What is MarkItDown?
MarkItDown is a lightweight Python utility for converting various files to Markdown for use with LLMs and related text analysis pipelines. The repository is published under the microsoft organization on GitHub. The README compares it to textract, with a focus on preserving document structure such as headings, lists, tables and links.
The output is meant to be consumed by text analysis tools, so it may not be the best option for high-fidelity document conversions for human reading. Supported inputs listed by the project include PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, images with EXIF metadata and OCR, audio with speech transcription, HTML, CSV, JSON and XML, ZIP files, YouTube URLs and EPubs.
It requires Python 3.10 through 3.14 and installs with pip. Format support is split into optional dependency groups, so a team can install only the PDF, DOCX and PPTX extras instead of everything. Third-party plugins exist but are disabled by default. Azure Document Intelligence and Azure Content Understanding are optional cloud converters billed as Azure API calls, while the built-in converters use local compute only.
Key capabilities
- Markdown output Converts PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, HTML, images, audio, ZIP files and EPubs to Markdown.
- Command line and Python API Run
markitdown file.pdfor call the library, including piped input. - Selective installs Pick extras such as pdf, docx and pptx instead of installing every dependency.
- Plugins Third-party plugins are supported and stay off until enabled.
- Cloud options Azure Document Intelligence and Azure Content Understanding for higher-quality extraction, billed by Azure.
Where MarkItDown fits
- Preparing documents for LLM and RAG input
- Text analysis pipelines that need structure kept as Markdown
- Batch conversion from scripts using the CLI
- OCR of embedded images through the markitdown-ocr plugin and a vision-capable LLM
- Audio and video handling through Azure Content Understanding
Install
pip install 'markitdown[all]'Reviews of MarkItDown
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