markitdown

What it is and what it does

MarkItDown is a utility for converting documents and files into Markdown format. It provides both a Python API and a command-line interface, making it useful for indexing, text analysis, or preparing documents for downstream processing. The package wraps six runtime dependencies—beautifulsoup4, charset-normalizer, defusedxml, magika, markdownify, and requests—to handle format detection, parsing, and conversion across multiple file types.

The package is actively maintained by Microsoft, recently released, and carries an MIT license. It operates with the privileges of the calling process, so users must sanitize inputs when working with untrusted data. The library is in Beta status but has strong adoption (top 5000 on PyPI) and no known security vulnerabilities.

Use it for:

• Index documents for search or retrieval systems by converting them to searchable Markdown.
• Prepare PDFs and spreadsheets for text analysis, NLP pipelines, or AI model ingestion.
• Batch-convert office documents to Markdown for version control or documentation workflows.
• Extract structured content from web pages or HTML files into Markdown format.
• Automate document preprocessing in data pipelines that require plain-text or Markdown input.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Converts various file formats (PDF, Excel, Word, HTML, images, and others) to Markdown via a Python API or command-line tool.

Yes. Low install friction, active maintenance, permissive MIT license, and no known vulnerabilities make this a safe choice. Install it if you need to convert files to Markdown for indexing, analysis, or documentation pipelines. Be aware that it runs with process-level privileges, so validate inputs in untrusted environments.

Install

markitdown on PyPI

pip install markitdown

uv add markitdown

poetry add markitdown

Installing markitdown

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel. Active maintenance: released 16 days ago with 173762 repository stars and a recent commit on 2026-07-29. Supports Python 3.10–3.13 on CPython and PyPy.

License in practice

MIT license permits commercial and private use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions—suitable for most projects.

Quickstart

pip install markitdown

from markitdown import MarkItDown

md = MarkItDown()
result = md.convert("test.xlsx")
print(result.text_content)

Requires Python 3.10 or later. File I/O operations run with the privileges of the current process; sanitize inputs in untrusted environments.

Verify before relying

• Which file formats are supported beyond PDF, Excel, Word, HTML, and images—full list not in excerpt.
• Performance characteristics and memory usage for large or batch conversions.
• Accuracy and fidelity of markdown output across different source formats.

Package facts

Evidence: markitdown-0.1.7-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Markup packages