Alternative to Turndown
Turndown for Developers. Web2MD for Everyone.
Turndown is a great library if you're building a converter yourself. If you just want clean Markdown from any webpage without writing code, Web2MD is the productized version — with smart site extractors, browser-side execution, and one-click AI handoff.
Skip the integration work →Why people are leaving Turndown
Drawn from GitHub issues, Reddit threads, and Chrome Web Store reviews.
“Turndown is a library — you have to embed it, fetch the HTML yourself, deal with CORS, write the UI.”
“Generic HTML-to-Markdown — no site-specific intelligence for Reddit, X, YouTube, Stack Overflow.”
“Server-side fetch fails on login-walled or anti-bot content.”
“No AI integration, no UI, no clipboard support — just a string transformer.”
Turndown vs Web2MD
| Feature | Turndown | Web2MD |
|---|---|---|
| End-user UI | ❌ Library — you build it | ✅ Chrome extension, one click |
| Source HTML | You fetch (CORS, login, bot detect) | Reads live DOM in your browser |
| Smart site extractors | ❌ Generic conversion only | 20+ (Reddit, X, YouTube, Notion, Xiaohongshu...) |
| Code block fidelity | ⚠️ Generic — preserves classes | ✅ Strips Highlight.js/Prism residue |
| Send to AI | ❌ None | ✅ One-click ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini |
| Save to Obsidian / Notion | ❌ None | ✅ Native |
| API access | ✅ It IS an API | ✅ REST + MCP server |
| Target user | JavaScript devs | Anyone who reads webpages |
| Price | Free / MIT licensed | Free tier + Pro at $9/mo |
Why switch to Web2MD
Web2MD is what you would build with Turndown
If you used Turndown to ship a real product, you would end up building exactly what Web2MD is: browser-side execution to bypass CORS, site-specific extractors for Reddit/X/YouTube, AI integration, queue and bulk export. We did that work so you do not have to.
Better defaults than generic Turndown
Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, arXiv, GitHub, Hacker News — each has known DOM quirks. Web2MD ships extractors that handle them; vanilla Turndown produces noisier output.
API still available if you need it
If you do want programmatic access, Web2MD Pro includes a REST API and MCP server. So you can have both: end-user product for your team, API for your scripts.
Common questions
Is Web2MD built on Turndown?▼
Web2MD uses a custom converter pipeline tuned for AI output, with site-specific extractors. The core HTML-to-Markdown step has more in common with Pandoc's approach than Turndown's.
Can I use Turndown for the simple cases and Web2MD for the rest?▼
You can. For developer workflows, Turndown is fine for trivial HTML. For anything user-facing, the extra polish (extractors, AI handoff, queue) is what separates a library demo from a real product.
Does Web2MD work for batch URL conversion?▼
Yes — Pro accounts get batch convert (up to 50 URLs at once) and the REST/MCP API for programmatic use.
Ready to switch?
Install Web2MD from the Chrome Web Store. Free tier — no signup needed.
Add to Chrome — Free →