The Best PDF to Markdown Tools in 2026 (Honestly Compared) (opens in new tab)

Turning a PDF into Markdown sounds simple until you try it on a real document. The text comes out fine. Then the tables collapse into mush, the formulas turn to gibberish, the figures vanish, and a two-column research paper reads in the wrong order. Markdown is how documents get fed to AI tools, pasted into notes, and stored in wikis, so "mostly right" usually isn't good enough. I compared the tools people actually reach for, judged on the parts that break: tables, formulas, images, scanned p...