Markdown to PDF: Convert .md Files to Clean A4 PDFs
Convert Markdown to PDF online: upload a .md or .markdown file and download an A4 PDF with its headings, lists, tables, task lists and code blocks laid out. No sign-up, and we don't add a watermark.
// how it works
How to convert Markdown to PDF
Upload a Markdown file (.md or .markdown) and you'll get a formatted PDF to download.
- 01Upload your Markdown file (.md or .markdown)
- 02Click 'Convert' and give it a moment.
- 03Download your new PDF
- 04Converted several files? They come down together in one ZIP file.
Markdown to PDF: what is kept, what changes and a tested example
Markdown is easy to write but awkward to hand to someone who has no Markdown viewer. Converting Markdown to PDF gives them a fixed, printable document that opens anywhere.
Our Markdown to PDF converter reads your .md or .markdown file, GitHub-style tables and task lists included, and lays it out on A4 pages. Below we list exactly which elements come through and which don't, so you know what the PDF will look like before you upload.
How to convert Markdown to PDF online
You upload the Markdown file itself. Nothing to paste, nothing to set up.
- Click Choose Files and pick one or more files ending in .md or .markdown, or drag them onto the page.
- Check the list and remove anything you added by mistake.
- Click Convert and wait a moment.
- Click Download to save the PDF, or a ZIP file if you converted several.
What is Markdown, and why turn it into a PDF?
Markdown is a lightweight markup language for writing formatted text in a plain-text editor; John Gruber released it in 2004. GitHub Flavored Markdown added tables, task lists and strikethrough later.
Lots of READMEs, notes and docs are written this way. As a PDF they can be printed, attached to an email or filed, and nobody needs a Markdown preview to read them.
Which Markdown elements appear in the PDF
The converter draws each element itself on A4 pages with 50-point margins, in the DejaVu fonts.
Elements that come through
- Headings: all six levels, in bold at sizes from 22 down to 11 points.
- Paragraphs, lists and task lists: bullets, numbers, nested lists and [x] or [ ] checkboxes.
- Code blocks: set in a monospaced font; long lines wrap, so nothing gets cut off.
- Tables: printed row by row, with a vertical bar between cells and the header row in bold.
- Blockquotes and horizontal rules: quotes get indented in grey italics, rules turn into a thin line.
- Letters beyond English: Greek and Cyrillic text shows correctly.
Elements that change or are left out
- Bold and italic text inside a paragraph prints as normal text.
- Links print as the link text with the address after it in brackets. You can't click them.
- Images aren't embedded. Each one turns into a short note such as [image: diagram].
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters aren't in the font, so they're dropped.
- Inline HTML loses its tags and keeps only its text.
If your document leans on images or styled text, export it from your editor to a Word file and use Word to PDF.
Math, Mermaid diagrams, alerts and page breaks
Math, Mermaid diagrams and GitHub alerts print as their source text. None of them gets drawn. We converted a test file with each of them in October 2026, and it came out as one A4 page of 27.0 KB.
- Inline math: $E=mc^2$ appears as typed, dollar signs and all.
- A $$ math block: printed as three lines, $$, the LaTeX source and $$. Markdown escaping also ate one backslash, so \, in the formula turned into a plain comma.
- A mermaid code block: printed as the diagram code in small monospaced type.
- A [!NOTE] alert: printed as an indented grey italic quote that starts with the text [!NOTE].
- Emoji: 😀 came out as a small black and white face, and a :smile: shortcode stayed as typed.
There's no way to force a page break. A <div style="page-break-after: always"> did nothing, \pagebreak printed as text, and the whole file stayed on one page. The PDF has no bookmarks either, because headings are drawn as bold text with no outline entry.
What happened when we tested Markdown to PDF
We converted our small test file markdown-rich.md (358 B), which holds a heading, words with underscores, a table and a code line of more than 150 characters, with no options to choose; the tool processed the file as uploaded. It returned a 1-page PDF of 19.3 KB, ready 0.3 seconds after we clicked Convert on our local test server.
Tested in October 2026.
Other text documents to PDF
A plain .txt file with no Markdown syntax converts better with TXT to PDF. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files go through Office to PDF.
Several Markdown files give you one PDF per file. To make a single document out of them, combine them with Merge PDF and put the pages in order with Organize PDF.
Frequently Asked Questions about Markdown to PDF
Does the converter accept .markdown files as well as .md?
Yes. Both extensions work, and each file can be up to 25 MB.
Are images in my Markdown file included?
No. Each image turns into a short text note with its description, because the uploaded Markdown file doesn't contain the image files themselves.
Are bold and italic kept?
Headings are bold, but bold and italic words inside paragraphs come out as normal text.
Can I convert more than one Markdown file at a time?
Yes. Each file becomes its own PDF, and several PDFs download together in one ZIP file.
What happens to my file after conversion?
We convert it on our server and delete it automatically within two hours. You don't need an account, and we don't add a watermark.