Softwr
Obsidian logo

Obsidian

A powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files

Visit Obsidian

Overview

What Obsidian does

Obsidian is a private and flexible writing app that adapts to the way you think. It stores notes locally on your device, ensuring complete ownership and privacy of your data. With powerful linking, graph view, and extensibility through plugins, Obsidian is perfect for building a personal knowledge management system.

What people use it for

  • Local-first markdown note taking with no account required
  • Linking notes into a personal knowledge graph
  • Syncing a vault across devices with end-to-end encryption on the paid add-on
  • Publishing a public site from a vault
  • Extending the editor with community plugins

Related searches

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Obsidian.

  • Sync is a paid add-on at $4 per month billed annually rather than part of the app
  • Publishing to the web is a further $8 per month per site
  • Commercial use asks for a $50 per user per year licence, though the vendor states it is not required
  • Collaboration is limited compared with a hosted notes tool, since the vault is local files first

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Obsidian

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pricing

What Obsidian costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Obsidian Sync

$4 /mo

  • Sync notes across devices

Obsidian Publish

$8 /mo

  • Turn notes into a website

Capabilities

Features

  • Bidirectional linking

    Bidirectional linking capability

  • Graph view visualization

    Graph view visualization capability

  • Markdown support

    Markdown support capability

  • Local file storage

    Local file storage capability

  • Plugin ecosystem

    Plugin ecosystem capability

  • Custom CSS themes

    Custom CSS themes capability

  • Templates

    Templates capability

  • Search and tags

    Search and tags capability

  • Zotero

    Integration with Zotero

  • Readwise

    Integration with Readwise

  • Anki

    Integration with Anki

  • Day One

    Integration with Day One

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Obsidian free?

Yes. The core Obsidian application is 100% free for personal and commercial use with no limitations. You can use unlimited vaults and every core feature without payment.

Source
What file format does Obsidian use?

Obsidian stores every note as a plain Markdown file. Because it uses standard Markdown instead of a proprietary format, your notes remain portable and can be edited with many other Markdown editors.

Source
Can I collaborate with others in Obsidian?

The core application does not include built-in team collaboration features. However, Obsidian offers optional add-ons and can be used with version control systems or cloud storage for collaboration.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Obsidian

Company
Dynalist Inc
Based in
Toronto, Canada

Timeline

Obsidian over time

  1. Launch2020-03-13

    Obsidian public beta launched by Shida Li and Erica Xu during COVID-19 lockdown

    Source
  2. Milestone2015-03-01

    Dynalist launched by Shida Li and Erica Xu as infinitely nested outliner app

    Source
ShareXLinkedInRedditWhatsAppEmail

Keep looking

Where to go from Obsidian

Best Research software for

Compare Obsidian with

Other Research software

  • Elicit logo

    Elicit

    The AI research assistant

  • Mendeley logo

    Mendeley

    The free all-in-one reference manager

  • NVivo logo

    NVivo

    Easy-to-use, collaborative qualitative analysis software

  • Zotero logo

    Zotero

    Collect, organize, annotate, cite and share your research

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Obsidian, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

More on Obsidian