markdownify-rs

Rust implementation of Python markdownify with output parity as the primary goal.

Python bindings

Build and install locally with maturin (uv):

uv venv
uv pip install maturin
.venv/bin/maturin develop --features python

Build via pip (PEP 517):

uv pip install .

Usage:

from markdownify_rs import markdownify

print(markdownify("<b>Hello</b>"))

keep emits selected elements as HTML, including their descendants, instead of converting them. It defaults to empty. Block elements such as <table> get blank lines around them; inline elements such as <select> and <del> stay inline. For example, markdownify("<p>Choose <select><option>A</option></select></p>", keep=["select"]) returns Choose <select><option>A</option></select>. keep takes precedence when a tag is also in strip, or when convert is set. keep_attrs defaults to True; set it to False to remove attributes from the kept element and every descendant. For example, markdownify('<select name="x"><option value="1">A</option></select>', keep=["select"], keep_attrs=False) returns <select><option>A</option></select>. strip and convert remain mutually exclusive. Kept <script> and <style> elements are emitted as HTML; otherwise they are dropped. The same keep option works with MarkdownConverter and markdownify_batch.

BS4-style read-only HTML API:

from markdownify_rs import Soup

soup = Soup("<div class='main'><p>Hello</p></div>")
p = soup.find("p")
print(p.get_text())                  # "Hello"
print(soup.select("div.main > p"))   # [<Tag <p>Hello</p>>]
print(p.parent.name)                 # "div"

BS4 batch query API (GIL-free execution in Rust):

from markdownify_rs import QueryPlan, run_batch

plan = QueryPlan()
plan.add_select_count("links", "a[href]")
plan.add_select_one_text("title", "title")
plan.add_select_all_texts("link_texts", "a", separator=" ", strip=True)
plan.add_get_text("all_text", " ", True)

rows = run_batch(["<html><title>A</title><a href='/x'>x</a></html>"], plan)
print(rows[0]["links"], rows[0]["title"], rows[0]["link_texts"])  # 1, "A", ["x"]

Full Python bs4 API + QueryPlan guide:

• PYTHON_BS4_API.md

Markdown -> HTML usage (Python-Markdown-style API):

from markdownify_rs import markdown, Markdown

print(markdown("# Hello", extensions=["tables", "footnotes"]))

md = Markdown(extensions=["toc", "admonition"])
print(md.convert("[TOC]\n\n# Title"))
print(md.toc_tokens)  # [{"level": 1, "id": "...", "name": "Title"}]

# Optional CommonMark/GFM-ish toggles (default False):
print(markdown("visit https://example.com", autolink=True))
print(markdown("- [ ] task", tasklist=True))
print(markdown("~~old~~", strikethrough=True))

# Parsing mode:
# - python_compat (default): best-effort Python-Markdown compatibility
# - fast: pure comrak/CommonMark fast path
print(markdown("1) one\n2) two", extensions=["sane_lists"], mode="python_compat"))
print(markdown("1) one\n2) two", extensions=["sane_lists"], mode="fast"))

Full Python markdown-to-HTML API quickstart (all public args):

• PYTHON_MARKDOWN_TO_HTML_QUICKSTART.md

Batch usage (parallelized in Rust):

from markdownify_rs import markdownify_batch

outputs = markdownify_batch(["<b>Hello</b>", "<i>World</i>"])

Markdown-adjacent utilities (submodule):

from markdownify_rs.markdown_utils import (
    split_into_chunks,
    split_into_chunks_batch,
    coalesce_small_chunks,
    link_percentage,
    link_percentage_batch,
    filter_by_link_percentage,
    strip_links_with_substring,
    strip_links_with_substring_batch,
    remove_large_tables,
    remove_large_tables_batch,
    remove_lines_with_substring,
    remove_lines_with_substring_batch,
    fix_newlines,
    fix_newlines_batch,
    split_on_dividers,
    strip_html_and_contents,
    strip_html_and_contents_batch,
    strip_data_uri_images,
    text_pipeline_batch,
)

chunks = split_into_chunks(text, how="sections")
chunks_batch = split_into_chunks_batch([text1, text2], how="sections")
cleaned = strip_links_with_substring(text, "javascript")
cleaned_batch = strip_links_with_substring_batch([text1, text2], "javascript")
filtered = filter_by_link_percentage([text1, text2], threshold=0.5)
pipelined = text_pipeline_batch(
    [text1, text2],
    steps=[
        ("strip_links_with_substring", {"substring": "javascript"}),
        ("remove_large_tables", {"max_cells": 200}),
        ("fix_newlines", {}),
    ],
)

Notes:

• code_language_callback is not yet supported in the Python bindings.

CLI:

markdownify-rs input.html
cat input.html | markdownify-rs

Releasing

Releases are built and uploaded locally; there is no CI publish job.

1. Bump version in both Cargo.toml and pyproject.toml.
2. Build and smoke-test everything into dist/ (needs Docker, e.g. colima start):

   scripts/build_release_wheels.sh
   

   This builds a macOS universal2 wheel and manylinux2014 aarch64/x86_64 wheels (abi3, CPython >= 3.8) from a clean export of the committed HEAD, then checks that all three produce identical output. No sdist is published.
3. Check and upload with twine (in the dev group; uv sync installs it):

   .venv/bin/twine check dist/*
   .venv/bin/twine upload dist/*
   

HTML parser

By default, markdownify and Soup parse with a vendored copy of the astral-html tokenizer (src/astral_html/, MIT/Apache-2.0) and build a scraper::Html tree from its tokens (src/astral_tree.rs). Nesting is lexical like BeautifulSoup’s html.parser (an end tag closes the innermost matching open element; nothing is implied or relocated), which is both faster than html5ever’s tree builder and closer to python-markdownify’s output (e.g. <noscript> contents are parsed as markup). Build with --no-default-features to use scraper/html5ever instead. xml_utils::get_tag always uses scraper for its fallback.

Parity hacks (vs. BeautifulSoup)

These are explicit, ad hoc behaviors added to match python-markdownify (BeautifulSoup + html.parser) output. They are intentionally quirky and may be replaced with more “correct” behavior once parity is stable.

• Leading whitespace reconstruction: html.parser preserves whitespace‑only text nodes that html5ever drops (notably between <html> children and at the start of <body>). We reconstruct the normalized leading whitespace prefix (using the same “single space vs. single newline” rules as BeautifulSoup’s endData) and merge it with the converter output, carrying it across non‑block tags and empty custom elements whose contents are only comments/whitespace.
• Table header inference: For tables whose header row is effectively empty, we avoid forcing a “---” separator to match python-markdownify behavior.
• Top-level <td>/<th> wrapping: If input is a bare <td>/<th>, we wrap it in a <table><tr>…</tr></table> fragment to align with python-markdownify output.

Benchmarks

Datasets

• Michigan Statutes (JSONL, 241 HTML documents).
  • Total HTML bytes: 101,029,525 (~96.35 MiB).
  • Largest document: 8,034,686 bytes (~7.66 MiB).
  • Source file size: 102,856,616 bytes (~98.10 MiB).
• Law websites (CSV, 3,136 HTML documents).
  • Total HTML bytes: 111,747,114 (~106.57 MiB).
  • Largest document: 1,381,380 bytes (~1.32 MiB).
  • Source file size: 148,486,852 bytes (~141.61 MiB).

Run

# Michigan Statutes (JSONL)
MARKDOWNIFY_BENCH_PATH=/path/to/mi_statutes.jsonl .venv/bin/python scripts/bench_python.py --module markdownify_rs --dist-name markdownify-rs --label markdownify_rs
MARKDOWNIFY_BENCH_PATH=/path/to/mi_statutes.jsonl .venv/bin/python scripts/bench_python.py --module markdownify --dist-name markdownify --label markdownify

# Law websites (CSV)
.venv/bin/python scripts/bench_python.py --format csv --path /path/to/deleted_pages.csv --module markdownify_rs --dist-name markdownify-rs --label markdownify_rs
.venv/bin/python scripts/bench_python.py --format csv --path /path/to/deleted_pages.csv --module markdownify --dist-name markdownify --label markdownify

Python binding comparison (both run through Python, 2026-01-28, Apple M3, macOS 14.6 / Darwin 24.6.0, Python 3.13.0)

Michigan Statutes (JSONL)

• markdownify_rs convert_all (241 docs): time 2.266594 s, throughput 42.508 MiB/s
• markdownify_rs convert_all_batch (241 docs): time 0.538012 s, throughput 179.084 MiB/s
• markdownify_rs convert_largest (8,034,686 bytes): time 187.941 ms, throughput 40.771 MiB/s
• markdownify convert_all (241 docs): time 29.654787 s, throughput 3.249 MiB/s
• markdownify convert_largest (8,034,686 bytes): time 4.496880 s, throughput 1.704 MiB/s

Speedup summary (wall-clock time, lower is better)

Law websites (CSV)

• markdownify_rs convert_all (3,136 docs): time 2.596691 s, throughput 41.041 MiB/s
• markdownify_rs convert_all_batch (3,136 docs): time 0.672013 s, throughput 158.584 MiB/s
• markdownify_rs convert_largest (1,381,380 bytes): time 54.482 ms, throughput 24.180 MiB/s
• markdownify convert_all (3,136 docs): time 17.680570 s, throughput 6.028 MiB/s
• markdownify convert_largest (1,381,380 bytes): time 280.459 ms, throughput 4.697 MiB/s

Speedup summary (wall-clock time, lower is better)

Markdown -> HTML parity/speed report:

.venv/bin/python scripts/report_markdown_to_html_parity_speed.py \
  --corpus-dir /tmp/test_markdowns \
  --report BENCHMARKS_MARKDOWN_TO_HTML.md