Markdown to Confluence Converter

Write in Markdown and convert it to Confluence wiki markup — the notation Confluence uses for headings (h1.), bold (*x*), links ([text|url]), lists, code macros, and ||header|| tables. Paste your Markdown and copy the wiki version to paste into a Confluence page. The conversion happens entirely on your device.

How to use the Markdown to Confluence Converter

Type or paste Markdown into the left box and the Confluence wiki markup appears on the right, updating live. When it looks right, press Copy wiki markup and paste it into Confluence using the editor's Insert > Markup (or "Insert wiki markup") option, which accepts this older but still widely supported notation.

The converter maps the common constructs directly. Markdown headings # … ###### become h1. through h6.; **bold** becomes *bold* and _italic_ stays _italic_; inline `code` becomes {{code}}. A link [text](url) turns into [text|url] and an image ![alt](url) into !url!. Bulleted and numbered lists map to Confluence's * and # markers, with nesting expressed by repeating the marker (**, ##) according to indentation. Fenced code blocks become a {code} macro, carrying the language when you specify one.

Blockquotes are wrapped in a {quote} macro, horizontal rules become ----, and Markdown tables are rewritten with Confluence's ||header||header|| heading row and |cell|cell| body rows. Because Confluence tables do not encode per-column alignment in wiki markup, the alignment colons from your Markdown separator are dropped. Everything runs locally in your browser, so nothing you paste is uploaded.

Markdown, Confluence, and two flavors of markup

Confluence, Atlassian's team wiki, predates the dominance of Markdown and grew up with its own wiki markup — a compact text notation where a heading is h2. Title, bold is a pair of asterisks around a word, and a code block is a {code} macro. Over the years Confluence moved to a rich visual editor backed by a storage format, but the wiki markup remains useful: it is fast to type, easy to generate from scripts, and the editor still offers an "insert wiki markup" path that converts it into proper page content. The friction is that the rest of the world writes in Markdown — READMEs, issue trackers, chat, static sites — so people constantly have content in one notation that they need in the other.

The two languages express the same ideas with different punctuation, and the mismatches are exactly where hand-conversion goes wrong. Both use asterisks, but they mean different things: in Markdown a single *word* is italic and a double **word** is bold, whereas in Confluence a single *word* is bold and italic uses underscores. Convert naively and your bold and italic swap. Links invert their structure too — Markdown puts the text first and the URL in parentheses, [text](url), while Confluence puts them in one bracket separated by a pipe, [text|url]. Inline code is backticks in Markdown and doubled curly braces, {{like this}}, in Confluence. None of these are hard individually, but doing them by hand across a long document is slow and error-prone, especially when bold and italic are nested or a line mixes code, links, and emphasis.

Block structures add their own subtleties. Markdown indicates list nesting with indentation, but Confluence indicates it by repeating the marker, so a doubly-indented bullet becomes ** and a nested numbered item becomes ##; a converter has to translate indentation depth into marker repetition. Code fences map cleanly to the {code} macro, and carrying the fenced language across keeps syntax highlighting. Tables are the most visibly different: Markdown separates the header with a row of dashes, while Confluence has no separator row at all and instead marks header cells with double pipes. Because the wiki table syntax carries no alignment information, the per-column alignment you may have set in Markdown simply has nowhere to go. Understanding these structural differences is what makes a faithful conversion possible, and automating it means you can keep authoring in the Markdown you are comfortable with and still publish clean, correctly formatted Confluence pages.

Common use cases

  • Publishing docs. Move a Markdown README or design doc into a Confluence page.
  • Release notes. Convert changelog Markdown into wiki markup for a Confluence space.
  • Migrations. Bulk-translate Markdown content when moving onto Confluence.
  • Mixed workflows. Author in Markdown, paste as wiki markup where Confluence expects it.

Frequently asked questions

Why do bold and italic markers differ?
Confluence uses single asterisks for bold and underscores for italic, while Markdown uses single asterisks for italic and double for bold. The converter handles the swap so emphasis is not inverted.

How do I paste the result into Confluence?
In the Confluence editor use the Insert menu and choose Markup (or "Insert wiki markup"), then paste. Confluence converts the wiki notation into page content.

Are nested lists supported?
Yes. Indentation in Markdown is translated into repeated markers — ** for a second-level bullet, ## for a nested numbered item — which is how Confluence expresses nesting.

Why is my table alignment lost?
Confluence wiki markup for tables has no way to encode per-column alignment, so the colons in your Markdown separator row are dropped. The header cells are marked with double pipes instead.