marklipi API reference

marklipi converts text-layer PDFs to clean Markdown. It is built for agents: stateless, zero-config, no API key for basic use, structured JSON responses. No vision model — fast and cheap for documents that have a text layer (bank statements, ownership records, contracts, tables).

• Base URL: https://api.marklipi.com
• OpenAPI spec: https://api.marklipi.com/openapi.json
• Auth: none required
• Formats: request multipart/form-data, response application/json
• Status: public beta — free, rate-limited (see Rate limits).

Quickstart

Convert a PDF with one request — upload the file, get Markdown back:

curl -s https://api.marklipi.com/convert \
  -F "file=@statement.pdf"

{
  "markdown": "# Account Statement\n\n| Date | Description | Amount |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n...",
  "filename": "statement.pdf",
  "characters": 18342
}

POST /convert

Convert a PDF to Markdown. Stateless: the file is processed in memory and discarded — nothing is stored.

Request

multipart/form-data with a single field:

The API accepts file uploads only — there is no URL parameter. If the PDF lives at a URL, download it yourself and upload the bytes.

Response — 200 OK

Errors

All errors return JSON: {"detail": "<human-readable message>"}.

Examples

Python (httpx):

import httpx

with open("statement.pdf", "rb") as f:
    response = httpx.post(
        "https://api.marklipi.com/convert",
        files={"file": ("statement.pdf", f, "application/pdf")},
        timeout=60,
    )
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json()["markdown"])

JavaScript (fetch):

const form = new FormData();
form.append("file", pdfBlob, "statement.pdf");

const res = await fetch("https://api.marklipi.com/convert", {
  method: "POST",
  body: form,
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error((await res.json()).detail);
const { markdown } = await res.json();

GET /health

Liveness check. Returns the running API version.

curl -s https://api.marklipi.com/health

{ "status": "ok", "version": "0.1.0" }

Rate limits

Per client IP, on /convert:

On 429, the Retry-After header tells you how many seconds to wait. Back off for that long — retrying sooner only re-triggers the limit. Need more? See Pricing.

Pricing

The free tier stays free — no key, no signup. Paid tiers lift the daily limit on /convert:

To buy: email hello@dovey.com.au with the tier name. Paid keys are issued by email within 24 hours of purchase, along with usage instructions.

What it’s good at (and not)

marklipi extracts the existing text layer. It does not run OCR or a vision model.

• Great: digital-native PDFs — bank statements, invoices, contracts, government records, reports, tables.
• Returns 422: scanned documents, photos of documents, image-only PDFs. Use an OCR or vision pipeline for those.

Rule of thumb: if you can select text in the PDF, marklipi can convert it.

Privacy

Stateless by design: no sessions, no persistence. Uploaded files are processed in memory and discarded — nothing is stored.

Machine-readable resources

• llms.txt — index of agent-readable resources
• llms-full.txt — this entire documentation in one file
• docs.md — this page as raw Markdown
• openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1 spec