claude-code-skills-reference/doc-to-markdown/references/tool-comparison.md

Tool Comparison

Comparison of document-to-markdown conversion tools.

Feature Matrix

Feature	pymupdf4llm	markitdown	pandoc
PDF Support	✅ Excellent	✅ Good	⚠️ Limited
DOCX Support	❌ No	✅ Good	✅ Excellent
PPTX Support	❌ No	✅ Good	✅ Good
XLSX Support	❌ No	✅ Good	⚠️ Limited
Table Detection	✅ Multiple strategies	⚠️ Basic	✅ Good
Image Extraction	✅ With metadata	❌ No	✅ Yes
Heading Hierarchy	✅ Good	⚠️ Variable	✅ Excellent
List Formatting	✅ Good	⚠️ Basic	✅ Excellent
LLM Optimization	✅ Built-in	❌ No	❌ No

Installation

pymupdf4llm

pip install pymupdf4llm

# Or with uv
uv pip install pymupdf4llm

Dependencies: None (pure Python with PyMuPDF)

markitdown

# With PDF support
uv tool install "markitdown[pdf]"

# Or
pip install "markitdown[pdf]"

Dependencies: Various per format (pdfminer, python-docx, etc.)

pandoc

# macOS
brew install pandoc

# Ubuntu/Debian
apt-get install pandoc

# Windows
choco install pandoc

Dependencies: System installation required

Performance Benchmarks

PDF Conversion (100-page document)

Tool	Time	Memory	Output Quality
pymupdf4llm	~15s	150MB	Excellent
markitdown	~45s	200MB	Good
pandoc	~60s	100MB	Variable

DOCX Conversion (50-page document)

Tool	Time	Memory	Output Quality
pandoc	~5s	50MB	Excellent
markitdown	~10s	80MB	Good

Best Practices

For PDFs

1. First choice: pymupdf4llm

   • Best table detection
   • Image extraction with metadata
   • LLM-optimized output

2. Fallback: markitdown

   • When pymupdf4llm fails
   • Simpler documents

For DOCX/DOC

1. First choice: pandoc

   • Best structure preservation
   • Proper heading hierarchy
   • List formatting

2. Fallback: markitdown

   • When pandoc unavailable
   • Quick conversion needed

For PPTX

1. First choice: markitdown

   • Good slide content extraction
   • Handles speaker notes

2. Fallback: pandoc

   • Better structure preservation

For XLSX

1. Only option: markitdown
   • Table to markdown conversion
   • Sheet handling

Common Issues by Tool

pymupdf4llm

Issue	Solution
"Cannot import fitz"	pip install pymupdf
Tables not detected	Try different table_strategy
Images not extracted	Enable write_images=True

markitdown

Issue	Solution
PDF support missing	Install with [pdf] extra
Slow conversion	Expected for large files
Missing content	Try alternative tool

pandoc

Issue	Solution
Command not found	Install via package manager
PDF conversion fails	Use pymupdf4llm instead
Images not extracted	Add --extract-media flag

API Comparison

pymupdf4llm

import pymupdf4llm

md = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(
    "doc.pdf",
    write_images=True,
    table_strategy="lines_strict",
    image_path="./assets"
)

markitdown

from markitdown import MarkItDown

md = MarkItDown()
result = md.convert("document.pdf")
print(result.text_content)

pandoc

pandoc document.docx -t markdown --wrap=none --extract-media=./assets

import subprocess

result = subprocess.run(
    ["pandoc", "doc.docx", "-t", "markdown", "--wrap=none"],
    capture_output=True, text=True
)
print(result.stdout)