Software Alternatives & Startups

Pure Paste VS StripHTML

Compare Pure Paste VS StripHTML and see what are their differences

Pure Paste

Paste as plain text by default.

Rating
0 reviews
StripHTML

Strip HTML tags, clean up your text and get plain content in seconds

Rating
0 reviews

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, Pure Paste seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 6 times since March 2021.

social mentions
6 vs 0
Productivity popularity
80% vs 20%
alternatives listed
50 vs 11

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Pure Paste
StripHTML
Website sindresorhus.com striphtml.com
Platforms —
Web
Company — Startup from Denmark · 1 - 9 employees · 2012
Listed in

About Pure Paste and StripHTML

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Pure Paste
StripHTML

No description of Pure Paste yet.

StripHTML.com Free, no-signup text tools for cleaning up the mess that comes with copy and paste. Paste text from a website, an email or a Word document and it often arrives with extras nobody asked for: stray HTML tags, odd spacing and line breaks in the wrong places. StripHTML.com fixes that....

Read more about StripHTML

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Pure Paste 5 features
StripHTML 4 features
  • Simplicity
    Pure Paste offers a straightforward and minimalist interface, making it easy for users to understand and use without any complicated features.
  • Functionality
    The tool is focused on efficiently managing paste operations, ensuring that text formatting from different sources is removed automatically.
  • Integration
    It integrates well with macOS, providing seamless operation without needing constant configuration or setup from the user's side.
  • Privacy
    Pure Paste is designed with user privacy in mind, often requiring minimal permissions and not collecting user data for its operations.
  • Productivity
    By automatically cleaning pasted text, it eliminates the need for manual formatting adjustments, thus saving time and increasing productivity.

Possible disadvantages

  • Platform Limitation
    Currently, Pure Paste is only available for macOS, which means users of other operating systems cannot benefit from its functionality.
  • Limited Functionality
    While its focus on simplicity is a pro for some, it may lack advanced features that power users require for more complex text-editing needs.
  • Lack of Customization
    The application does not offer much in terms of personalization or customization options for altering how it processes text.
  • Dependency on macOS Features
    Its operations are heavily dependent on macOS's clipboard management, which may limit its capabilities if any OS-specific changes occur.
  • Niche Use Case
    The primary functionality might only appeal to a specific group of users, particularly those dealing with text formatting issues regularly.
  • AI Text Tools
    Remove em dashes, citations, invisible characters and Markdown from AI output.
  • Text Tools
    Count characters, convert case, sort lines, remove duplicates and compare texts.
  • HTML Tools
    Strip HTML, clean Word HTML, extract links and remove tracking from URLs.
  • StripHTML.com
    Dozens of free tools to clean, convert and count text. No signup needed. Free and user-friendly.

Videos

Walkthroughs and reviews on video.

Pure Paste 1 video + Add
StripHTML 0 videos + Add

How to copy JUST TEXT without FORMAT (Pure Paste or ⌘⇧V)

No StripHTML videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Pure Paste
StripHTML
80% 80%
20% 20%
0% 0%
100% 100%
100% 100%
Mac
0% 0%
100% 100%
0% 0%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Pure Paste and StripHTML.

What makes your product unique?

StripHTML's answer:

Mostly what it leaves out. There's no signup, no account, no pro tier and no daily limit. You paste your text, press a button and get the result.

The tools don't use AI either. Everything is plain, carefully written string processing, so the same input always gives the same output. Nothing gets queued or rate limited, and there's no API bill that would one day turn into a paywall.

Almost every tool runs entirely in your browser, so your text never leaves your machine. That matters when you're cleaning up a contract, a customer list or anything else that is nobody else's business.

And the details are handled properly. Removing an em dash sounds trivial until you realise the spacing around it has to be rebuilt, or you end up with a stray comma or two words glued together. Fifteen years of edge cases sent in by users have gone into getting small things like that right.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

StripHTML's answer:

Because it gets out of your way. Plenty of text tools want your email address before they'll show a result, or cap you at a few uses a day before offering a subscription. StripHTML doesn't do any of that, and never has.

  • It's fast. One text box, one button, instant result.
  • It's private. Most tools run in your browser, so your text stays on your machine.
  • It's predictable. No AI guesswork. The same input gives the same output every time.
  • It's been around. The site has run since 2011 and isn't going anywhere.

It also covers a lot of ground in one place. Whether you need to strip HTML, count characters, clean up ChatGPT output or remove tracking from a link, the tool is probably already there. If it isn't, you can write in and there's a good chance it will be soon.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

StripHTML's answer:

Anyone who moves text from one place to another and wants it to arrive clean.

In practice that's a broad group:

  • Writers and editors cleaning up copy pasted from Word, Google Docs or the web.
  • Marketers and social media managers formatting posts for LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, and checking character limits.
  • Developers who need to strip tags, escape strings, encode Base64 or convert timestamps without opening an editor.
  • Students and researchers tidying up quotes, sources and transcripts.
  • Anyone using AI assistants who wants to remove em dashes, citation markers and leftover Markdown before the text goes anywhere else.

What they have in common is that they have a small, specific problem and want it solved in seconds. Most visitors don't think of themselves as users of a text tool at all. They just have messy text and a deadline.

What's the story behind your product?

StripHTML's answer:

It started in 2011, during my parental leave. Between feeds and naps I kept running into the same small irritation. I needed to strip HTML from a bit of text, and every option was heavier than the job deserved: open an editor, find the right regex, run it, close it again. That's a lot of work for something that should take three seconds.

So I built the tool I wanted. One text box, one button, plain text back. It turned out a lot of people were searching for exactly that, and the page found an audience almost straight away.

Then people started asking for the jobs next door, like counting characters, converting case and removing line breaks. The site has grown the same way ever since. Someone runs into a small text problem, writes in about it, and a few weeks later there's a page for it.

Fifteen years on, it's still one developer, no investors and no roadmap. Just dozens of tools, built by hand.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

StripHTML's answer:

Deliberately simple ones. The site is built with plain PHP, vanilla JavaScript and hand-written CSS. There are no frameworks, no build step and no heavy libraries, which keeps pages small and fast to load.

The actual text processing is written by hand in JavaScript and runs directly in the browser for almost every tool. That means your text never has to travel to a server, and results appear instantly. The one exception is the original Strip HTML tool on the front page, which processes text on the server, in memory, and never stores it.

There's no AI model behind any of the tools. Everything is deterministic string handling, so the same input always gives the same result, and there's no external API that could slow things down or go away.

PHP handles the page templates, shared layout and tool catalogue. The rest is just careful code and fifteen years of edge cases.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

StripHTML's answer:

StripHTML has no accounts or signups, so there's no customer list to share. Regular users include:

  • Content and marketing teams
  • Copywriters and editors
  • Developers and QA testers
  • Social media managers
  • Support teams cleaning up email replies
  • Students and teachers

User comments

Share your experience with using Pure Paste and StripHTML. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

Pure Paste 6 mentions
StripHTML 0 mentions
  • Clean Text alternative / text tools to auto strip most formatting from copied text? (preferably free / low cost)
    So I know there's things like PurePaste (which I use), and TRex (auto-ocr screenshotted area, it's fantastic). But those work best for short shorter snippets. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Maccy 0.26
    There is a wonderful Pure Paste application by u/sindresorhus that strips formatting from copied content. Maccy is now fully compatible with it and ensures that the recorded copies take into account modifications made by Pure Paste. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Formatting Question
    I have an app on my computer (Pure Paste) that can strip formatting from any paste job, and I've found that helps. Source: over 3 years ago

View more

Tracking StripHTML since Sep 2026.

Alternatives to Pure Paste and StripHTML

When comparing Pure Paste and StripHTML, you can also consider the following products.