The MarkItDown library lets you quickly turn PDFs, Office files, images, HTML, audio, and URLs into LLM-ready Markdown. In this tutorial, you’ll compare MarkItDown with Pandoc, run it from the command line, use it in Python code, and integrate conversions into AI-powered workflows.
By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand that:
- You can install MarkItDown with
pipusing the[all]specifier to pull in optional dependencies. - The CLI’s results can be saved to a file using the
-oor--outputcommand-line option followed by a target path. - The
.convert()method reads the input document and converts it to Markdown text. - You can connect MarkItDown’s MCP server to clients like Claude Desktop to expose on-demand conversions to chats.
- MarkItDown can integrate with LLMs to generate image descriptions and extract text from images with OCR and custom prompts.
To decide whether to use MarkItDown or another library—such as Pandoc—for your Markdown conversion tasks, consider these factors:
| Use Case | Choose MarkItDown | Choose Pandoc |
|---|---|---|
| You want fast Markdown conversion for documentation, blogs, or LLM input. | ✅ | — |
| You need high visual fidelity, fine-grained layout control, or broader input/output format support. | — | ✅ |
Your choice depends on whether you value speed, structure, and AI-pipeline integration over full formatting fidelity or wide-format support. MarkItDown isn’t intended for perfect, high-fidelity conversions for human consumption. This is especially true for complex document layouts or richly formatted content, in which case you should use Pandoc.
Get Your Code: Click here to download the free sample code that shows you how to use Python MarkItDown to convert documents into LLM-ready Markdown.
Start Using MarkItDown
MarkItDown is a lightweight Python utility for converting various file formats into Markdown content. This tool is useful when you need to feed large language models (LLMs) and AI-powered text analysis pipelines with specific content that’s stored in other file formats. This lets you take advantage of Markdown’s high token efficiency.
The library supports a wide list of input formats, including the following:
The relevance of MarkItDown lies in its minimal setup and its ability to handle multiple input file formats. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to install and set up MarkItDown in your Python environment and explore its command-line interface (CLI) and main features.
Installation
To get started with MarkItDown, you need to install the library from the Python Package Index (PyPI) using pip. Before running the command below, make sure you create and activate a Python virtual environment to avoid cluttering your system Python installation:
(venv) $ python -m pip install 'markitdown[all]'
This command installs MarkItDown and all its optional dependencies in your current Python environment. After the installation finishes, you can verify that the package is working correctly:
(venv) $ markitdown --version
markitdown 0.1.3
This command should display the installed version of MarkItDown, confirming a successful installation. That should be it! You’re all set up to start using the library.
Note: If you’re running the latest Python 3.14 release, pip might install an outdated version of MarkItDown instead of the current stable one. This happens because the library’s own dependencies haven’t been built for Python 3.14 yet, so pip falls back to the earliest compatible version it finds.
To fix this, you can install MarkItDown in a Python 3.13 or earlier environment. Check out pyenv to manage multiple versions of Python.
Alternatively, MarkItDown also supports several optional dependencies that enhance its capabilities. You can install them selectively according to your needs. Below is a list of some available optional dependencies:
pptxfor PowerPoint filesdocxfor Word documentsxlsxandxlsfor modern and older Excel workbookspdffor PDF filesoutlookfor Outlook messagesaz-doc-intelfor Azure Document Intelligenceaudio-transcriptionfor audio transcription of WAV and MP3 filesyoutube-transcriptionfor fetching YouTube video transcripts
If you only need a subset of dependencies, then you can install them with a command like the following:
(venv) $ python -m pip install 'markitdown[pdf,pptx,docx]'
This command installs only the dependencies needed for processing PDF, PPTX, and DOCX files. This way, you avoid cluttering your environment with artifacts that you won’t use or need in your code.
