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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What the tool does, where it falls short, and what happens to the pages you put through it.

What does MarkdownifyWeb actually do?
You paste the address of a web page and it returns the readable part of that page as Markdown: headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and code, with the navigation, ads, cookie banners and footers stripped out. You copy the result and paste it wherever you need it.
Why not just paste the URL into ChatGPT or Claude?
Sometimes you can. But AI chats often can't fetch a page at all — the site blocks automated visitors, the content is behind a login, or the page is built entirely in JavaScript. Even when fetching works, the model spends part of its context window reading menus and adverts. Markdown gives it the article and nothing else.
How many tokens does this actually save?
It depends heavily on the page, but the reduction is large. Cloudflare published an example where its own announcement page came to 16,180 tokens as raw HTML and 3,150 tokens as Markdown — about 80% fewer. Documentation and blog pages commonly land in the 60–80% range. Every conversion shows you its own token count so you can judge whether it fits your model's context window.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no signup, no email, and no login. Paste a URL and press Convert.
Is it free?
Yes. The tool is free to use and supported by advertising on the surrounding pages. Ads are never placed between the input box and the Copy button, and there are no popups, popunders or redirects.
Why did my Reddit or Medium link fail?
Those sites — along with X, many news publishers and anything behind Cloudflare's bot protection — refuse requests that don't come from a real logged-in browser. We don't try to defeat that. When a page is blocked you get a clear message saying so rather than a broken half-conversion. There is a way round it: copy the page from your own browser and paste it in. Your browser is already past the block.
What if a page won't convert from its address?
Copy the page and paste it in instead. Select the page (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C) and paste it on our Paste a page screen — your browser puts the rendered HTML on the clipboard, so headings, lists and tables survive. That fixes three things at once: sites that block automated readers, pages behind a login you already have, and single-page apps whose content only exists after JavaScript runs. The conversion runs entirely on your machine; the page is never sent to us.
Can it get past a paywall?
No, and it isn't designed to. If a publisher returns a subscription wall instead of the article, that is what we see too. If you subscribe, copy the text from your own logged-in browser tab instead.
Do you store the pages I convert?
Converted output is held briefly in server memory — about fifteen minutes — so that repeat requests for the same page are instant. It is not written to a database, not tied to you, and not used for anything else. Nothing you convert is published or shared.
Does it work on pages built with JavaScript?
Only partly. The converter reads the HTML the server sends. If a page renders its content in the browser after loading — many dashboards and single-page apps do — there is nothing in that HTML to extract, and you'll get a 'no readable content' message. Most articles, blog posts and documentation pages are fine.
What are the Title, Links and Clean toggles for?
Title adds the page title as a top-level heading. Links keeps inline links as Markdown links; switching it off flattens them to plain text, which is often what you want when feeding an AI. Clean removes images and embeds for the leanest possible output.
Is there a limit?
Twenty conversions per minute from a single address, and a 5MB ceiling per page. Both exist to keep the tool free and responsive; ordinary use will never reach either.
Is converting a page legal?
Reading a public page and reformatting it for your own use is ordinary browsing. What you do with the result is your responsibility: the text still belongs to whoever wrote it, and republishing it may not be permitted. We don't store or redistribute anyone's content.

Still stuck on something?

If a page won't convert and you think it should, tell us which one — that feedback is how the extraction improves.

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