I built an API that converts any webpage to clean Markdown in under 1 second

filtede98 — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:21:01 +0000

## The Problem

I was building a RAG pipeline and needed a way to feed web content into my LLM. The options were:

Copy-paste the text manually — doesn't scale
Use Beautiful Soup — returns raw text, loses all structure
Use a headless browser — slow, expensive, complex to maintain

None of them gave me what I actually needed: structured Markdown that preserves headings, tables, code blocks, and
links.

## So I Built WTM API

One POST request. Any URL. Clean Markdown back in under 1 second.


bash
  curl -X POST https://wtmapi.com/api/v1/convert \                                                                      
    -H "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY" \                
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \                                                                               
    -d '{"url": "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map"}'

  What you get back:                      

  # Array.prototype.map()                                                                                               

  The **map()** method of Array instances creates a new array                                                           
  populated with the results of calling a provided function                                                             
  on every element in the calling array.

  ## Syntax                                                       

  map(callbackFn)                                                 
  map(callbackFn, thisArg)

  ## Examples                             

  const numbers = [1, 4, 9];                                                                                            
  const roots = numbers.map((num) => Math.sqrt(num));
  // roots is now [1, 2, 3]                                                                                             

  Headings, code blocks with syntax hints, bold text, links — all preserved. Not just raw text.

  How It Works

  No headless browser. No Puppeteer. No Playwright.               

  The engine runs server-side with Cheerio (lightweight HTML parser) and does:

  1. Minimal cleanup — removes only <nav>, <script>, <style>, cookie banners
  2. Recursive conversion — walks the DOM tree and converts each element to its Markdown equivalent                     
  3. URL resolution — relative links become absolute URLs         
  4. Table conversion — HTML tables become proper Markdown tables                                                       

  The result is a faithful conversion of the page content, not a lossy text extraction.                                 

  What I Used to Build It                                                                                               

  The entire stack runs on free tiers:                                                                                  

  ┌────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┐     
  │  Service   │                  Purpose                   │                                                           
  ├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤     
  │ Next.js 16 │ Framework (App Router)                     │                                                           
  ├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤     
  │ Supabase   │ Auth + PostgreSQL + Row Level Security     │
  ├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
  │ Stripe     │ Subscription billing (Free/Pro/Enterprise) │
  ├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤                                                           
  │ Vercel     │ Hosting and deployment                     │                                                           
  ├────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤                                                           
  │ Cheerio    │ HTML parsing engine                        │                                                           
  └────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘     

  Total monthly cost: $0.                                         

  Pricing

  - Free: 50 calls/month (no credit card)     
  - Pro: $9/month — 10,000 calls                                                                                        
  - Enterprise: $49/month — 100,000 calls                         

  Try It Now

  There's a live demo on the site — 3 free conversions, no signup required. Paste any URL and see the output instantly.

  https://wtmapi.com                                              

  I'd love to hear what you think. What URLs would you test it on? What features would you want next?

DEV Community: filtede98

I built an API that converts any webpage to clean Markdown in under 1 second