app was hunted by Jerome. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how pdfmarkdown.app stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Jerome
Hey PH 👋
I’m Jerome, the indie maker behind pdfmarkdown.app.
I use Obsidian to manage much of my personal knowledge. Markdown notes are easy to search, link, edit, and reuse with AI. PDFs are the awkward exception.
Research papers, books, reports, and manuals often arrive as PDFs, but they don’t fit naturally into a Markdown knowledge base. Every small question means parsing the whole PDF again and burning more tokens.
I kept looking for a better way to convert them.
Some open-source tools are genuinely powerful, but they require a command line and a fresh setup on every computer. Most aren’t directly accessible from a phone, and I couldn’t easily hand them to a non-technical family member.
Simpler web tools often upload the PDF to a server. That may be fine for a public paper, but not for medical records, tax documents, or anything else I want to keep private.
👉 So I built pdfmarkdown.app: a PDF-to-Markdown tool that runs directly in your browser.
What makes it different:
→ Keep the document, not just the words
It reconstructs tables, formulas, and reading order instead of flattening everything into plain text. Images are cropped, kept in place, and bundled with the Markdown for easy Obsidian import.
→ See it before your AI does
The PDF and Markdown stay side-by-side and scroll in sync in either direction. Click any part of the Markdown to jump to its source in the PDF, making it faster to verify the result before using it in your knowledge base or AI workflow.
→ Private without the setup
Everything runs on your device, including OCR for scanned pages. There’s no server upload, account, installation, or command line. Open the site on a computer or phone and start converting.
It also handles encrypted PDFs and CJK documents, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text.
The hardest part wasn’t extracting words. PDFs store where content is drawn, not how it should be read. Reconstructing columns, tables, formulas, and image placement took far more work than I expected.
pdfmarkdown.app is free to use. I’d especially love feedback from Obsidian users, researchers, and anyone building a personal knowledge base.
Try one of the real examples on the homepage, or give it the hardest PDF you have.
I’d love to hear what you’re bringing into your knowledge base and how the conversion holds up.