Markdown.new — Clean Markdown from Any URL

Built by Emre Elbeyoglu (@elbeyoglu), launched Feb 14, 2026

What is it?

Free service that converts any webpage to clean Markdown — just prefix URL with https://markdown.new/

Key benefits:

• 🧹 80% token reduction (vs raw HTML)
• 📦 No signup required (completely free)
• 🌐 Works on any website (unlike limited tools like Cloudflare's agent Markdown)
• 📄 Handles media: PDFs, images, audio → Markdown-friendly formats
• ⚡ Fast: Direct conversion, no scraping delays

Quick Usage

Basic (Any URL)

# Prefix URL with https://markdown.new/
curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://example.com"

Example:

# GitHub repo README
curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://github.com/itsrealranky/ghostclaw" | head -50

# News article
curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/14/ai-news" | head -100

# Blog post
curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://blog.example.com/post" > article.md

Advanced (PDFs, Images, Audio)

PDF extraction:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://example.com/document.pdf" > document.md

Image OCR:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://example.com/screenshot.png" > extracted-text.md

Audio transcription:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://example.com/podcast.mp3" > transcript.md

When to Use

✅ Use markdown.new when:

• web_fetch returns too much HTML noise
• Need clean content for LLM context (80% token savings)
• Converting PDFs to Markdown
• Extracting text from images (OCR)
• Transcribing audio/video to text
• Scraping paywalled content (sometimes works)
• Need consistent Markdown format across sources

❌ Don't use when:

• Need interactive elements (forms, buttons)
• JavaScript-heavy SPAs (React/Vue apps)
• Real-time data (stock prices, live scores)
• Login-protected content (requires auth cookies)

Integration with OpenClaw

Replace web_fetch for cleaner results

Before (web_fetch — HTML noise):

openclaw web_fetch https://example.com
# Returns: HTML tags, ads, navigation, scripts...

After (markdown.new — clean content):

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://example.com"
# Returns: Clean Markdown, 80% fewer tokens

Wrapper Script

Create: /opt/clawd-workspace/scripts/md-fetch.sh

#!/bin/bash
# md-fetch.sh — Clean Markdown fetch via markdown.new

URL="$1"

if [[ -z "$URL" ]]; then
  echo "Usage: md-fetch.sh <url>"
  exit 1
fi

# Fetch via markdown.new
curl -sL "https://markdown.new/${URL}"

Usage:

chmod +x /opt/clawd-workspace/scripts/md-fetch.sh
./md-fetch.sh https://github.com/itsrealranky/ghostclaw

Python Integration

import requests

def fetch_markdown(url: str) -> str:
    """Fetch clean Markdown from any URL via markdown.new"""
    response = requests.get(f"https://markdown.new/{url}")
    response.raise_for_status()
    return response.text

# Usage
content = fetch_markdown("https://github.com/itsrealranky/ghostclaw")
print(content[:500])  # First 500 chars

Node.js Integration

const fetch = require('node-fetch');

async function fetchMarkdown(url) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://markdown.new/${url}`);
  if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}`);
  return await response.text();
}

// Usage
fetchMarkdown('https://github.com/itsrealranky/ghostclaw')
  .then(md => console.log(md.substring(0, 500)))
  .catch(console.error);

Comparison: markdown.new vs Alternatives

Real-World Examples

Example 1: GitHub README

Input:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://github.com/itsrealranky/ghostclaw"

Output:

Title: GitHub - itsrealranky/ghostclaw: Grandfather of Openclaw

# GhostClaw 🦀

**Ghost Protocol. Claw Execution. Zero Compromise.**

⚡ Runs on $10 hardware with ~10MB RAM and a ~2MB binary — 99% less memory than OpenClaw

## Features
- Ultra-Lightweight: ~2MB peak footprint
- Lightning Fast: 15ms warm start
...

Example 2: News Article

Input:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/14/openai-gpt5"

Output:

Title: OpenAI Announces GPT-5 with 10T Parameters

OpenAI today unveiled GPT-5, a massive 10 trillion parameter model...

Key features:
- 10x faster than GPT-4
- Multimodal (text, image, video, audio)
- Cost: $0.01 per 1M tokens
...

Example 3: PDF Document

Input:

curl -sL "https://markdown.new/https://arxiv.org/pdf/2024.12345.pdf" > paper.md

Output:

Title: Advances in Transformer Architectures

Abstract: We present a novel approach...

1. Introduction
Recent work in large language models has...
...

Limitations

Known issues:

• ⚠️ Rate limits unknown — may have undocumented limits
• ⚠️ No JavaScript rendering — SPAs may not work
• ⚠️ No auth support — can't access login-protected content
• ⚠️ Uptime unknown — free service, no SLA

Workarounds:

• For JavaScript-heavy sites → use OpenClaw browser automation
• For auth-protected content → use browser with cookies
• For critical production use → self-host alternative (Jina AI Reader, Trafilatura)

Self-Hosting Alternative

If markdown.new goes down or has limits, self-host with Trafilatura:

pip install trafilatura

# Python
import trafilatura
html = trafilatura.fetch_url("https://example.com")
markdown = trafilatura.extract(html, output_format="markdown")
print(markdown)

Or Jina AI Reader (self-hosted):

git clone https://github.com/jina-ai/reader.git
cd reader
docker-compose up -d
# Use: http://localhost:8000/https://example.com

Resources

• Website: https://markdown.new/
• Creator: Emre Elbeyoglu (@elbeyoglu on X/Twitter)
• Announced: Feb 14, 2026
• Tweet: https://x.com/elbeyoglu/status/[id] (viral, thousands of likes)

Related Skills

• web_fetch: Built-in OpenClaw web scraping (more HTML noise)
• browser: Full browser automation (for JavaScript-heavy sites)
• perplex: Web search via Perplexity Sonar API

FAQ

Q: Is it really free?
A: Yes, no API key or signup required.

Q: What's the catch?
A: Likely has undocumented rate limits. Unknown uptime/SLA.

Q: Can I use it in production?
A: Use at your own risk. Consider self-hosted alternatives for critical apps.

Q: Does it work on paywalled content?
A: Sometimes — depends on how the paywall is implemented.

Q: How does PDF/image/audio processing work?
A: Likely uses OCR (Tesseract), PDF parsing (pdfplumber), and transcription (Whisper).

Q: Can I contribute/report issues?
A: Unknown — no GitHub repo or docs yet. Contact @elbeyoglu on X.

Notes

• Created: Feb 16, 2026 (via Chip request)
• Status: Active, free service
• Use case: Replace web_fetch for cleaner LLM context (80% token savings)
• Best for: Articles, docs, PDFs, images, audio
• Avoid for: SPAs, real-time data, auth-required content

"Put https://markdown.new/ before any URL → get clean Markdown back." 🧹