md2document
Guide

Markdown to PDF - a converter built for documents you send

A free, browser-based tool that turns Markdown into a branded PDF. Eleven templates, ten designs, twelve font pairings, cover page, table of contents, page numbers. Paste, pick, export.

Elia Kuratli
By Elia Kuratli
·7 min read
Open the converter

What this tool does

You write Markdown in the editor. A live PDF preview renders on the right. When you press Export, the browser produces a real PDF - proper page breaks, page numbers, optional cover page, optional table of contents, and tables that respect column alignment. The DOCX path uses the same source and the same template, so a single document ships as either format.

It is built for the documents people actually write in Markdown: client proposals, internal reports, technical memos, white papers, quotes, invoices, resumes, cover letters and meeting notes. Eleven templates ship with sensible defaults - cover on for proposals, off for memos, page numbers off for invoices and resumes, ToC on for reports - so you stop guessing at chrome.

How the conversion runs

The public converter is fully client-side. The Markdown parser (marked), the PDF engine (@react-pdf/renderer), the fonts and the preview all ship as JavaScript in the page. When you click Export, the engine builds the PDF blob in memory and the browser hands it to you as a download. Nothing about the conversion requires a server round trip.

You can sign up if you want projects to sync between devices - that path stores the project state in our database so you can open the same document on a laptop and a phone. The conversion itself still runs in your browser on the device you export from.

Five steps to a PDF

  1. Open the converter. Editor centre, preview right, sidebar left.
  2. Pick a template - Proposal, Report, Memo, Resume, Invoice, Quote, White paper, Cover letter, Meeting notes, Blog post, or Blank. Each seeds the Markdown plus its cover / ToC / numbering defaults.
  3. Type or paste your Markdown.
  4. Pick a design and a font-family pairing. Designs control colour, spacing and accents; font pairings control type. Each is balanced for a specific register.
  5. Click Export PDF. To download a Word file instead, switch the toggle to DOCX before exporting. Keyboard shortcut: ⌘E on Mac, Ctrl+E on Windows / Linux.

The Markdown features that matter for documents

Tables with numeric auto-alignment

GitHub-flavoured tables convert as expected. Columns whose body cells are mostly numeric get right-aligned automatically - no explicit colon required. That is what makes a pricing table read like a pricing table without you fighting the syntax.

| Item | Effort | Total |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery | 8h | 1,440 |
| Design | 16h | 2,880 |
| Build | 40h | 7,200 |
| Total |  | 11,520 |

Pick a table style per table from the sidebar (Minimal, Corporate, Striped, Bordered). Toggle Bold last row to render the bottom row as a Total. See the tables guide for the cases that bite.

Headings, numbering and ToC

Use # through ###### the way you do anywhere. Toggle Numbered headings to get 1 / 1.1 / 1.1.2 auto-numbering. Toggle Table of contents and the renderer builds a ToC page from your H1 / H2 / H3 - H4 and below stay out, on purpose.

H1 always opens a new page. If you want a hard break before a section, lead it with an H1 - that is the only page-break primitive you need most of the time. The full story is in the page-break guide.

Cover page - five layouts

The cover page is opt-in per document. For a memo, off; for a proposal, on. Five layouts ship: centered (title mid-page, metadata below), side-bar (accent stripe on the left, title beside), rule (title near the top, dashed-rule metadata block at the bottom), block (title in a tinted block), letter (sender / recipient / date for formal letters).

Page chrome - numbers, footer, logo

Page numbers default to bottom-centre, formatted 1 / N. Cover and ToC pages are excluded from the count. Add a footer string ("Confidential", "Draft 2") in the Page section. Upload a logo in the Brand section to print it top-right of every page.

Code blocks

Fenced code blocks with language tags render in the active mono font on a tinted background. The language tag shows as a small label top-right. There is no syntax highlighting in the PDF - the target is a clean, printable block, not an IDE screenshot.

Designs and fonts

Ten designs ship - Minimal-style options (balandir, ledger), editorial (rcrport, rotion), product-team (aplle, linnear, stripeish), expressive (gurnroad, newprint, goodle). Each design is a complete pairing of canvas colour, ink scale, accent, rule weights and table treatment.

Twelve font-family pairings sit on top. Inter, Geist, IBM Plex (Sans / Serif / Mono), Carlito, Hanken Grotesk with Space Mono / Faculty Glyphic / Monoton - each pairing is a heading + body + mono trio balanced for a specific register. The DOCX export maps every pairing to a Word-native font so the file renders correctly without our bundled fonts.

Save your work

Two paths. The fastest: Save configuration to file in the sidebar exports a small JSON file with your theme, template, fields and Markdown. Email it to yourself or commit it to a repo. Load it later via Load configuration.

If you sign up, projects sync to your account automatically - open the dashboard from any device to find them. Same content, no JSON round-trip.

When this tool is enough - and when it is not

For proposals, memos, reports, resumes, invoices, white papers and meeting notes - this is the tool. For documents with LaTeX-grade math, BibTeX-managed citations or a CI build pipeline, Pandoc plus a TeX engine is still the right answer. We cover the trade-offs honestly in the Pandoc-alternative comparison.

Common questions

Is the converter free?

Yes. Open the page, paste, export - no signup required. Sign up only if you want your projects to sync between devices via your account.

Does my Markdown get uploaded?

The public converter is client-side. The Markdown, the images you drop in and the generated PDF stay in your browser tab. If you sign in, the project state (text, settings) syncs to our database so you can reopen it on another device.

What Markdown features are supported?

GitHub Flavored Markdown: headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, ordered and unordered lists, task lists, tables with column alignment, inline code, fenced code blocks with language tags, blockquotes, horizontal rules, links and images (URL or drag-and-drop).

Can I add a cover page and a table of contents?

Yes. Toggle 'Show cover page' to pick one of five cover layouts (centered, side-bar, rule, block, letter). Toggle 'Table of contents' to add a generated ToC after the cover. Heading numbering is a separate toggle.

How do page numbers work?

On by default in most templates, bottom-centre, formatted '1 / N' in the active mono font. The cover page and the ToC are excluded from the count so the body starts at '1'.

Can I export to Word?

Yes. Switch the export toggle from PDF to DOCX before exporting. The output uses Word-native fonts so it renders correctly on every Word install. See the dedicated DOCX guide.

Does it work offline?

Once the page has loaded, the converter runs offline. The Markdown parser, the fonts and the PDF engine all ship with the page and cache aggressively.

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