HTML to Text
Strip HTML tags into clean plain text that keeps lists, tables and link URLs.
About this tool
Paste HTML or open an .html file to get readable plain text straight away. You can keep or drop link addresses and image alt text, show headings as plain lines, in capitals or as # Markdown, and wrap long lines at a set width, such as 72 characters for plain-text email. Copy the result or download it as a .txt file.
Why not just delete the tags?
Removing everything between < and > is the quick way to strip HTML, but it leaves a mess: paragraphs run together, list items lose their bullets, table cells merge into one line, & and £ stay encoded, and the contents of <script> and <style> leak in as text. This converter reads the HTML the way a browser does and rebuilds the structure as text. Paragraphs, headings and <br> become line breaks, and blank lines separate blocks. Lists become β’ bullets or numbered items, including lists that start at 3, and nested lists are indented. Tables become one line per row with tabs between cells, so they paste straight into a spreadsheet. Links keep their address in brackets after the link text, as in "Visit our help centre (https://example.com/help)", unless the text already is the address. Entities are decoded, and scripts, styles, templates and elements hidden with the hidden attribute, aria-hidden or display:none are skipped. Common uses include writing the plain-text part of a marketing email, cleaning content copied from a CMS, preparing text for an AI model or a word count, and archiving pages as text. Honest limits: CSS stylesheets aren't applied, so text that a stylesheet hides or reorders may still appear, and the tool doesn't download web pages. Paste the source instead (Ctrl+U or Cmd+Option+U shows it). HTML to Markdown, the text cleaner and the text counter are related.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert HTML to plain text?
Paste the HTML here. Tags are removed but paragraphs, lists, tables and link addresses are kept as readable text.
Are links kept?
Yes, as 'link text (url)'. Untick 'Keep link URLs' to keep only the link text.
What happens to tables?
Each row becomes one line with tab-separated cells, so you can paste it into Excel or Google Sheets.
Is my HTML uploaded?
No. Conversion runs in your browser and nothing is stored or sent.