How to Remove HTML Tags in Python with Regex

Strips all HTML tags from a string using a regular expression and cleans extra whitespace.

Easy Python 3.9+ Aug 9, 2026 Strings & text 13 views 0 copies

regex html text-cleaning stdlib

Python code

14 lines

Python 3.9+

import re

def remove_html_tags(text: str) -> str:
    """Remove all HTML tags from the given text using regex."""
    # Remove opening and closing tags
    clean = re.sub(r'<[^>]+>', '', text)
    # Remove any extra whitespace left behind
    clean = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', clean).strip()
    return clean

if __name__ == "__main__":
    sample = "<h1>Hello, <b>World</b>!</h1><p>This is <i>Python</i>.</p>"
    result = remove_html_tags(sample)
    print(result)

Output

stdout

Hello, World! This is Python.

How it works

This pattern r'<[^>]+>' matches any character between < and > that is not >, effectively catching both opening and closing tags. The re.sub replaces every match with an empty string. After tags are removed, a second substitution collapses multiple whitespace characters into a single space and strip() trims leading/trailing spaces. This works for simple HTML without embedded > inside tag attributes or script/style content. For robust parsing, use an HTML parser like BeautifulSoup, but this regex is sufficient for quick text extraction.

Common mistakes

Using `r'<.*?>'` which is equivalent to `r'<[^>]+>'` but may be slower on large strings
Forgetting to collapse extra whitespace left after tag removal, producing run-on text
Applying regex to malformed HTML with `>` inside attributes, causing incomplete tag removal

Variations

Use `re.compile(r'<[^>]+>')` and then call `pattern.sub('', text)` for reuse
For a more accurate but heavier approach, use `BeautifulSoup(text, 'html.parser').get_text()`

Real-world use cases

Cleaning scraped web content before saving it into a text column for search indexing.
Displaying a plain-text preview of an HTML email body inside a notification feed.
Extracting readable text from HTML snippets in API payloads before sentiment analysis.

How to Remove HTML Tags in Python with Regex

Python code

Output

How it works

Common mistakes

Variations

Real-world use cases

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Python code

Output

How it works

Common mistakes

Variations

Real-world use cases

More from Strings & text

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