Markdown vs HTML

Compare Markdown and HTML for authoring content: readability, expressiveness, and when to use each.

Markdown and HTML both describe document structure, but Markdown optimizes for writing speed and readability while HTML gives you full control over markup.

Markdown Preview

  • Plain-text syntax that is quick to write and easy to read in its source form.
  • Renders to HTML, with extensions like tables and fenced code blocks in GitHub-flavored variants.
  • Limited to a subset of document structure unless you fall back to raw HTML.
Open Markdown Preview

HTML Formatter & Minifier

  • Full, precise control over elements, attributes and semantics.
  • The exact format browsers consume, so there is no conversion layer to go wrong.
  • Verbose and error-prone to write by hand for long-form content.
Open HTML Formatter & Minifier

Verdict

Write in Markdown for prose and documentation, and use HTML when you need precise markup control. Markdown is rendered to HTML anyway, so the two are complementary.