Convert Markdown to YAML Online

Paste a Markdown table below, edit it if you need to, and get YAML back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

From

From a page

The only part of this site that uses a server. The address is sent to it so the page can be fetched, because a browser is not allowed to fetch someone else's page itself. Your own files are never involved.

Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.

Edit

Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.

ToDataMarkupDocumentsCodeSchemasImages

Header rowDetect numbers

The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What Markdown is

A Markdown table is rows of pipe-separated cells with a dashed rule under the header. Alignment is set by placing colons in that rule.

README files, GitHub issues, documentation sites, Obsidian and Notion.

What YAML is

YAML uses indentation instead of brackets. It is a superset of JSON, supports comments, and is meant to be edited by hand.

Kubernetes manifests, CI pipelines, Ansible playbooks and most modern config files.

What changes when you convert Markdown to YAML

Leading and trailing pipes are optional and both are handled. A pipe the author escaped with a backslash is read as data rather than a column break, which is the usual reason a hand-written table parses one column too wide.

You get a list of maps, one per row, with long lines left unwrapped so values do not get folded across lines.

What carries over from Markdown to YAML

Markdown records 2 things about a table that YAML has no way to hold.

YAML wants a type for each column, and Markdown does not record one, so each column is typed from what its values look like. A column of digits that should stay text - a zip code, a phone number, a leading-zero id - is the usual thing to check afterwards.

YAML has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.

Anything visual in the Markdown - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in YAML and is dropped. The values are what survives.

The identifier 007 comes out of the YAML as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.

The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a YAML file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are left as a plain quote character in the YAML.

A worked example

Three rows of staff data, with an identifier that has a leading zero, a value containing a comma, a value containing quotes and one blank cell. Those are the four places formats disagree, so they are the four places to look.

Markdown in

| id  | name             | role          | started    | hours |
| --- | ---------------- | ------------- | ---------- | ----- |
| 007 | Halima Yusuf     | Analyst, data | 2024-03-15 | 38.5  |
| 012 | Jonah "Jo" Pryce | Engineer      | 2025-11-02 |       |
| 104 | Wei Chen         | Manager       | 2023-06-30 | 40    |

YAML out

- id: '007'
  name: Halima Yusuf
  role: Analyst, data
  started: '2024-03-15'
  hours: '38.5'
- id: '012'
  name: Jonah "Jo" Pryce
  role: Engineer
  started: '2025-11-02'
  hours: ''
- id: '104'
  name: Wei Chen
  role: Manager
  started: '2023-06-30'
  hours: '40'

Questions

How do I convert Markdown to YAML?

Paste your Markdown into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the YAML from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Can a Markdown table cell contain a line break?

Not directly. The row ends at the newline. Use a <br> tag inside the cell, which every common Markdown renderer passes through to the HTML output.

Why did my YAML value change meaning?

YAML reads several bare words as booleans. In the 1.1 spec that includes yes, no, on and off, which is why a country column containing NO for Norway can arrive as false. Quote values you want kept as text.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.