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Pasted or scraped HTML content is full of tags, attributes, and entity codes that get in the way when all you need is the plain readable text underneath — copying an article from a web page, exporting content from a CMS, or receiving an HTML email often brings the markup along with it whether you want it or not. A tag stripper solves a narrower but very common problem: turning marked-up content into clean text you can paste into a plain-text field, a spreadsheet cell, an SMS, or a system that doesn't render HTML at all. It's a lightweight alternative to opening a full HTML parser or writing a regex by hand every time this need comes up. This tool strips every HTML tag from a block of markup and decodes any HTML entities (like turning a coded ampersand back into a plain & character), leaving only clean plain text, with an optional whitespace-collapsing step for tidier output.
How it works
Paste in your HTML content. The tool scans the text and removes everything between an opening angle bracket (<) and a closing angle bracket (>) — that is, every opening and closing tag along with any attributes inside it — while leaving the text between tags untouched. It then decodes common HTML entities — the coded forms of an ampersand, an opening or closing angle bracket, and a non-breaking space — back into their plain-text equivalents (&, <, >, and a normal space). If you enable whitespace collapsing, the tool also cleans up the extra blank lines and repeated spaces that are commonly left behind once block-level tags like paragraph and div tags are removed.
- Enter hTML input.
- Enter collapse extra whitespace.
- Click Calculate to see your results.
Examples
Stripping a simple paragraph
The input <p>Hello <strong>World</strong>!</p> becomes Hello World! once every tag is removed, with the visible text preserved exactly.
Decoding a coded ampersand
Pasted HTML often contains a coded ampersand entity instead of a plain & character, since an ampersand has special meaning in HTML markup — this tool decodes it back to a normal & symbol in the stripped output, so text written as "Salt (coded ampersand) Pepper" in the source comes out reading "Salt & Pepper".
Stripping a link
The input Visit <a href="https://example.com">our site</a> today! becomes Visit our site today! — the tag and its href attribute are both removed, but the visible link text is preserved.
Who should use it
- Extracting plain readable text from scraped or copy-pasted HTML content.
- Cleaning HTML-formatted text before importing it into a plain-text field or system.
- Preparing email or CMS content for a plain-text export, SMS, or notification.
- Quickly checking what an HTML snippet reads like with all markup removed.
Industry applications
- Content management and data migration
- Web scraping and data processing
- Email and notification systems
Advantages
- Decodes HTML entities automatically, not just removing tags.
- Optional whitespace collapsing for cleaner output from block-heavy markup.
- Fast, one-step way to get plain text from marked-up content without writing your own regex.
Limitations
- Does not selectively exclude script or style block contents — best used on content-focused HTML rather than a full page source.
- Not a substitute for a proper HTML sanitization library in security-sensitive contexts.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Pasting a full raw HTML page (including head, script, and style sections) and expecting only the visible body text — this strips ALL tags, not just visible content ones, so hidden script/style text can bleed through.
- Forgetting that stripped output loses all formatting (bold, links, line breaks as separate elements) — this extracts plain text only, not a lightly-formatted version.
- Using this as a security/XSS sanitizer for untrusted input rendered back into a web page — it is a text-extraction convenience tool, not a hardened sanitizer.
- Not enabling whitespace collapsing on heavily nested markup, resulting in an output with many stray blank lines.
Best practices
- Enable "collapse whitespace" when stripping tags from block-heavy markup (lots of div/p tags) to avoid a result full of blank lines.
- Paste only the content section you care about (rather than a full page source) for the cleanest, most predictable result.
- Double-check the output for leftover entity artifacts if the source HTML uses uncommon or numeric character references.
Tips
- If you need to preserve some structure (like paragraph breaks) rather than a single wall of text, keep "collapse whitespace" off and let the natural line spacing from block tags carry through.
- For content pulled from a rich text editor, strip tags first, then re-check for any leftover non-breaking spaces or special characters.
- If your source has custom or numeric HTML entities, spot check the decoded output for accuracy.