BBCode ↔ Markdown
Convert forum BBCode to Markdown and back — bold, italic, strike, links, images, quotes, code, lists, headings, rules — unsupported tags unwrapped and counted.
The converted text, the number of replacements, the tags with no counterpart (unwrapped or kept, your choice), and the mapping table the conversion follows.
Example: [b]Hello[/b] [url=https://x.y]link[/url] [list=1][*]one[*]two[/list] becomes **Hello** [link](https://x.y) 1. one 2. two; [color=red] has no Markdown form and is unwrapped.
Two markups,
one mapping.
Which tags map to what, what has no counterpart, and how the conversion handles the rest.
The mapping
[b] ↔ **bold**, [i] ↔ *italic*, [s] ↔ ~~strike~~, [u] → <u> (Markdown has no underline; unwrap it if you prefer plain text), [url=…] ↔ [text](url), bare [url] ↔ <url>, [img] ↔ , [quote] and [quote=name] ↔ > lines (with a "name wrote:" line), [code] ↔ backticks or a fence, [list][*] ↔ - items and [list=1] ↔ 1. items, [h1]–[h3] ↔ #, [hr] ↔ ---.
No counterpart
BBCode colour, size, font, alignment and table tags have no Markdown form: they are unwrapped (the content stays) and counted, or kept as text if you choose. Markdown tables likewise have no BBCode form on most forums and pass through unchanged. Code blocks are protected first so nothing inside them is touched.
Method
Regular-expression pair matching, innermost first for code; nested tags of the same kind and unbalanced tags are left as they are, and BBCode dialects that use different tag names ([strike], [ul]/[li]) are covered where common. The output is plain text — paste it into the target platform to check the rendering. Nothing leaves the browser; the same four anonymous usage counts as the rest of the site apply.
SOURCES
- Tag mapping: [b]/**, [i]/*, [s]/~~, [u]/<u>, [url]/[text](url), [img]/, [quote]/>, [code]/backticks, [list][*]/- or 1., [h1–3]/#, [hr]/---; regex pair matching, no dialect assumed
Last reviewed 21 September 2026. How results are checked: How we verify.