Remove HTML Tags — Strip Markup and Keep the Text

When you copy text from a web page, an email, or a CMS export, the clipboard often carries invisible markup: tags, attributes, script blocks, and style rules. Pasting that into a plain-text field, a spreadsheet, or a code comment leaves the noise behind. An HTML-to-text tool strips the markup and keeps only the readable content.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. The HTML you paste is parsed locally and converted to plain text. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and no signup is required. You get clean text that you can copy back into your document, email, or note-taking app.

Why strip HTML

Browsers render markup, but most other tools do not. When you move content out of a browser context, the tags become clutter. Stripping HTML helps you:

• Clean copied text. Pull a paragraph from a web page and paste it into a plain-text email without the surrounding <div> and <span> noise.
• Sanitize CMS exports. Content management systems often wrap every block in nested containers. Stripping the markup gives you the raw words.
• Prepare data for analysis. Spreadsheets, databases, and NLP pipelines expect plain text. Removing tags is the first step before counting words, detecting language, or running sentiment analysis.
• Recover from formatted documents. When a rich-text editor exports HTML and you only need the words, stripping is faster than retyping.
• Remove embedded code. Script and style blocks are stripped with their content, so JavaScript and CSS never leak into the result.

Stripping is not the same as sanitizing for safe display. This tool produces plain text, not safe HTML. If you need to render user content on a page, use a proper sanitizer instead.

How to use

Paste HTML

Open the HTML source textarea and paste your markup. A single element, a full page, or a messy fragment from a CMS export all work. The textarea is editable, so you can also type or tweak HTML directly before stripping.

Remove markup

Click Remove markup to strip the tags. The tool removes <script>, <style>, <noscript>, <iframe>, <object>, and <embed> elements entirely, then parses the remaining markup with the browser's built-in DOMParser. Block elements like <p>, <div>, headings, list items, table rows, and blockquotes get line breaks around their content so paragraphs stay separated. <br> becomes a newline. HTML entities like & and < are decoded automatically.

The result replaces what is in the textarea. If the textarea is empty, you will see a friendly prompt asking you to paste HTML first.

Copy text

Click Copy text to write the current textarea content to your clipboard. A short confirmation appears so you know the copy succeeded. If the clipboard API is unavailable, the content stays in the textarea for manual selection.

Clear editor

Click Clear editor to empty the textarea and reset the widget. This clears the field; it does not restore the previous HTML. If you need the original markup again, keep a copy in your source control or clipboard history.

Example

Here is a typical before-and-after. The input is a paragraph with inline formatting and a script block. After stripping, only the readable text remains.

Before — HTML:

<p>Hello <b>world</b></p><script>alert(1)</script>

After — plain text:

Hello world

Notice that the <script> block is gone entirely. The alert(1) code never appears in the output, and it is never executed.

Adjacent paragraphs stay separated. Each block element gets a newline before and after its content, so two paragraphs do not run together into a single line.

Before — two paragraphs:

<p>One</p><p>Two</p>

After — plain text:

One

Two

Tips for cleaner output

• Paste raw HTML. If your source is a rendered page, view the page source or use your browser's inspector to copy the markup. Pasting rendered text often misses the tags you actually want to strip.
• Keep a copy of the original. Stripping is destructive. Save the HTML in your project or clipboard history before you overwrite the textarea.
• Combine with other tools. If the result still has extra line breaks, run it through the Remove Line Breaks tool. If you want to re-format the HTML before stripping, use the HTML Formatter.
• Use it on email exports. Many email clients export messages as HTML. Strip the markup to get the plain-text body without the wrapper elements.

FAQ

Does this tool upload my HTML to a server?

No. The entire process runs in your browser using client-side JavaScript. Nothing leaves your device.

What happens to <script> and <style> blocks?

They are removed entirely, including their content. JavaScript code and CSS rules never appear in the output, and they are never executed.

Does it work on partial HTML, or only full documents?

Both. Paste a single <span>, a fragment of nested elements, or a complete page. The parser handles all of the same input.

What about HTML entities like & and <?

They are decoded automatically. & becomes &, < becomes <, and so on. The browser's DOMParser handles the decoding as part of parsing.

Can I undo the stripping?

The Clear editor button empties the textarea. It does not restore the previous HTML. If you need the original markup again, keep a copy before you click Remove markup.

What if my HTML has syntax errors?

The browser's parser is forgiving. Most malformed markup still produces readable text. If something goes wrong during processing, a friendly message appears instead of an empty screen.

Related tools

• HTML Formatter — beautify and indent HTML markup before you strip it.
• HTML Minifier — compress HTML markup when you need to keep the tags but remove the whitespace.
• Remove Line Breaks — clean up line breaks after stripping markup from multi-paragraph content.