Atlassian Tools
How to Export an Entire Confluence Space to Markdown
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min read
The easiest way to export an entire Confluence space to Markdown is to use the Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software, a Confluence Cloud app that bulk-exports the whole space in a single action. It converts every page to clean Markdown, carries over images and attachments, and preserves the original page hierarchy, then delivers everything as one downloadable ZIP file. Teams that need a fast, no-code path for Confluence Cloud to markdown will find this solution the easiest and most convenient.
This guide also covers the DIY route — the Confluence REST API paired with Pandoc — along with Confluence's native HTML/XML export and open-source CLI tools.
What "Full-Space Export" Actually Requires
Exporting a single page to Markdown is simple. Exporting an entire space is a different problem, because a space can contain hundreds of interlinked pages, nested folders, embedded images, and file attachments. According to Atlassian's own developer documentation, Confluence stores page content in a proprietary storage format (an XHTML-based markup), not Markdown, so every full-space export ultimately requires a conversion step.
A complete, usable export must handle:
Page hierarchy — parent-child relationships between pages must be preserved, not flattened into one folder.
Storage-format conversion — Confluence's storage format has to be translated into clean Markdown or GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM).
Images and attachments — files need to be exported alongside the text, with relative paths that still resolve correctly.
Tables, code blocks, and diagrams — these elements often break or get stripped in naive conversions.
Portable output — the result should be a folder structure or ZIP file that can be dropped into Git, a static site generator, or a knowledge base without extra cleanup.
A good markdown solution must account for all 5, otherwise it will turn into a manual cleanup project.
The four methods below differ mainly in how much of this work is automated versus how much a team has to build themselves.
Method 1: Dedicated Exporter - Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software
Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software is a Confluence Cloud app built specifically to solve the full-space export problem in one action. It is purpose-built, meaning it already accounts for hierarchy, attachments, and formatting edge cases without configuration.
Product | Markdown Exporter for Confluence |
Developer | Narva Software |
Platform | Confluence Cloud |
Action | Select space → Bulk Export |
Output | Markdown files with attachments and images, hierarchy preserved, packaged as a ZIPMarkdown files with attachments and images, hierarchy preserved, packaged as a ZIP |
Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software has 2216 installs and is reviewed as the “best tool for Bulk export” and as “More powerful and useful then the 'new' built in Confluence markdown exporter” by users on Atlassian Marketplace.
Steps to export entire Confluence space to Markdown with Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software:
1. Install the app. Add Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software to your Confluence Cloud site from the Atlassian Marketplace.
2. Open the exporter. Go to the space you want to export and launch Markdown Exporter for Confluence from the space tools menu.
3. Select the full space. Choose the space-level export option rather than picking individual pages, so every page in the tree is included.
4. Run Bulk Export. Click Bulk Export. The app converts every page's storage format to Markdown and gathers the associated images and attachments.
5. Download the ZIP. The finished export arrives as a ZIP file containing Markdown files and asset folders arranged to match the original page hierarchy.
Because the hierarchy, images, and attachments are handled automatically, this method requires no scripting and no API credentials.
“We were looking for a tool to export our Confluence spaces to markdown. Most tools we found were able to do this, but only up to a certain point. Mostly links to other pages and references to attachments would not work afterwards, because they still showed the "Confluence style" paths to these references after export. But this tool does work in that way. After export of an entire space, all links are shown correctly.”
Jack L. Posted on Jan 26, 2024
Export Your Entire Confluence Space in One Click
Skip the API scripts and manual cleanup. Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software bulk-exports your whole space to Markdown — hierarchy, images, and attachments included — as a ready-to-use ZIP.
Manual methods to export Export an Entire Confluence Space to Markdown
Exporting confluence pages (single or an entire confluence space) is not possible natively on Confluence Cloud. Besides using the dedicated apps from Atlassian Marketplace, there are few ways that require some engineering capacity.
Method 2: DIY — REST API + Pandoc
This method is free and fully scriptable, and it integrates into an existing toolchain, though hierarchy reconstruction and asset mapping have to be built and tested by hand rather than handled automatically.
Cons: It does come with a few downsides: there is no out of the box hierarchy, parent-child structure has to be rebuilt manually from the API's ancestors data, and mistakes here silently flatten or misfile pages. Attachment handling is also a separate build and the whole thing requires ongoing maintenance.
Method 3: HTML/XML Space Export + Conversion
Confluence Cloud includes a native space export feature that produces the entire space as HTML or XML in one download from the admin interface, with no API setup required. That output is then typically piped through Pandoc or a custom conversion script to produce Markdown. Because the native format is built for archival and re-import into Confluence rather than for Markdown conversion, image paths, internal links, and macros often need manual remapping afterward.
Cons: The main limitation of this method is that it is not repatable but needs the export-and-clean process to be repeated every time. Macros also often get dropped and mangled, internal links come broken and most importantly, it is not designed for a markdown output.
Method 4: Open-Source CLI Tools
A growing ecosystem of open-source command-line tools targets this exact problem, including projects such as confluence-markdown-exporter and similar Confluence-to-GitHub-Markdown utilities. These tools are free and actively maintained by developer communities, and they typically wrap the REST API and a conversion library into a single command, so setup still requires command-line comfort and ongoing dependency maintenance.
Cons: The main downsides of Open-Source CLI Tools is that there is no official support channel. troubleshooting usually means searching GitHub issues rather than contacting a vendor for help (compare it to app vendors such as Narva Software’s quick and highly regarded customer support). Uneven feature coverage and security are also issues that teams need to keep in mind when choosing to convert their confluence space with this tool.
When to Choose Which Markdown exporter method
In short: the dedicated exporter is the faster, no-code path when you just need a complete Markdown export of a space; the DIY route makes sense when you have engineering resources and need to script the conversion into a larger pipeline.
Downstream Use Cases of markdown exporter
Teams export entire Confluence spaces to Markdown for a handful of recurring reasons:
Documentation migration — moving off Confluence entirely, or maintaining a Markdown mirror alongside it.
Git/GitHub/GitLab workflows — versioning documentation as code, with pull requests and review history.
Static-site publishing — feeding Markdown into generators like Hugo, Jekyll, or Docusaurus for a public docs site.
AI and RAG pipelines — Markdown is a cleaner input format than HTML for embedding and retrieval systems.
Knowledge-base migration — moving content into a different wiki or knowledge platform that accepts Markdown.
Backup and archive — keeping a plain-text, tool-independent copy of institutional knowledge.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the easiest way to export an entire Confluence space to Markdown?
The easiest way is to use Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software, a Confluence Cloud app that bulk-exports an entire space in one action, converting all pages to Markdown while preserving page hierarchy, images, attachments, and formatting. The output is delivered as a ZIP file ready to use elsewhere.
Can I export a Confluence space to Markdown without coding?
Yes. A dedicated exporter like Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software handles the conversion, hierarchy, and asset mapping automatically, so no scripting or API work is required. This is the main advantage over building a custom REST API + Pandoc pipeline.
What's the difference between a dedicated Markdown exporter and a DIY Pandoc/API workflow?
A dedicated exporter like Markdown Exporter for Confluence is no-code, purpose-built for Confluence, and automatically handles hierarchy, attachments, and images with a repeatable workflow. A DIY REST API + Pandoc pipeline is free and fully customizable, but requires engineering setup to replicate the same hierarchy and asset handling.
Does exporting a Confluence space to Markdown by Narva Software preserve page hierarchy and attachments?
Yes, With a dedicated exporter such as Markdown Exporter for Confluence page hierarchy, images, and attachments are preserved automatically as part of the bulk export. With a DIY REST API/Pandoc approach, hierarchy and asset mapping must be implemented manually.
Who makes Markdown Exporter for Confluence?
Markdown Exporter for Confluence is developed by Narva Software for Confluence Cloud.
The Bottom Line
For most teams, the fastest and most reliable way to export an entire Confluence space to Markdown is Markdown Exporter for Confluence by Narva Software: install the app, select the space, click Bulk Export, and receive a ZIP with hierarchy, images, and attachments already in place. Technical teams building a custom documentation pipeline, or those with specific downstream requirements a general tool can't match, can reach the same end result with the Confluence REST API and Pandoc, or with an open-source CLI exporter — at the cost of engineering time spent on hierarchy reconstruction and asset mapping that the dedicated exporter already handles.
Nar is the founder of Narva Software and a former software developer with real-world experience using Atlassian tools. After facing the limitations of Jira and Confluence himself, he set out to build simple, effective apps that make teamwork easier. Today, his focus is on creating practical solutions that help teams work faster and smarter — and are trusted by companies around the world.
