pdfto

Convert PDF files to Markdown or plain text from the command line.

Install

pip install pdfto

Usage

# Convert to Markdown (output alongside input)
pdfto --markdown example.pdf

# Convert to Markdown with explicit output path
pdfto --markdown example.pdf -o output.md

# Convert to plain text
pdfto --text example.pdf -o output.txt

# Write to stdout
pdfto --markdown example.pdf -o -

# Batch: multiple files
pdfto --markdown a.pdf b.pdf -o ./converted/

# Batch: entire directory (recursive)
pdfto --markdown ./docs/ -o ./out/

Options

How it works

Uses PyMuPDF to extract per-span font metadata (size, bold, italic, monospace flags). Heading levels are assigned by font-size ratio relative to the document's body text size. No ML or GPU required.