The repo (start here)
MarkItDown — free from Microsoft
github.com/microsoft/markitdown — 170,000+ stars. Point it at a file and it turns PDFs, Excel sheets, Word docs and PowerPoints into clean markdown text.
The double-billing problem
When you upload a PDF, Claude turns every page into an image, then pulls the text out on top of that — and you get charged for both. Anthropic's own docs put it at 1,500–3,000 tokens per page, with the page image stacking on top.
A 20-page contract can burn 60,000 tokens before you've even asked a question. MarkItDown converts the file to plain markdown first, so you're only paying for the words.
Set it up in one prompt
You don't need to be technical — paste this into Claude Code (or Codex) and let it do the install:
The "ohhh" bit
MarkItDown also has an MCP server — connect it to Claude Desktop and every file you upload gets auto-converted, without you thinking about it again. Ask Claude Code to "set up the MarkItDown MCP server for Claude Desktop" once you've got the basics working.
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