html2text

2025.4.15 · active · verified Wed Apr 08

html2text is a Python library that efficiently converts HTML into clean, easy-to-read plain ASCII text, which is also valid Markdown. It provides extensive customization options for the conversion process. The library maintains an active and healthy development status with regular releases, ensuring ongoing support and feature enhancements.

Warnings

breaking Support for Python 2.x and older Python 3 versions was removed in release 2019.8.11. The library now officially requires Python 3.9 or newer.
Fix: Upgrade your Python environment to 3.9 or newer.
breaking The functionality to retrieve HTML over the network by passing URLs directly to the library was removed in release 2019.8.11. Earlier versions issued deprecation warnings for this feature.
Fix: Fetch HTML content using a dedicated HTTP client (e.g., `requests`) and pass the HTML string to `html2text.html2text()` or `HTML2Text().handle()`.
gotcha To configure conversion options (e.g., `ignore_links`, `body_width`, `images_as_html`), you must create an instance of `html2text.HTML2Text()` and set properties on it, then call its `handle()` method. The top-level `html2text.html2text()` function does not accept these configuration options directly.
Fix: Use `h = html2text.HTML2Text(); h.option = True; h.handle(html)` for custom configurations.
gotcha By default, `html2text` may wrap long lines. To disable this, which is often desirable for programmatic parsing or specific Markdown formatting, set the `body_width` option to `0`.
Fix: When using `HTML2Text()`, set `h.body_width = 0` to prevent line wrapping.

Install

pip install html2text Install latest version

Imports

html2text
```
import html2text
text = html2text.html2text(html_content)
```
Direct function for simple conversion without custom configuration.
HTML2Text
```
from html2text import HTML2Text
h = HTML2Text()
h.ignore_links = True
text = h.handle(html_content)
```
Class-based approach for custom configurations like ignoring links, setting body width, etc.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates both the simple `html2text()` function for basic conversion and the `HTML2Text` class for more granular control over the output, such as ignoring links or disabling line wrapping.

import html2text

html_content = """
<h1>Welcome</h1>
<p>Hello, <b>world</b>! This is a <a href="https://example.com">link</a>.</p>
<ul>
  <li>Item 1</li>
  <li>Item 2</li>
</ul>
"""

# Basic conversion
plain_text = html2text.html2text(html_content)
print("--- Basic Conversion ---")
print(plain_text)

# Custom conversion with options (e.g., ignoring links and no line wrapping)
h = html2text.HTML2Text()
h.ignore_links = True # Do not include link URLs
h.body_width = 0     # Disable line wrapping

custom_text = h.handle(html_content)
print("\n--- Custom Conversion (No links, no wrap) ---")
print(custom_text)

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