Marko is a markdown parser written in pure Python that complies with CommonMark's spec v0.30. It is designed to be highly extensible. Among all implementations of Python's markdown parser, it is a common issue that user can't easily extend it to add his own features. Furthermore, Python-Markdown and mistune don't comply with CommonMark's spec. It is a good reason for me to develop a new markdown parser. Respecting that Marko complies with CommonMark's spec at the same time, which is a super complicated spec, Marko's performance will be affected. However, using a parser which doesn't comply with the CommonMark spec may give you unexpected rendered results from time to time. A benchmark result shows that Marko is 3 times slower than Python-Markdown, but a bit faster than Commonmark-py, much slower than mistune. If performance is a bigger concern to you than spec compliance, you'd better choose another parser.