pdf-to-markdown

name	pdf-to-markdown
description	Extracting text and tables, merging/splitting documents. Use when needing to convert PDFs while preserving structure.

PDF to Markdown

marker-pdf

• Preserves structure, math, tables, figures.
• This should be your go-to tool for converting PDFs to Markdown with good fidelity.
• Repo: https://github.com/datalab-to/marker

CLI

# pip install marker-pdf  # python==3.12
marker_single input.pdf --output_dir ./marker-output

marker_single input.pdf --output_dir ./out --page_range "0,5-10"  # specific pages
marker_single input.pdf --output_dir ./out --force_ocr  # for scanned PDFs
OUTPUT_IMAGE_FORMAT=PNG marker_single input.pdf --output_dir ./out  # change image format to PNG
marker_single input.pdf --output_dir ./out --use_llm \
  --llm_service marker.services.openai.OpenAIService \
  --openai_api_key "$OPENAI_API_KEY" \
  --openai_model gpt-5.2

Output:

• marker_output/<filename>/<filename>.md
• extracted images as JPEGs by default.
  • marker_output/<filename>/_page_<N>_Figure_<M>.jpeg
• Run marker_single --help for all available options.

python API

• convert.py - simple PDF -> markdown conversion.
  • python convert.py input.pdf [output.md]
• convert_json.py
  • PDF -> JSON via ConfigParser.

downsides

• Discards most styling (colors, fonts, anything that would need HTML).