The Markdown to HTML Converter turns Markdown into clean, escaped HTML as you type and shows the rendered preview alongside, for drafting README sections, CMS content, release notes, and emails where only HTML is accepted. Paste Markdown, read the HTML, copy it out.
How It Works
The converter processes your text line by line with a deliberately small, predictable rule set. Block rules handle headings (one to six hash marks), unordered and ordered lists, blockquotes, horizontal rules, and fenced code blocks. Inline rules then format code spans, bold with double asterisks or underscores, italics with singles, and links in the text form. Crucially, your raw text is HTML-escaped before any formatting is applied, so angle brackets you type appear as text in the output instead of being injected as markup, and generated links are restricted to http and https addresses with protective rel attributes.
Supported syntax
| Markdown | Becomes |
|---|---|
| # through ###### headings | h1 through h6 headings |
| bold or bold | strong emphasis |
| italic or italic | emphasis |
| inline code | code element |
| Fenced block with triple backticks | preformatted code block |
| - or * or + list items | unordered list |
| 1. numbered items | ordered list |
| > quoted text | blockquote |
| --- or *** or ___ | horizontal rule |
| text | link with safe rel attributes |
Worked example
Three lines of Markdown:
## Release notes
This build fixes the **login** crash and adds *dark mode*.
- Faster sync
- New export
become an h2 heading, a paragraph with strong and em elements, and a two-item unordered list. Note that each source line becomes its own block in this converter's line-based model, so a paragraph you want held together should be written as one line, unlike full CommonMark where consecutive lines merge into a single paragraph.
What is intentionally not supported
This is a lightweight converter, not a full CommonMark engine. Tables, images, footnotes, task lists, strikethrough, reference-style links, raw inline HTML (it is escaped, by design), and nested lists are outside its rule set; a nested list item is treated as its own flat item. If your document needs those constructs, draft the simple 90% here and finish in a full Markdown processor, or write the table directly in HTML in your target system rather than pasting it here to be escaped.
Safety behaviour worth understanding
Escaping first is the security decision that makes the output safe to paste into web pages: a pasted script tag becomes visible text, never an executable element, and a stray less-than sign in prose such as "a < b" cannot break the surrounding page. The link rule extends the same caution by only converting http and https targets and stamping rel="noopener noreferrer" on the anchor, so a converted document cannot smuggle a javascript: link or a referrer leak into your site.
Limitations
Line-based conversion means soft line breaks join differently than in GitHub-flavoured or CommonMark renderers, and edge cases in nested emphasis can differ from a full parser. The preview reflects this converter's own output rules, which are the ones your copied HTML follows. For documents where exact CommonMark compliance matters (specifications, publishing pipelines), validate the final HTML in the destination system.
A workflow that uses this tool well
Draft in Markdown for speed (it is the fastest readable formatting most people type), convert here to inspect the exact HTML you will ship, and paste into the target with the preview's behaviour in mind: single lines as blocks, flat lists, escaped raw HTML. For recurring content such as changelogs, keep the Markdown source as the editable original and regenerate the HTML on each release rather than hand-editing the output; the line-based rules are deterministic, so the same input always yields the same HTML, which makes diffs between versions meaningful and review quick.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my HTML tags come out as visible text?
Deliberately. Input is escaped before conversion so the tool can never be used to inject markup. If you need raw HTML in the output, this is the wrong tool for that document; most CMS editors have a separate raw-HTML block for it.
Does it support GitHub tables?
No. Tables are outside the supported subset. The rows will appear as ordinary paragraphs, which makes the omission obvious in the preview before you copy anything.
Are links safe to paste into my site?
Yes: only http and https links convert, and they carry noopener and noreferrer attributes. Relative links and other protocols stay as literal text in the output.