AI Tokens

The cost of building with AI is starting to shift. As enterprise AI adoption grows, the real costs are becoming visible. Previously, AI use often felt free or was covered by a flat subscription. Now, with the move to usage-based billing, many large language model providers charge per token sent or received, and businesses are feeling the financial impact of AI. Advanced reasoning models are also more expensive to use, and they consume significantly more tokens for a given use case.

This change is particularly evident in document-related tasks, where high costs are incurred for document conversions that do not require advanced AI. For instance, this might be feeding a PDF into an LLM to extract its text or structured information and requesting Markdown as the output. Using AI to generate Markdown this way is a major source of token consumption.

This article covers two connected ideas. Converting a document to Markdown is deterministic work that needs no reasoning, so you shouldn't use a language model to produce it. Do it in code instead, and you get a second benefit: Markdown is a lean format, so feeding the model Markdown uses fewer tokens than a raw document . This is suitable when you control the preprocessing pipeline and can convert the source file before sending it to the model.

The conversion applies in both directions: converting your source documents to Markdown on the way in and rendering the Markdown into a polished PDF on the way out. TX Text Control handles both conversions directly in code, with no token cost, while maintaining the accuracy, pagination, and compliance that enterprise documents require .

Why Markdown is an AI-ready format

DOCX and PDF files are not built for language models. When you send one straight to an LLM, it carries overhead the model doesn't need. Layout elements such as repeated headers and footers, page breaks, and table formatting are all counted as tokens, so they add cost. The model also has to guess which text is a heading, a table row, or a list item, even though the original file already stored that information, which can hurt both accuracy and efficiency. This gets more expensive with complex documents, where nested tables, multi-column layouts, and mixed content push the token count even higher.

Converting the document to clean Markdown first removes that overhead. With a leaner input, the model uses fewer tokens and often produces better answers, because it can focus on the content instead of the formatting.

Markdown represents document structure, such as headings, lists, and tables, in clear, plain text. It provides an efficient and accurate representation of content, making it well-suited for large language models. While we advocated for this approach in this article , usage-based billing models make it a practical budget decision.

Token Optimization (TokenOps) with TX Text Control

Document format touches your token bill at two points: what you send into the model, and what you have it send back. TX Text Control handles the conversion at both points deterministically, in code, to reduce token counts.

Input: Converting Documents to Markdown

Give the model leaner input . A raw DOCX or HTML file carries formatting the model doesn't need, so sending it straight through inflates your input tokens. Convert your source documents, Word or HTML, to Markdown first, before they reach the model. This applies wherever your documents feed into an LLM, whether that's a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline, an extraction step, or an AI agent working with files.

TX Text Control loads the document and exports Markdown in a single operation, mapping supported Word styles to Markdown structure and preserving tables and lists, so the model receives clean, compact content instead of layout noise. The conversion runs in code and costs no tokens.

Output: Rendering Markdown to PDF

Let the model write Markdown, then render the document yourself . When you're using AI to generate a document, such as an AI-drafted report, contract, or letter, don't ask the model to produce the formatted file itself. Have it output Markdown instead, then hand that Markdown to TX Text Control to render the final PDF. The model spends tokens only on the content; the pagination, branding, headers, and structure are produced deterministically in code. You end up with a polished PDF rather than a model's guess at layout.

Here's how it works in practice. Note that the Markdown methods come from the TXTextControl.Markdown.Core NuGet package, and that LoadMarkdown accepts Markdown content as a string. Download the free TX Text Control .NET Server trial , install it locally, and run the snippet below. The free trial is fully functional for testing:

using TXTextControl; using TXTextControl.Markdown; // required: LoadMarkdown() and SaveMarkdown()

// INPUT: DOCX -> Markdown using (var tx = new ServerTextControl()) { tx.Create(); tx.Load("enterprise-report.docx", StreamType.WordprocessingML);

string markdown = tx.SaveMarkdown(); // returns Markdown as a string — no model, no tokens File.WriteAllText("report.md", markdown); }

// OUTPUT: Model Markdown -> a clean, paginated PDF using (var tx = new ServerTextControl()) { tx.Create();

string md = File.ReadAllText("model-output.md"); tx.LoadMarkdown(md);

tx.Save("final-report.pdf", StreamType.AdobePDF); // writes the PDF - no token cost } TX Text Control is a native .NET document engine that runs entirely within your application. It converts DOCX and HTML to Markdown, and renders Markdown to PDF, all deterministically in code with no language model involved, so these conversions cost no tokens. It runs headless on both Windows and Linux.

That makes it a strong fit for the documents enterprises generate most often, such as invoices, contracts, statements, reports, and exports from internal systems. Since these tasks make up the majority of daily document processing, a deterministic engine is ideal for handling them. These digital, text-based documents are exactly what TX Text Control converts and renders directly in code.

Learn More

For more detailed guidance, refer to the following articles:

Converting MS Word (*.docx) to Markdown (*.md) in .NET C# Converting HTML to Markdown in C# .NET A Complete Guide to Converting Markdown to PDF in .NET C#

Why Enterprise-Grade Document Conversion

Converting a clean file to Markdown is not difficult, and many tools can handle this task. The true test for enterprise products is the quality of everything surrounding the conversion process. Token reduction offers immediate economic benefits, while enterprise-grade conversion ensures long-term value and production-ready features:

Understanding real-world DOCX . Enterprise DOCX files include nested tables, custom and localized styles, headers and footers, tracked changes, and embedded objects. TX Text Control is a full word-processing engine, so it imports the source document into its internal document model before performing the conversion. On export to Markdown, it maps that structure to the elements Markdown supports, such as headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, emphasis, and links. You can extend the default style mapping so that custom and localized styles convert the way you intend rather than being dropped.

Output is fully paginated and brand-consistent . Rendering Markdown back to PDF is where layout fidelity matters most, and it is exactly what TX Text Control's page-based document engine is built for. Instead of a model's rough guess at layout, you get accurate PDFs that keep your templates, headers, page numbering, and branding intact, so the output is client-ready rather than raw text.

Structure and compliance are built in . TX Text Control produces tagged, PDF/UA-compliant PDFs . The same structural tags that make the document accessible also give any AI system that reads it later, such as a search or extraction step, a clear map of its structure, so accessibility and machine-readable structure come from a single output.

It runs as real infrastructure . TX Text Control runs in-process and headless on Windows and Linux. You can run it as a service on a server rather than installing desktop software on each machine, and because the conversion happens inside your own application, documents never leave your infrastructure for that step.

Agentic Development with TX Text Control

Looking ahead, as these systems evolve, the useful move is to give AI agents the right tools to do their jobs, and document conversion is a textbook example. When an agent's task is to transform rather than comprehend, it should call a deterministic tool instead of processing document data itself.

You can build your own MCP-powered document processing backend with TX Text Control , exposing conversion and rendering as tools your agents invoke at runtime. TX Text Control does the document work deterministically, so tokens go to decisions rather than converting a file that the agent could have handed off in a single call. Separately, Text Control's Agent Skills and MCP server help AI coding assistants build TX Text Control applications reliably during development.

Learn more

This article explains how AI agents can use natural language to create documents through an MCP server. Instead of letting a language model generate documents directly, the AI translates prompts into structured tool calls while TX Text Control performs the actual document processing.

AI Natural Language Document Generation with MCP and TX Text Control .NET

Conclusion

You don't need a reasoning model to convert your documents. The smarter architecture is simple: send routine document tasks to a deterministic engine that handles them in-process, in code, with no token cost, and reserve the language model for work that requires reasoning. TX Text Control does that deterministic work at a fixed, predictable cost that doesn't increase with each document you process, so your AI budget goes toward genuine intelligence rather than format conversion. It's cost-effective now, and it's a reliable architecture regardless of what tokens cost next year.

Sources

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

Frequently Asked Questions

Does converting a document to Markdown reduce AI token usage? Yes. A DOCX or PDF carries a lot of formatting a model doesn't need such as layout data, repeated headers and footers, styling, and packaging overhead. Markdown keeps the content and structure (headings, lists, tables) in plain text and drops the rest, so the same document uses fewer tokens, and the model reads content instead of noise.

Which tool to use instead of an LLM to convert documents to Markdown? A document engine handles this in code with no token cost. TX Text Control is a native .NET engine that imports DOCX and HTML into its internal document model and exports Markdown in a single operation, preserving headings, lists, and tables. Because the conversion is deterministic, the same input always produces the same output.

How to convert DOCX to Markdown in .NET C# without using AI? Load the document with TX Text Control's ServerTextControl and call SaveMarkdown() from the TXTextControl.Markdown.Core package. It returns Markdown as a string in a single operation, mapping supported Word styles such as headings, lists, and tables, with no model involved.

How to convert Markdown to PDF in .NET C# without using AI? Load the Markdown into TX Text Control's ServerTextControl using LoadMarkdown() from the TXTextControl.Markdown.Core package, then call Save() with StreamType.AdobePDF . The rendering is deterministic and runs in code, so it produces a paginated PDF with no language model and no token cost.

Why is using AI to convert documents so expensive under the new billing models? Many providers now charge per token, billing for everything the model reads and everything it writes. Converting a file means the model has to ingest the entire document (input tokens) and then regenerate all of its content in the new format (output tokens, which usually cost more), for every document, every time. Documents are large, so those counts add fast, and you're paying premium reasoning rates for mechanical work that a deterministic engine does in code.

Can TX Text Control generate accessible, PDF/UA-compliant PDFs? Yes. TX Text Control can export tagged PDFs that meet PDF/UA (ISO 14289), the standard for accessible PDF documents. This fits the Markdown workflow on the way out: as TX renders the model's Markdown to PDF, the headings, lists, and tables become a properly tagged structure, so the output is accessible rather than flat and untagged. That matters for enterprise and public-sector workflows, where accessibility is now a legal requirement (for example the U.S. ADA Title II rule and the European Accessibility Act).

Can AI agents call TX Text Control to convert documents at runtime? Yes. With TX Text Control you can build an MCP server that exposes document operations such as loading, reading, editing, and exporting to formats like PDF, DOCX, HTML, and Markdown as tools an AI agent calls directly. TX Text Control performs the conversion and rendering deterministically.

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July 2026

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