Markdown to HTML

Convert Markdown to HTML online, in your browser

This Markdown to HTML converter parses your text with a GitHub-flavored Markdown engine as you type, highlights fenced code blocks, gives every heading a stable id for anchor links, and sanitizes the result. You then choose the shape you need:

• HTML — a clean, indented fragment to drop into a CMS, a blog template, an email builder, or a React component.
• Full page — a complete <!doctype html> document with one of four self-contained themes (GitHub, clean sans, classic serif, academic). No external fonts or stylesheets, so the file looks the same offline and when printed.
• Preview — exactly how the page renders, in a sandboxed frame.
• Plain text — Markdown converted to plain text: formatting removed, structure kept.
• Copy as rich text — formatted content on your clipboard for Google Docs, Gmail, Word, and Notion.

Nothing is uploaded — the Markdown to HTML conversion runs entirely on your device, so it's safe for private notes, internal docs, and unreleased READMEs, and it handles files of several megabytes without breaking a sweat.

How to paste Markdown into Google Docs (with formatting)

Paste raw Markdown into a Google Doc and you get literal asterisks and pound signs. To import Markdown to Google Docs as real formatting:

1. Paste your Markdown above, or open the .md file.
2. Click Copy as rich text.
3. In Google Docs, place the cursor and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac).

Headings land as Google Docs Heading 1–6 styles (so they show up in the document outline), lists stay real lists, tables become native tables with borders, links stay clickable, and code keeps a monospace font. Task-list checkboxes become ☐ / ☑.

Google Docs also has its own Markdown support: turn on Tools → Preferences → Enable Markdown and you can type Markdown shortcuts or use Edit → Paste from Markdown. That works well inside Docs; the copy-as-rich-text route here works the same way everywhere else too — Gmail, Outlook, Word, Notion, Confluence, and Slack canvases.

Markdown to rich text for email, Word, and Notion

Rich-text editors don't read Markdown, but they all understand HTML on the clipboard. The rich-text copy is tuned for that: styles are inlined (editors ignore stylesheets and classes on paste), code highlighting colors are baked in, and table borders are explicit, so what you paste looks like what you previewed. A plain-text version rides along for apps that only accept text.

• Gmail / Outlook — write an email in Markdown, copy as rich text, paste into the compose window.
• Microsoft Word— headings map to Word's heading styles, so the navigation pane and table of contents work.
• Notion, Confluence, Jira — paste formatted blocks instead of fighting their Markdown shortcuts line by line.
• AI chat output — ChatGPT and Claude answer in Markdown; paste the answer here to move it into a doc or an email with the formatting intact.

Convert Markdown to plain text format

The plain text tab strips every Markdown symbol — no **, no #, no link brackets — while keeping the document readable: paragraphs stay separated, list items keep a dash or number, nested lists are indented, and tables become tab-separated rows you can paste into a spreadsheet. Use it for SMS, app store descriptions, plain-text email, form fields, or any place that shows markup literally.

What each Markdown element becomes in HTML

Markdown to HTML in Python, JavaScript, and Pandoc

Need the conversion in a script or a build step? These are the standard ways to convert Markdown to HTML programmatically.

Python — the markdown package (Python-Markdown) is the classic choice; enable extensions for tables and fenced code:

# pip install markdown
import markdown

with open("README.md", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    html = markdown.markdown(
        f.read(),
        extensions=["tables", "fenced_code", "toc", "sane_lists"],
    )

For CommonMark-exact output (the same rules GitHub uses) use markdown-it-py; for speed, mistune:

# pip install markdown-it-py
from markdown_it import MarkdownIt
html = MarkdownIt("gfm-like").render(text)

# pip install mistune
import mistune
html = mistune.html(text)

JavaScript / Node — marked (what this page uses) or markdown-it. Always sanitize if the Markdown comes from users:

// npm i marked dompurify
import { marked } from "marked";
import DOMPurify from "dompurify";

const html = DOMPurify.sanitize(marked.parse(markdown, { gfm: true }));

Pandoc — the Swiss Army knife on the command line:

pandoc README.md -f gfm -o README.html          # fragment
pandoc README.md -f gfm -s -o README.html       # full page (--standalone)
pandoc README.md -f gfm -s --toc -o doc.html    # with a table of contents

Getting cleaner HTML from Markdown

• Leave a blank line between blocks — a list or table directly after a paragraph without one may not be recognized.
• Line breaks: standard Markdown joins consecutive lines into one paragraph. End a line with two spaces (or a backslash) to force a <br>, or turn on the line-breaks option to treat every newline as one.
• Heading ids follow GitHub's rules (## getting started → id="getting-started"), so existing #anchor links keep working. Turn them off for CMS fields that add their own.
• Name the language after the opening fence (```python) to get syntax highlighting; the highlighted HTML uses highlight.js classes, and the full-page themes include the colors.
• Want the page online instead of a file? An HTML page built here can be deployed to a shareable URL with host0 in seconds.

Frequently asked questions