Run a real PDF. Right here.
Nothing pre-rendered: each example runs the converter in your browser on a real document. And each one says what does not come out well — you should know before you rely on it.
Research paper
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
6 pages · PLOS Medicine (2005)
- What to look for
- A two- and three-column journal layout read column by column, the abstract and section headings rebuilt as Markdown headings, and the 2 × 2 tables of the model.
- Rough edges
- The decorative drop cap splits off the first word of the essay, the pull quote lands in the middle of the text as a heading, and the tables full of formulas are partly broken across rows.
Source: John P. A. Ioannidis, PLOS Medicine (2005) · CC BY 4.0
Scanned · OCR
NACA Report No. 460 — 78 related airfoil sections (1933)
3 pages · NASA Technical Reports Server
- What to look for
- Pages that are only pictures of paper, typeset in 1933: every page goes through OCR, and each one is flagged for review in the result.
- Rough edges
- The title page reads cleanly, but on the two-column pages OCR mixes the columns and misreads faded words, equations are lost, and specks in the margins come out as stray characters. Exactly why those pages are flagged.
Source: NASA Technical Reports Server · Public domain (US government work)
Dense tables
Income in the United States: 2023 (excerpt)
4 pages · U.S. Census Bureau, report P60-282
- What to look for
- Table A-1 on the last page: nine columns of estimates and margins of error rebuilt as a Markdown table, ready to export as CSV. The three-column introduction is read in order.
- Rough edges
- The chart labels on page 3 use a symbol font: they come out as garbage characters. The big table's two-line column headers are split over several rows.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, report P60-282 · Public domain (US government work)
Wide tables
Short-Term Energy Outlook — Tables 2 and 3d (September 2026)
2 pages · U.S. Energy Information Administration
- What to look for
- Quarterly data tables with 15 numeric columns, kept row by row and column by column.
- Rough edges
- The dotted leaders after each row label are kept, and the two header rows (years and quarters) end up as a bold line above the table instead of inside it.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration · Public domain (US government work)
Government form
IRS Form W-9 and its instructions
6 pages · Internal Revenue Service
- What to look for
- A dense form page followed by five pages of two-column instructions, with the “IF the payment is for… THEN…” tables rebuilt as Markdown.
- Rough edges
- Form boxes and check boxes have no Markdown equivalent: the form page comes out as labels, some of them grouped into small tables.
Source: Internal Revenue Service · Public domain (US government work)
Long report
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0
32 pages · National Institute of Standards and Technology, CSWP 29
- What to look for
- A 32-page standard with lists, a table of contents and the Functions/Categories table — the kind of document people turn into notes or feed to an AI.
- Rough edges
- Numbered section titles set in the body font size are not recognised as headings, and an introductory sentence in Appendix B is mistaken for one.
Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology, CSWP 29 · Public domain (US government work)
Long documents are cut to a few representative pages so the examples load quickly on a phone; the scanned NACA report was re-rendered as plain images, as a fresh scan would be. Have a PDF that converts badly? Tell us — the hard cases are the useful ones.