diff --git a/.changeset/tidy-cheetahs-count.md b/.changeset/tidy-cheetahs-count.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..63c58997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/tidy-cheetahs-count.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+'markdown-to-jsx': patch
+---
+
+Arbitrary HTML no longer punches out pipes when parsing rows. If you absolutely need a pipe character that isn't a table separator, either escape it or enclose it in backticks to trigger inline code handling.
diff --git a/index.compiler.spec.tsx b/index.compiler.spec.tsx
index 02929239..2f10866e 100644
--- a/index.compiler.spec.tsx
+++ b/index.compiler.spec.tsx
@@ -2247,6 +2247,55 @@ describe('GFM tables', () => {
     `)
   })
 
+  it('regression #625 - processes self-closing HTML inside of a table row', () => {
+    render(
+      compiler(theredoc`
+        | col1 | col2 | col3 |
+        |------|-----------------|------------------|
+        | col1 | <custom-element>col2</custom-element><br> col2 | <custom-element>col3</custom-element><br>col3 |
+      `)
+    )
+
+    expect(root.innerHTML).toMatchInlineSnapshot(`
+      <table>
+        <thead>
+          <tr>
+            <th>
+              col1
+            </th>
+            <th>
+              col2
+            </th>
+            <th>
+              col3
+            </th>
+          </tr>
+        </thead>
+        <tbody>
+          <tr>
+            <td>
+              col1
+            </td>
+            <td>
+              <custom-element>
+                col2
+              </custom-element>
+              <br>
+              col2
+            </td>
+            <td>
+              <custom-element>
+                col3
+              </custom-element>
+              <br>
+              col3
+            </td>
+          </tr>
+        </tbody>
+      </table>
+    `)
+  })
+
   it('processes markdown inside of a table row when a preceeding column contains HTML', () => {
     render(
       compiler(theredoc`
diff --git a/index.tsx b/index.tsx
index 445040e1..36fc6fe4 100644
--- a/index.tsx
+++ b/index.tsx
@@ -624,8 +624,8 @@ function parseTableRow(
   state.inTable = true
   let tableRow = source
     .trim()
-    // isolate situations where a pipe should be ignored (inline code, HTML)
-    .split(/( *(?:`[^`]*`|<.*?>.*?<\/.*?>(?!<\/.*?>)|\\\||\|) *)/)
+    // isolate situations where a pipe should be ignored (inline code, escaped, etc)
+    .split(/( *(?:`[^`]*`|\\\||\|) *)/)
     .reduce((nodes, fragment) => {
       if (fragment.trim() === '|')
         nodes.push(