Remove HTML Tags

Turning Markup Into Clean Reading Text

HTML tags are the code that tells a browser how to display a page. Things like <p>, <div>, and <a> wrap the actual words. When you copy from a web page or export from a content system, those tags often come along and clutter the text. Removing HTML tags strips out that markup and leaves only the readable words, so you get plain text you can paste anywhere without stray code.

Writers and editors use this to lift the text out of a formatted page for reuse. Developers clean HTML snippets before feeding them into a plain-text field, a search index, or a log. Support and data teams sanitize content pasted from emails and web forms so it stores safely. Anyone who has pasted from a website into a plain-text app and seen odd tags or symbols benefits from a quick strip.

What Gets Removed and What Stays

The tool deletes everything between angle brackets, so all tags disappear. It goes further with two kinds of content that would otherwise leak through. Script and style blocks are removed whole, not just their tags, so no JavaScript or CSS ends up in your text. The words inside normal tags are kept. Two options let you tidy the result: decode entities turns codes like &amp; and &nbsp; back into the real characters they stand for, and collapse spaces squeezes long runs of spaces and blank lines into clean spacing.

Strip Tags Versus Sanitize

These two jobs sound alike but differ. Stripping tags removes all HTML to give plain text, which is what you want when the markup is noise. Sanitizing keeps safe HTML but removes dangerous parts, like scripts, so the content can still be shown as formatted HTML without a security risk. This tool strips, giving you clean text. If your goal is to display user content as HTML on a live site, you need a proper sanitizer on your server, not a plain-text strip, because plain text alone is not a security control for rendered pages.

Benefits, Limits, and Common Mistakes

The benefit is a fast, private way to get readable text from messy markup, with no upload and no waiting even on long documents. The limits are worth noting. Because tags become spaces, the layout of the original page is lost; a table turns into a stream of cell text with no columns. Line breaks from <br> and paragraph gaps may not match the original exactly. A common mistake is expecting links to survive; the visible link text stays, but the underlying URL is dropped along with the tag. If you need those addresses, pull them separately before stripping.

• To keep the URLs that stripping would discard, run the HTML through the URL extractor first.
• After stripping, check the length of the clean text with the word counter.
• If the output has repeated lines from list items, tidy it with remove duplicate lines.
• Leave decode entities on when copying from web pages, since real content is full of &amp; and &nbsp; codes.
• Turn off collapse spaces only when the exact original spacing matters, such as preformatted code.

People Also Ask

How do I convert HTML to plain text?

Paste the HTML into the box and click Strip HTML. The tool deletes every tag and returns just the words inside, which you copy with one click. Keep the decode and tidy options on for the cleanest result.

Does removing HTML tags delete the content too?

No. Only the tags between angle brackets are removed. The visible words stay. The one exception is script and style blocks, whose inner code is deleted on purpose so it never reaches your text.

Will it remove inline styles and classes?

Yes. Style and class attributes live inside tags, so they vanish when the tags are stripped. Whole <style> blocks are also removed, so no CSS survives in the output.

Why does my stripped text still show &amp; or &nbsp;?

Those are HTML entities, which are codes for special characters. Leave the decode option ticked and they turn back into the real characters, so &amp; becomes an ampersand and &nbsp; becomes a normal space.

Is stripping HTML the same as sanitizing it?

No. Stripping removes all HTML to give plain text. Sanitizing keeps safe formatting while removing dangerous parts like scripts. For showing user content as live HTML, use a real sanitizer on your server, not a plain-text strip.

Does it keep links when removing tags?

The visible link text stays, but the web address inside the tag is removed. If you need those URLs, extract them from the HTML before you strip the tags.

Is it safe to paste private content?

Yes. The stripping runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript, so nothing you paste is uploaded or stored. Closing the page clears everything.