Markitdown

Microsoft's open source document format conversion tool supports one-click conversion of 15+ file formats such as PDF, Word, and Excel to Markdown.

Document processing

In-depth Report

MarkItDown is a lightweight Python tool open sourced by Microsoft's AutoGen team. It can convert more than 15 file formats such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, pictures, audio, HTML, EPub, etc. to Markdown format with one click. In April 2026, MarkItDown topped the GitHub hot list and received 108K stars, showing high recognition from the developer community. This tool is particularly useful for text analysis tools and large language models (LLMs), because Markdown retains the structural information of the original document while maintaining an LLM-friendly format.
MarkItDown supports the following file formats: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, pictures (supports OCR), audio, HTML, EPub, ZIP, etc. For images and PDFs, the tool uses LLM Vision to extract text from embedded images. The tool supports two modes: llm_client and llm_model, and can be used with various LLMs for OCR recognition.
MarkItDown is mainly used in the following scenarios: RAG (Retrieval Enhanced Generation) scenarios, document processing pipelines, AI applications, scenarios that require processing of multiple document formats, enterprise document management, etc.
Easy to install via pip: pip install markitdown. The method of use is simple, and the format conversion can be completed with a single line of code. The MIT open source license allows free commercial use.