// rag · datalab-to/marker

Marker

Marker is an open-source rag & knowledge project by datalab-to (datalab-to/marker on GitHub). It has 40,648 GitHub stars and 2,945 forks, is released under the Apache-2.0 license, and was last updated on GitHub on 22 October 2026.

Marker — converts PDFs to Markdown and JSON quickly and accurately, with layout, tables and math intact, Apache-2.0

★ 40.6k stars⑂ 2.9k forksApache-2.0updated 2026-10
▦ visual — this project's README ships no embeddable screenshot,
so here's a placeholder. The guide below is complete regardless.
// project facts

Project facts

GitHub stars
40,648
Forks
2,945
License
Apache-2.0
Last updated on GitHub
22 October 2026
Listing
Full install guide
// how it works

How it works

  1. Install Marker for PDFs

    The base package covers PDF conversion from PyPI.

  2. Add the full extras for other document types

    Documents beyond PDFs need the full dependency set.

  3. Set up your inference backend

    On an NVIDIA GPU use vLLM with Docker and the NVIDIA Container Toolkit; on CPU or Apple Silicon install the llama-server binary from llama.cpp.

// features

Why people love it

High-accuracy PDF conversion

Layout, tables and math survive as structured Markdown and JSON, not flattened text.

Two modes for two budgets

Balanced mode for maximum quality on GPU; fast mode for CPU-friendly conversion with targeted repair of bad blocks.

Surya vision models underneath

Layout detection and OCR come from dedicated vision models, with re-OCR of pages whose embedded text is unreliable.

Built for document pipelines

Output is made to feed search, RAG and dataset tooling, not just to be read once.

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// run it

Run it yourself

  1. Install for PDFs

    The README install route from PyPI.

    pip install marker-pdf
  2. Install the full version

    Adds support for documents other than PDFs.

    pip install marker-pdf[full]
  3. CPU / Apple Silicon backend

    The llama-server binary Marker needs on non-GPU machines.

    brew install llama.cpp
// use cases

What you can build

  • Converting research papers and reports into Markdown for RAG
  • Building datasets from PDF archives with tables and math intact
  • Turning scanned or messy PDFs into clean structured text
  • Feeding document pipelines that need JSON, not just text
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// faq

Questions, answered

Who makes Marker?

The datalab-to team, built on the Surya vision models.

Is Marker free?

Yes — Apache-2.0 licensed.

Do I need a GPU?

No — fast mode is optimised for CPU, with llama.cpp as the backend; balanced mode is best on an NVIDIA GPU with vLLM.

What does Marker output?

Markdown and JSON with layout, tables and math preserved — structured output for search and RAG, not a plain text dump.

How do I get started?

pip install marker-pdf (or marker-pdf[full] for non-PDF documents), set up the vLLM or llama.cpp backend, and convert.

// keep exploring

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Get Marker

Free and open — grab the source, star the repo, and start creating.