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I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it bein

I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.

giancarlostoro 1y ago
> with the new database feature of Obsidian What database features?
- dtkav 1y ago
  https://help.obsidian.md/bases https://help.obsidian.md/bases
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Thank you, I downloaded the Obsidian app for iOS and I'm already sold. It has so many things I've wanted in a crisp clean UI.
    - dtkav 1y ago
      Yeah, Obsidian is great. Enjoy.
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
You need to get out of your bubble. Notion is so much more popular than Obsidian you cannot imagine. My dentist office uses Notion for example. Migrating out of Notion is also very difficult and for most people it isn't worth the hassle. Obsidian not being web based is also a con not a pro to the average person. The number of people leaving Notion for Obsidian is a rounding error.
- savolai 1y ago
  Yep. Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users. It could probably be made even smoother but I cannot imagine obsidian being competitive, having used it. Just too much hassle for things Notion handles smoothly. I would like to have more of the content available offline automatically though, i.e all text and image content, and big files downloaded on request. Closer to local first than this.
  - solardev 1y ago
    > Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users. Have you ever tried Airtable? How does Notion compare?
    - savolai 1y ago
      I have taken a glance, the integration between documents and db tables is what makes notion relevant for me in this space though and i don’t see how airtable competes.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  I think the market is big enough for Notion and Obsidian to both exist.
- raincole 1y ago
  Yeah. I feel like the ratio is probably more than Windows vs Linux. Of course for many users the ship has been sailed and they've switched to Obsidian. But for many many many more users they never even heard of Obsidian.
prox 1y ago
Yup. Too little, too late. Hard pass.
- meowface 1y ago
  My only reasons for switching was performance and simplicity. (Okay, I guess now that I write out like that, it seems like a pretty substantial disillusionment.) Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.
graphememes 1y ago
web experience, many users do not use notion in an app
Illniyar 1y ago
I've never heard of companies using Obsidian. Notion isn't really marketed or suitable for individuals (even if their free plan says otherwise).
- fudged71 1y ago
  Notion is used individually by a lot of students
- sfennell 1y ago
  It is suitable for individuals, I used it for a couple years and was very happy with it. I only decided to move on because I wanted a local database that I could mine as my personal knowledge base.
- layman51 1y ago
  I think you're correct. But I remember back around 2020 when Notion became very popular, it was definitely marketed toward individuals like students, or professionals who wanted to do a lot of planning or organization related to their working/personal lives.
  - numbers 1y ago
    yeah, when I downloaded the beta back in 2017/2018, I was using it as a replacement for Evernote. It was amazing. As the feature bloat made it slower and as the push towards companies made it less individual-focused, I started to use it more for group projects and now for teams. Obsidian is just better for writing especially longer notes etc. Notion is great for sharing data intensive stuff, nicely formatted docs, and for collaborating.
  - cholantesh 1y ago
    I actively used Notion with a lot of my fellow students at the time. I've subsequently gravitated towards Joplin for 'richer' content and Obsidian for general text.
  - louisbourgault 1y ago
    I love notion for school stuff. The databases are just absolutely neccesary for me, and collaboration is a must for me (and without a paid subscription as well). I'm going to check out Obsidian Bases too though now they're out.
cschep 1y ago
Are they comparable tools in a team context? The ease of linking documents to people and collaborating? Seems like solo, sure. But in a group.. Obsidian doesn't replace Notion at all.
- jmetrikat 1y ago
  obsidian’s great for solo use, but for team collaboration, anytype is closer to notion-built-in group sync, permissions, and offline support. you don’t need plugins or external services for multi-user editing; it just works across devices
  - jamil7 1y ago
    Anytype responds poorly to feedback and bug reports from users, they send LLM slop back for any feedback or bug reports sent to them.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dtkav 1y ago
  Have you tried Relay [0]? It makes Obsidian work for groups by adding real-time collaboration features. (disclaimer: I'm the dev) [0] https://relay.md https://relay.md
paxys 1y ago
Obsidian is great for solo use, but then so is Apple Notes and a dozen similar options. Where Notion shines is team based sharing and collaboration. There's really nothing else like it with the same feature set.
- EGreg 1y ago
  What feature set exactly? Describe what makes it so amazing. Basically collaboration? Notes has that too.
  - rafram 1y ago
    https://www.notion.com/help/intro-to-databases https://www.notion.com/help/intro-to-databases
  - dzuc 1y ago
    Ever try to use the collaboration feature in Apple Notes? I find it remarkable how unreliable is.
- 0xCMP 1y ago
  Once iOS 26 drops Apple Notes will be much-much more useful with the combination of supported linking between notes and supporting Markdown. Before it rapidly became untenable as a place to actually store my notes. I use it more as a "temporary note" that will be moved to the proper place later.
  - lawgimenez 1y ago
    I have been using Apple Notes' Import to Notes and Import Markdown features a lot in macOS 26 and it has been great so far.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    It's nice if you're on just Apple but if you use Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS all mixed together it's pretty useless. Like most of apple's stuff.
- 1y ago
baxtr 1y ago
One thing I prefer in Notion is the index site, which is something Obsidian lacks. PS: I’m aware there are plugins that solve this issue, but none of them have worked well enough for me.
s0meON3 1y ago
Appflowy is a great alternative
raincole 1y ago
Tech-savvy people indeed do have some very interesting (while out of touch) perspectives.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  I don't think Obsidian is even a major player in tech-savvy circles. I'd point to Apple Notes instead.
  - mgmobrien 1y ago
    It's a major player for personal notes. Eg > Love letter to @obsdmd to which I very happily switched to for my personal notes. My primary interest in Obsidian is not even for note taking specifically, it is that Obsidian is around the state of the art of a philosophy of software and what it could be. — https://x.com/karpathy/status/1761467904737067456 https://x.com/karpathy/status/1761467904737067456 And there's a lot of interest from tech-savvy folks wanting to use it at work. (Said as a cofounder of a co making business multiplayer tools)
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Yeah why do you need a Markdown editor when you can just write normal text files. Personally I find the source to be more readable than the "rendered" view from Obsidian.
- solardev 1y ago
  Who needs SaaS when you can engrave your own punch cards?
mmargenot 1y ago
I like Obsidian a lot (especially for the ease of plugin development), but my impression is that most people don't use such comparatively heavy applications for managing their personal lives. It's more likely that they use a Google Keep or sticky notes just placed in random places. That leaves mostly enterprise use cases for such knowledge management tools, and Notion is much more full-featured for enterprise than Obsidian is.
tombert 1y ago
Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work? I know it wasn't enforced but I think the free license limited you to personal use. I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff. I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now? I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it. [1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.
- j_4 1y ago
  Yes. https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/ https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
  - tombert 1y ago
    Ah, fair enough. That's actually fairly recent.
  - kwanbix 1y ago
    I don't get it. The pricing page only lists paid options. Not a free tier. What am I missing here?
    - Saris 1y ago
      There are no tiers or different features, just their own sync service is a paid service, and the commercial license is paid but optional. Otherwise the free Obsidian has everything, and there are other plugins for self hosted syncing that don't use the paid service.
      - kwanbix 1y ago
        but without syncing is basically unusable, or can I access my texts from my pc and my cell for example?
dimal 1y ago
Personally, I use Obsidian. But I can’t imagine using it with a team. There’s too much friction sorting out what extensions to use, making sure everyone knows how to use said extensions. I don’t see how Obsidian is feasible for teams. If anyone has experience making it work well for their team, I’d love to hear about it.
- dtkav 1y ago
  I've the dev behind Relay [0] (real-time collaboration for teams using Obsidian), and we work with a lot of teams who have switched over to using Obsidian for work. We just hit 10,000 users yesterday. You don't need a lot of the plugins to be productive in Obsidian, but I think a superpower people are overlooking is that you can build your own plugins for company specific features/workflows quite cheaply. Combine that with having everything local, and you can use tools like claude code to actually make use of the knowledge/context that you're creating. I find it crazy that people are pushing data into locked-in systems like Notion only to be limited by their weak-sauce AI tools. In contrast, we are all in on file-over-app -- keeping the files locally on your computer so you can actually use them. Many of our customers run their Relay Server on-prem for total document privacy. [0] https://relay.md https://relay.md
  - dimal 1y ago
    Well damn, this looks fantastic!
    - dtkav 1y ago
      thanks =] Find me on our discord [0] and I'll gift you some free storage. [0] https://discord.system3.md https://discord.system3.md
- themadturk 1y ago
  I know a team at my work is using it, though I'm fuzzy on how. I think they have a shared OneDrive folder that they use as a vault. How they deal with locking and such I haven't a clue.
bayindirh 1y ago
I use both. Obsidian is very powerful for quick entry and working on Markdown knowledge bases, and it's great. I use it to manage my digital garden among other things. On the other hand, Notion is great for processing data. I use their databases extensively incl. their charts and whatnot. I also host a couple of read-only public pages for friends or family as documentation. I think they cater to different use cases and doesn't replace each other. I'd certainly won't run my digital garden over Notion, or store the databases I keep in Notion in Obsidian. Obsidian's Bases fill a different need, for now. Also, Notion slightly pivoted recently. They altered their “single person” oriented Pro plan and made Business their “Entry level, full fledged” plan. They do not cater to individuals anymore. Where obsidian is more geared towards individuals.
- mgmobrien 1y ago
  For some kinds of data processing having your files in a local folder is a prereq. Every day I have my Obsidian vault open in Zed, and I interact with files via the tool-calling agent panel and via terminal. I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great. But I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house. Notion CEO Ivan Zhao recently said: "If you think about applications, each application is kind of like a mini-prison of computing". (https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/756736/notion-ceo-ivan-zhao-productivity-software-design-ai-interview https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/75...) I think he's right. I don't want to be in Notion's prison even if it's big and nice.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    > For some kinds of data processing having your files in a local folder is a prereq. Of course. > open in Zed, and I interact with files via the tool-calling agent panel and via terminal. Ah no, I don't use AI for that kind of tasks. I generally use my own formulae and what Notion provides Sans-AI. > I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great. Me neither. I asked for authors and synopsis for a couple of books, that's all. > I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house. Before going in, I always check how the Export works. Notion gives your text as Markdown and tables/databases as CSV, which is good enough for me. I don't prefer to use services which I need to move my stuff by hand. If I can make Bases work for me in Obsidian, I might move completely to Obsidian, but I need to test that first. Edit: Looks like the functions Obsidian supports are not enough for me to move over yet.
Slow_Hand 1y ago
I dunno. I love Obsidian, but it has a huge learning curve and is not currently the type of tool that I see companies adopting when they need to have their employees adopt it’s use. Obsidian is way too overwhelming for the average user, whereas Notion is far more user-friendly and intuitive for people who just need to interact with the system to do their job. Edit: Not to mention that (last I checked) Obsidian lacks a lot of granularity when it comes to permissions for editing pages. It would be very easy for a beginner user to disrupt the markdown files or the organizational system. Even doing things like applying labels or tags in the YAML is less intuitive and requires a lot of consistency guidelines for users to make it worthwhile. Notion facilitates this kind of thing a lot better.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  By default Obsidian is a markdown editor with the ability to link to other notes with a pretty graph of your note links. What is overwhelming about that?
  - Slow_Hand 1y ago
    Obsidian can be extremely simple at it's core, but to structure everything and make it easy to use by an organization will likely require a whole lot of additional infrastructure and adherence to strict guidelines for organization. Notion seems far more intuitive in this way. Notion is also a bit limited when it comes to customization, but that limitation seems like more of an asset in this case because it produces consistency of style and usage patterns across the platform. Also, I don't find the Obsidian graph to be practical for organizing or locating files. It's impressive to look at, but not that practical in my experience.
richardlblair 1y ago
Notion for my team, Obsidian for myself. We do everything in Notion. Book time off, HR policies, run books, playbooks, knowledge dumps, project management, sprint management. Search is a lot better so it really opens up the use cases. Imo, if you're building a company with the goal of selling it you should use Notion. Get your team to use it, and capture everything about your business. When you go to sell it you have the whole business packaged up in a searchable, interactive knowledge base.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wltr 1y ago
  And if you not going to sell it from the day one, but rather deliver something you promised to deliver (not necessarily promised to others), you may want to use a set of self-hosted tools. I guess.
  - petralithic 1y ago
    > deliver something you promised to deliver (not necessarily promised to others), you may want to use a set of self-hosted tools. I don't see how one follows from the other, the vast majority of people use tools to deliver value without really caring whether they're self hosted or not
    - wltr 1y ago
      You missed ‘I guess’ in the quote, but anyway. The idea is that the parent commenter said about the intent to sell the company, and I’ve got the impression it’s a day-one intention. Like, we’re building a company to sell it. So if I’m planning to do the opposite, deliver some actual value and ideally never sell it, what should I do then? Is it self-hosting then? That’s why I’m saying ‘I guess.’ It’s an open question.
      - richardlblair 1y ago
        Your comment implies people who build companies with the intent to sell don't build companies that deliver value. That couldn't be further from the truth. There is nothing wrong with wanting to build something of value and don't want to work forever. Also, just because you don't see the value doesn't mean the value isn't there. You're right, though, people who build businesses they have no intent of selling will also get similar value. They also reduce their hit by buss factor, make onboarding new employees easier, and so on. I was simply offering one perspective. I don't think any commenter provides every single perspective, or when speaking on a product, all that products value.
Casteil 1y ago
Came here to say as much. No proprietary 'lock-in' with Obsidian, just plain .md, and honestly (if I recall correctly - it's been years now) I felt like I struggled using Notion's 'fancier' features. It seemed like copying/pasting out of it was often problematic. Like others are saying, though, Notion is much more geared for collaboration. I couldn't care much less about that, so here I am with Obsidian, still, years later.
atombender 1y ago
For me, a lot of it is that the "plumbing on the outside" approach of Markdown isn't nice. I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025. Maybe Obsidian appeals to a particular type of techie who uses Vim and stores all their files locally, compared to someone who isn't technical and just wants "documents in the cloud". I should add that I dislike Notion for most things. In particular, the database support (which a lot of people here are singing praises about), tables, lack of diagramming, and the poor search. But my main problem with Notion and other document systems is that invariably dissolve into the equivalent of a hoarder's house, full of outdated, hard-to-find garbage deeply buried under other garbage. That's because Notion only has hierarchy. It doesn't have a sense of "cross cutting". So everyone organizes their stuff in completely different ways, and you have to deal with poorly thought-out folder hierarchies. Where I work, any attempt to carefully "garden" pages is futile because there is no discipline enforced by the tool. Lately I've been using Linear as a replacement for Notion for some things, and it's just a much better designed tool.
- danielhep 1y ago
  Linear the project management software?
  - atombender 1y ago
    Yep!
- to11mtm 1y ago
  TBH I'd prefer either Sharepoint's forced edit boxes or raw markdown over the hot mess that is editing in confluence. Pick a side and be done with it.
- lmm 1y ago
  > I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025. Because if you can see them you can fix them when they inevitably get fucked up. (Literally commenting immediately after fixing some formatting that Confluence broke, like I do every day)
zie 1y ago
I switched to silverbullet[0], you get to write lua instead of YAML or whatever these apps are pushing. 0: https://silverbullet.md https://silverbullet.md
bryanhogan 1y ago
Notion still has Database feature that Obsidian doesn't, e.g. a good Kanban board.
isodev 1y ago
In our small (~12) product studio, we switched to Obsidian for team stuff as well and it’s working really well. Collaboration on the same notes works just fine, even if there is no “live editing” (which we realised is not really useful for us anyway). The fact that notes are just text files on disk has been transformative though - folks use the Shortcuts app, scripts and what not to manage and lookup things.
wortelefant 1y ago
The AI search and multiplayer modes are still a strong differentiator.
demarq 1y ago
> users like myself Nerdy devs are a niche. HN is a tiny tiny bubble. Most users don’t know and wouldn’t care for obsidian or markdown etc. I think is not a feature to appease the nerd community but for business users who are on the go.
heihieih 1y ago
I have switched to Obsidian and have not used Notion for a long time.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

> with the new database feature of Obsidian What database features?

dtkav 1y ago
https://help.obsidian.md/bases https://help.obsidian.md/bases
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Thank you, I downloaded the Obsidian app for iOS and I'm already sold. It has so many things I've wanted in a crisp clean UI.
  - dtkav 1y ago
    Yeah, Obsidian is great. Enjoy.

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

You need to get out of your bubble. Notion is so much more popular than Obsidian you cannot imagine. My dentist office uses Notion for example. Migrating out of Notion is also very difficult and for most people it isn't worth the hassle. Obsidian not being web based is also a con not a pro to the average person. The number of people leaving Notion for Obsidian is a rounding error.

savolai 1y ago
Yep. Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users. It could probably be made even smoother but I cannot imagine obsidian being competitive, having used it. Just too much hassle for things Notion handles smoothly. I would like to have more of the content available offline automatically though, i.e all text and image content, and big files downloaded on request. Closer to local first than this.
- solardev 1y ago
  > Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users. Have you ever tried Airtable? How does Notion compare?
  - savolai 1y ago
    I have taken a glance, the integration between documents and db tables is what makes notion relevant for me in this space though and i don’t see how airtable competes.
TimorousBestie 1y ago
I think the market is big enough for Notion and Obsidian to both exist.
raincole 1y ago
Yeah. I feel like the ratio is probably more than Windows vs Linux. Of course for many users the ship has been sailed and they've switched to Obsidian. But for many many many more users they never even heard of Obsidian.

prox 1y ago

Yup. Too little, too late. Hard pass.

meowface 1y ago
My only reasons for switching was performance and simplicity. (Okay, I guess now that I write out like that, it seems like a pretty substantial disillusionment.) Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.

graphememes 1y ago

web experience, many users do not use notion in an app

Illniyar 1y ago

I've never heard of companies using Obsidian. Notion isn't really marketed or suitable for individuals (even if their free plan says otherwise).

fudged71 1y ago
Notion is used individually by a lot of students
sfennell 1y ago
It is suitable for individuals, I used it for a couple years and was very happy with it. I only decided to move on because I wanted a local database that I could mine as my personal knowledge base.
layman51 1y ago
I think you're correct. But I remember back around 2020 when Notion became very popular, it was definitely marketed toward individuals like students, or professionals who wanted to do a lot of planning or organization related to their working/personal lives.
- numbers 1y ago
  yeah, when I downloaded the beta back in 2017/2018, I was using it as a replacement for Evernote. It was amazing. As the feature bloat made it slower and as the push towards companies made it less individual-focused, I started to use it more for group projects and now for teams. Obsidian is just better for writing especially longer notes etc. Notion is great for sharing data intensive stuff, nicely formatted docs, and for collaborating.
- cholantesh 1y ago
  I actively used Notion with a lot of my fellow students at the time. I've subsequently gravitated towards Joplin for 'richer' content and Obsidian for general text.
- louisbourgault 1y ago
  I love notion for school stuff. The databases are just absolutely neccesary for me, and collaboration is a must for me (and without a paid subscription as well). I'm going to check out Obsidian Bases too though now they're out.

cschep 1y ago

Are they comparable tools in a team context? The ease of linking documents to people and collaborating? Seems like solo, sure. But in a group.. Obsidian doesn't replace Notion at all.

jmetrikat 1y ago
obsidian’s great for solo use, but for team collaboration, anytype is closer to notion-built-in group sync, permissions, and offline support. you don’t need plugins or external services for multi-user editing; it just works across devices
- jamil7 1y ago
  Anytype responds poorly to feedback and bug reports from users, they send LLM slop back for any feedback or bug reports sent to them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dtkav 1y ago
Have you tried Relay [0]? It makes Obsidian work for groups by adding real-time collaboration features. (disclaimer: I'm the dev) [0] https://relay.md https://relay.md

paxys 1y ago

Obsidian is great for solo use, but then so is Apple Notes and a dozen similar options. Where Notion shines is team based sharing and collaboration. There's really nothing else like it with the same feature set.

EGreg 1y ago
What feature set exactly? Describe what makes it so amazing. Basically collaboration? Notes has that too.
- rafram 1y ago
  https://www.notion.com/help/intro-to-databases https://www.notion.com/help/intro-to-databases
- dzuc 1y ago
  Ever try to use the collaboration feature in Apple Notes? I find it remarkable how unreliable is.
0xCMP 1y ago
Once iOS 26 drops Apple Notes will be much-much more useful with the combination of supported linking between notes and supporting Markdown. Before it rapidly became untenable as a place to actually store my notes. I use it more as a "temporary note" that will be moved to the proper place later.
- lawgimenez 1y ago
  I have been using Apple Notes' Import to Notes and Import Markdown features a lot in macOS 26 and it has been great so far.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  It's nice if you're on just Apple but if you use Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS all mixed together it's pretty useless. Like most of apple's stuff.
1y ago

baxtr 1y ago

One thing I prefer in Notion is the index site, which is something Obsidian lacks. PS: I’m aware there are plugins that solve this issue, but none of them have worked well enough for me.

s0meON3 1y ago

Appflowy is a great alternative

raincole 1y ago

Tech-savvy people indeed do have some very interesting (while out of touch) perspectives.

tshaddox 1y ago
I don't think Obsidian is even a major player in tech-savvy circles. I'd point to Apple Notes instead.
- mgmobrien 1y ago
  It's a major player for personal notes. Eg > Love letter to @obsdmd to which I very happily switched to for my personal notes. My primary interest in Obsidian is not even for note taking specifically, it is that Obsidian is around the state of the art of a philosophy of software and what it could be. — https://x.com/karpathy/status/1761467904737067456 https://x.com/karpathy/status/1761467904737067456 And there's a lot of interest from tech-savvy folks wanting to use it at work. (Said as a cofounder of a co making business multiplayer tools)
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Yeah why do you need a Markdown editor when you can just write normal text files. Personally I find the source to be more readable than the "rendered" view from Obsidian.
solardev 1y ago
Who needs SaaS when you can engrave your own punch cards?

mmargenot 1y ago

I like Obsidian a lot (especially for the ease of plugin development), but my impression is that most people don't use such comparatively heavy applications for managing their personal lives. It's more likely that they use a Google Keep or sticky notes just placed in random places. That leaves mostly enterprise use cases for such knowledge management tools, and Notion is much more full-featured for enterprise than Obsidian is.

tombert 1y ago

Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work? I know it wasn't enforced but I think the free license limited you to personal use. I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff. I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now? I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it. [1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.

j_4 1y ago
Yes. https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/ https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
- tombert 1y ago
  Ah, fair enough. That's actually fairly recent.
- kwanbix 1y ago
  I don't get it. The pricing page only lists paid options. Not a free tier. What am I missing here?
  - Saris 1y ago
    There are no tiers or different features, just their own sync service is a paid service, and the commercial license is paid but optional. Otherwise the free Obsidian has everything, and there are other plugins for self hosted syncing that don't use the paid service.
    - kwanbix 1y ago
      but without syncing is basically unusable, or can I access my texts from my pc and my cell for example?

dimal 1y ago

Personally, I use Obsidian. But I can’t imagine using it with a team. There’s too much friction sorting out what extensions to use, making sure everyone knows how to use said extensions. I don’t see how Obsidian is feasible for teams. If anyone has experience making it work well for their team, I’d love to hear about it.

dtkav 1y ago
I've the dev behind Relay [0] (real-time collaboration for teams using Obsidian), and we work with a lot of teams who have switched over to using Obsidian for work. We just hit 10,000 users yesterday. You don't need a lot of the plugins to be productive in Obsidian, but I think a superpower people are overlooking is that you can build your own plugins for company specific features/workflows quite cheaply. Combine that with having everything local, and you can use tools like claude code to actually make use of the knowledge/context that you're creating. I find it crazy that people are pushing data into locked-in systems like Notion only to be limited by their weak-sauce AI tools. In contrast, we are all in on file-over-app -- keeping the files locally on your computer so you can actually use them. Many of our customers run their Relay Server on-prem for total document privacy. [0] https://relay.md https://relay.md
- dimal 1y ago
  Well damn, this looks fantastic!
  - dtkav 1y ago
    thanks =] Find me on our discord [0] and I'll gift you some free storage. [0] https://discord.system3.md https://discord.system3.md
themadturk 1y ago
I know a team at my work is using it, though I'm fuzzy on how. I think they have a shared OneDrive folder that they use as a vault. How they deal with locking and such I haven't a clue.

bayindirh 1y ago

I use both. Obsidian is very powerful for quick entry and working on Markdown knowledge bases, and it's great. I use it to manage my digital garden among other things. On the other hand, Notion is great for processing data. I use their databases extensively incl. their charts and whatnot. I also host a couple of read-only public pages for friends or family as documentation. I think they cater to different use cases and doesn't replace each other. I'd certainly won't run my digital garden over Notion, or store the databases I keep in Notion in Obsidian. Obsidian's Bases fill a different need, for now. Also, Notion slightly pivoted recently. They altered their “single person” oriented Pro plan and made Business their “Entry level, full fledged” plan. They do not cater to individuals anymore. Where obsidian is more geared towards individuals.

mgmobrien 1y ago
For some kinds of data processing having your files in a local folder is a prereq. Every day I have my Obsidian vault open in Zed, and I interact with files via the tool-calling agent panel and via terminal. I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great. But I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house. Notion CEO Ivan Zhao recently said: "If you think about applications, each application is kind of like a mini-prison of computing". (https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/756736/notion-ceo-ivan-zhao-productivity-software-design-ai-interview https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/75...) I think he's right. I don't want to be in Notion's prison even if it's big and nice.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  > For some kinds of data processing having your files in a local folder is a prereq. Of course. > open in Zed, and I interact with files via the tool-calling agent panel and via terminal. Ah no, I don't use AI for that kind of tasks. I generally use my own formulae and what Notion provides Sans-AI. > I haven't tried Notion AI, maybe it's great. Me neither. I asked for authors and synopsis for a couple of books, that's all. > I can't imagine going back to a world where all my knowledge lives in Notion's house. Before going in, I always check how the Export works. Notion gives your text as Markdown and tables/databases as CSV, which is good enough for me. I don't prefer to use services which I need to move my stuff by hand. If I can make Bases work for me in Obsidian, I might move completely to Obsidian, but I need to test that first. Edit: Looks like the functions Obsidian supports are not enough for me to move over yet.

Slow_Hand 1y ago

I dunno. I love Obsidian, but it has a huge learning curve and is not currently the type of tool that I see companies adopting when they need to have their employees adopt it’s use. Obsidian is way too overwhelming for the average user, whereas Notion is far more user-friendly and intuitive for people who just need to interact with the system to do their job. Edit: Not to mention that (last I checked) Obsidian lacks a lot of granularity when it comes to permissions for editing pages. It would be very easy for a beginner user to disrupt the markdown files or the organizational system. Even doing things like applying labels or tags in the YAML is less intuitive and requires a lot of consistency guidelines for users to make it worthwhile. Notion facilitates this kind of thing a lot better.

KetoManx64 1y ago
By default Obsidian is a markdown editor with the ability to link to other notes with a pretty graph of your note links. What is overwhelming about that?
- Slow_Hand 1y ago
  Obsidian can be extremely simple at it's core, but to structure everything and make it easy to use by an organization will likely require a whole lot of additional infrastructure and adherence to strict guidelines for organization. Notion seems far more intuitive in this way. Notion is also a bit limited when it comes to customization, but that limitation seems like more of an asset in this case because it produces consistency of style and usage patterns across the platform. Also, I don't find the Obsidian graph to be practical for organizing or locating files. It's impressive to look at, but not that practical in my experience.

richardlblair 1y ago

Notion for my team, Obsidian for myself. We do everything in Notion. Book time off, HR policies, run books, playbooks, knowledge dumps, project management, sprint management. Search is a lot better so it really opens up the use cases. Imo, if you're building a company with the goal of selling it you should use Notion. Get your team to use it, and capture everything about your business. When you go to sell it you have the whole business packaged up in a searchable, interactive knowledge base.

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wltr 1y ago
And if you not going to sell it from the day one, but rather deliver something you promised to deliver (not necessarily promised to others), you may want to use a set of self-hosted tools. I guess.
- petralithic 1y ago
  > deliver something you promised to deliver (not necessarily promised to others), you may want to use a set of self-hosted tools. I don't see how one follows from the other, the vast majority of people use tools to deliver value without really caring whether they're self hosted or not
  - wltr 1y ago
    You missed ‘I guess’ in the quote, but anyway. The idea is that the parent commenter said about the intent to sell the company, and I’ve got the impression it’s a day-one intention. Like, we’re building a company to sell it. So if I’m planning to do the opposite, deliver some actual value and ideally never sell it, what should I do then? Is it self-hosting then? That’s why I’m saying ‘I guess.’ It’s an open question.
    - richardlblair 1y ago
      Your comment implies people who build companies with the intent to sell don't build companies that deliver value. That couldn't be further from the truth. There is nothing wrong with wanting to build something of value and don't want to work forever. Also, just because you don't see the value doesn't mean the value isn't there. You're right, though, people who build businesses they have no intent of selling will also get similar value. They also reduce their hit by buss factor, make onboarding new employees easier, and so on. I was simply offering one perspective. I don't think any commenter provides every single perspective, or when speaking on a product, all that products value.

Casteil 1y ago

Came here to say as much. No proprietary 'lock-in' with Obsidian, just plain .md, and honestly (if I recall correctly - it's been years now) I felt like I struggled using Notion's 'fancier' features. It seemed like copying/pasting out of it was often problematic. Like others are saying, though, Notion is much more geared for collaboration. I couldn't care much less about that, so here I am with Obsidian, still, years later.

atombender 1y ago

For me, a lot of it is that the "plumbing on the outside" approach of Markdown isn't nice. I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025. Maybe Obsidian appeals to a particular type of techie who uses Vim and stores all their files locally, compared to someone who isn't technical and just wants "documents in the cloud". I should add that I dislike Notion for most things. In particular, the database support (which a lot of people here are singing praises about), tables, lack of diagramming, and the poor search. But my main problem with Notion and other document systems is that invariably dissolve into the equivalent of a hoarder's house, full of outdated, hard-to-find garbage deeply buried under other garbage. That's because Notion only has hierarchy. It doesn't have a sense of "cross cutting". So everyone organizes their stuff in completely different ways, and you have to deal with poorly thought-out folder hierarchies. Where I work, any attempt to carefully "garden" pages is futile because there is no discipline enforced by the tool. Lately I've been using Linear as a replacement for Notion for some things, and it's just a much better designed tool.

danielhep 1y ago
Linear the project management software?
- atombender 1y ago
  Yep!
to11mtm 1y ago
TBH I'd prefer either Sharepoint's forced edit boxes or raw markdown over the hot mess that is editing in confluence. Pick a side and be done with it.
lmm 1y ago
> I don't understand why anyone thinks that seeing and editing format codes all over the place is good UX in 2025. Because if you can see them you can fix them when they inevitably get fucked up. (Literally commenting immediately after fixing some formatting that Confluence broke, like I do every day)

zie 1y ago

I switched to silverbullet[0], you get to write lua instead of YAML or whatever these apps are pushing. 0: https://silverbullet.md https://silverbullet.md

bryanhogan 1y ago

Notion still has Database feature that Obsidian doesn't, e.g. a good Kanban board.

isodev 1y ago

In our small (~12) product studio, we switched to Obsidian for team stuff as well and it’s working really well. Collaboration on the same notes works just fine, even if there is no “live editing” (which we realised is not really useful for us anyway). The fact that notes are just text files on disk has been transformative though - folks use the Shortcuts app, scripts and what not to manage and lookup things.

wortelefant 1y ago

The AI search and multiplayer modes are still a strong differentiator.

demarq 1y ago

> users like myself Nerdy devs are a niche. HN is a tiny tiny bubble. Most users don’t know and wouldn’t care for obsidian or markdown etc. I think is not a feature to appease the nerd community but for business users who are on the go.

heihieih 1y ago

I have switched to Obsidian and have not used Notion for a long time.