Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Defuddle, an HTML-to-Markdown alternative to Readability
Defuddle is an open-source JS library I built to parse and extract the main content and metadata from web pages. It can also return the content as Markdown. I built Defuddle while working on Obsidian Web Clipper[1] (also MIT-licensed) because Mozilla's Readability[2] appears to be mostly abandoned, and didn't work well for many sites. It's still very much a work in progress, but I thought I'd share it today, in light of the announcement that Mozilla is shutting down Pocket. This library could be helpful to anyone building a read-it-later app. Defuddle is also available as a CLI:…
Defuddle is an open-source JavaScript library that extracts main content and metadata from web pages, with the option to convert output to Markdown. Built as an alternative to Mozilla's Readability, it is designed to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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Hey HN! I originally built “html-to-markdown” back in 2018 (while still in high school) to handle complex HTML conversions where other libraries struggled. Now, I’ve released v2 — a complete rewrite designed to handle even more edge cases. It supports entire websites with a high accuracy. Example use: I’ve used it in my RSS reader to strip HTML down to clean Markdown, similar to the "Reader Mode" in your Browser. It can be used as a Golang package or as an CLI. Give it a try & tell me what edge cases you encounter!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Context.dev▲814Hello, My name is Yahia, I've been working on scraping products for a long time and maintain a couple of free sites in my spare time (E.g. knifegeek.io) What prompted this is i've rebuilt scraping infra at every company I've started and finally just made it a product. Pass a URL, get clean markdown, html, images, sitemap or pass a domain, get logos, colors, socials, industry data. Goal is to offer a better service than VC funded competitors at a fraction of the cost. Stealth is included and automatic at no additional cost (normally an upcharge by alternatives). Would love your honest thoughts.
Jul 2026 · context.dev · its alternatives →
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Simple Scraper▲556Turn any website into an API in just a few seconds.
2019 · simplescraper.io · its alternatives →
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My partner usually writes substack posts which I then mirror to our website’s blog section. To automate this, I made a simple tool to scrape the post and clean it so that I can drop it to our blog easily. This might be useful to others as well. Oh and ofcourse you can instruct GPT to make any final edits :D
2024 · markdowndown.vercel.app · its alternatives →
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utility library for async iterable iterators. Contribute to crcn/mesh.js development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6Copy as Markdown▲302
Convert text to markdown for LLMs like ChatGPT
2025 · copyasmarkdown.com · its alternatives →
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Get Readable Content from any page. Based on Arc90's readability project using cheerio engine. - bndr/node-read
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Scroll is a language for scientists of all ages. Scroll includes a command line app that builds static blogs, websites, CSVs, text files, and more. - breck7/scroll
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A complete and versatile web scraper. Contribute to ruipgil/scraperjs development by creating an account on GitHub.
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Automatically extract body content (and other cool stuff) from an html document - ageitgey/node-unfluff
2014 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
docrawl is a lightweight Node.js CLI for crawling documentation sites and converting them into Markdown with defuddle. It is built for static and server-rendered docs sites such as Docusaurus, VitePress, MkDocs, GitBook exports, and Obsidian Publish. It does not run a browser and does not execute page JavaScript.
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Here's a project I've been working on for a little while now. Ripl is a JS library that provides a unified API for rendering shapes on both canvas and SVG interchangeably. Over the years I've used D3 extensively to create data visualisations so I figured I'd have a go at making my own version with a slightly more modern API and stricter TypeScript support. I am aware there are already libraries that can draw to multiple contexts interchangeably, but I've added a few little niceties to Ripl that (as far as I know) some other libraries don't have such as CSS-like query selectors, DOM-like…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15AD
A simple and fast zero-dependencies-library to transform text-selections into serializable markings.
2015 · bowlingx.github.io · its alternatives →
- 16FA
Fast and extensible Markdown parser in PHP. It supports GitHub Flavored Markdown and it adheres to CommonMark.
2014 · parsedown.org · its alternatives →
- 17AS
Took a stab at building my own string diffing JS package. I built an interactive demo for TypeIt’s website (https://typeitjs.com/build-your-own) a while back. The approach I took to handle user input necessitated a way to calculate the difference between the versions of a user’s text input. I searched around for a package to help me out and found a couple of good ones (like fast-diff), but I either didn’t really like their API or didn’t want to take on a huge new dependency. Instead, I thought I’d give it a shot myself (famous last words). I dove into it having no real formal…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 18
A private, browser-only ClojureScript playground powered by the self-hosted compiler.
2016 · cljsfiddle.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Extract clean Markdown, HTML, or plain text from content-heavy websites.
2022 · content-parser.com · its alternatives →
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The most important thing is to decide on the direction of development - games, websites, software. Then make a choice of language.
2012 · strapdownjs.com · its alternatives →
- 24
Hi HN, I'm a film director by trade, and I prefer writing my stories in plain text rather than using clunky screenplay software. Standard markup like Fountain doesn't work for me because I write in mixed languages, so I use Markdown with a custom syntax I invented to resemble standard screenplay structures. This workflow is great until I need to actually generate an industry-standard screenplay PDF. I got tired of manually copying and pasting my text back into the clunky software just to export it, so I decided to write a script to automate the process. That's when I hit a wall. I tried…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- HTML-to-Markdown – convert entire websites to Markdown with Golang/CLI alternatives
- Context.dev alternatives
- Simple Scraper alternatives
- I made a tool to clean and convert any webpage to Markdown alternatives
- Crudlet.js – A common, streamable interface for synchronizing data alternatives
- Copy as Markdown alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →