Markdown to BBCode Converter

How to use

1. 1Paste your Markdown into the input on the left, or click a sample (Forum announcement, Game guide, Signature block, or Code dump) to start with a typical post.
2. 2Pick the BBCode dialect that matches your forum: Generic for the widest compatibility, phpBB or XenForo for [code=lang] and [icode] support, vBulletin for [c] and the 1 to 7 [size] scale, or Plain when your forum strips [size] tags.
3. 3Read the BBCode output on the right and check the character and byte counts, then click Copy BBCode to lift the result into a phpBB, vBulletin, XenForo, MyBB, IPB, or Steam post window.
4. 4If a heading or code block does not render in your forum, switch dialects and re-copy; different engines accept different forms of [size], [code], and [icode].
5. 5Use the syntax cheat sheet and quirks panel at the bottom of the page to confirm how each construct maps to BBCode for the engine you target.

About this tool

Markdown to BBCode Converter rewrites CommonMark and GitHub-Flavored Markdown into the bracketed BBCode markup used by phpBB, vBulletin, XenForo, MyBB, Invision Power Board, Steam community pages, and many gaming and hobby forums. Most of these engines do not render Markdown, so a post drafted in a Markdown editor pastes in with literal asterisks, brackets, and pound signs. The converter applies a construct-by-construct mapping so the rendered post reads the same: **bold** becomes [b]bold[/b], *italic* becomes [i]italic[/i], ~~strike~~ becomes [s]strike[/s], inline `code` becomes [icode]code[/icode] or [c]code[/c] depending on the dialect, fenced code blocks become [code] or [code=lang] blocks, ATX and Setext headings become a [size=N][b]...[/b][/size] line with a step-down per level, > blockquotes become [quote]...[/quote] blocks, ordered and unordered lists become [list=1]/[list] with [*] markers (including nested lists), [label](url) and reference-style links become [url=url]label[/url], bare URLs and autolinks become [url]...[/url],  images become [img]url[/img], horizontal rules become [hr], and GFM pipe tables become [table][tr][th]...[/th][td]...[/td][/tr][/table] blocks. A dialect picker switches the output between Generic, phpBB and XenForo (with [code=lang] and [icode]), vBulletin (with [c] and the 1 to 7 [size] scale), and a Plain preset that omits [size] tags for forums that strip them. Backslash escapes, fenced code blocks, code spans, and reference link definitions are all handled by a CommonMark-style block parser, and inline conversion uses opaque tokens to keep tags inside link labels from being double-processed. Four sample posts (a forum announcement with a quote and lists, a game guide with a code block and table, a signature with an image, and a code dump) give you typical inputs to test against, a side-by-side cheat sheet shows every supported construct in both dialects, and a panel of dialect-specific quirks explains where engines differ on headings, inline code, code blocks, lists, image alt text, and tables. The conversion runs entirely in your browser, so private forum drafts, unpublished announcements, and game guides never leave your device.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.