HTML Tag Stripper

HTML

Plain text

Paragraphs, headings, list items, table rows, and line breaks become new lines. Inline tags such as bold or links are removed and their text stays in place.

How to strip HTML tags from text

Paste the HTML

Paste the markup into the HTML box, or click Load sample to see the tool work. The plain text appears in the output box at once.
Check the counters

The counters show how many tags were removed and how the character count changed. A large drop usually means the input carried inline styles or scripts.
Copy the result

Click Copy to put the plain text on your clipboard, then paste it into your document, form, or spreadsheet.
Clean up if needed

Open the Whitespace Cleaner to collapse the spacing the tags left behind, or Find & Replace to remove a repeated phrase.

Common use cases

Email and newsletter exports

Marketing platforms export HTML. Strip it to get the message as text for a transcript, an archive, or a word count.

CMS and rich-text fields

A WordPress post or a rich-text editor field carries markup. Strip it before you paste the copy into a plain-text field or a spreadsheet.

Scraped pages and prompts

A saved web page is mostly tags. Keep the words only before you paste it into a search index, a summarizer, or an AI prompt.

Product descriptions

Marketplace listings need plain text. Strip the store's HTML and keep one line per paragraph.

Why use an HTML tag stripper?

Text that arrives as HTML is hard to read and harder to reuse: an email export, a CMS field, a scraped page, or a rich-text editor's clipboard all wrap the words in tags. The HTML Tag Stripper removes every tag in one pass, turns block elements such as paragraphs and list items into line breaks so the structure survives as lines, and decodes the common entities so & becomes an ampersand again. Paste the result into a plain-text field, a search index, a spreadsheet cell, or a prompt with no markup in the way.

The HTML Tag Stripper turns markup into plain text. It removes every tag, turns each block element into a line break so paragraphs and list items stay on their own lines, decodes the six common entities, and collapses runs of blank lines. The result is the words of the page, in order, with no attributes, no styles, and no link URLs.

The stripping function is the same one behind the REST tool html-strip and the MCP tool html_strip, so a script or an AI client gets exactly the text the page shows. The page adds counters for the tags removed and the characters before and after.

Pair it with the HTML to Markdown converter when you need to keep the structure, with the Whitespace Cleaner to tidy the spacing after the tags are gone, and with Find & Replace to remove a repeated footer or signature.

How it compares

A text editor can strip tags with a regular expression, and a shell can do it with sed, but both need the pattern for block elements and entities on top of the tag pattern, and neither shows what changed. A dedicated stripper makes the rules explicit and reports the counts.

Compared with other online tag removers, this one runs in your browser rather than on a server, offers the same function through a REST endpoint and an MCP server for automation, and states exactly which entities it decodes and which tags become line breaks. It does not keep link URLs; the HTML to Markdown converter does.

Tips

Remove script and style blocks before you paste when the page carries inline code. The stripper keeps the code as text.
Use HTML to Markdown instead when you need to keep links and headings.
Run the Whitespace Cleaner after stripping to collapse double spaces and blank lines.
Check the Tags removed counter. A zero means the input had no tags, so the text is already plain.
Use the HTML Entity Decoder for numeric entities such as accented letters.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the tool keep, and what does it remove?

It keeps the text. It removes every tag, including script and style tags, and the attributes inside them. A paragraph, heading, list item, table row, block quote, div, or line break tag becomes a new line, so a list stays one item per line. Inline tags such as bold, italic, span, and link are dropped and their text stays where it was.

Which HTML entities are decoded?

The six common ones: &, <, >, ", ', and  . Numeric entities for other characters, such as accented letters or symbols, are left as they are. Paste the result into the HTML Entity Decoder if you need the full set.

Does it keep link URLs?

No. A link becomes its visible text and the URL is removed with the tag. Use the HTML to Markdown converter when you want to keep links, headings, and lists in a readable form.

What happens to script and style blocks?

The tags are removed, but the code between them is text to the stripper and stays in the output. Delete those blocks before pasting when the page carries inline scripts or styles.

Why does the output have extra blank lines?

Each block tag adds a line break, and nested blocks add more than one. The tool collapses runs of three or more line breaks to a single blank line. Run the Whitespace Cleaner with Remove blank lines on when you want no blank lines at all.

Does the HTML Tag Stripper require a signup?

No. It is available with no signup and no usage limits. The stripping runs in your browser, so the HTML you paste is not uploaded to a server.

Can I run the same conversion from a script or an AI client?

Yes. The same function powers the REST tool html-strip at api.findutils.com and the MCP tool html_strip at mcp.findutils.com. It takes one argument, html, and returns the plain text.

Is there a size limit?

The page has no fixed limit; your browser's memory is the ceiling. The REST and MCP surfaces cap one request at 1 MB.

Is this the same as the HTML to Markdown converter?

No. HTML to Markdown keeps the structure as Markdown: headings become # lines, lists keep their bullets, links keep their URLs. The stripper keeps only the words and the line breaks. Choose the stripper for a search index, a form field, or a word count, and the converter for documentation.

Does it handle malformed HTML?

Yes. The tool does not build a document tree. It removes anything that looks like a tag, from a < to the next >, so unclosed and mismatched tags do not stop it. A lone < in the text that is not a tag is removed up to the next >, so escape it as < first.

Run it from code

$ curl -X POST \
  api.findutils.com/api/tools/html-strip/execute \
  -d '{"html":"<p>hi</p>"}'

$ claude mcp add findutils \
  --transport http https://mcp.findutils.com/
# then call findutils:html_strip

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