Obsidian

About

Obsidian is a knowledge base built on plain Markdown files stored on your own machine, which means your notes outlive any app or subscription. Link notes together and the graph view maps how your thinking connects, while backlinks surface every mention of an idea automatically. Thousands of community plugins and themes make it endlessly adaptable, from a simple journal to a full research system.

The core app is free, and since February 2025 that includes commercial use at work, with no licence required. Optional add-ons handle the rest: Sync, from $4 per month, moves notes between devices with end-to-end encryption, and Publish turns a vault into a public site. For anyone serious about building a permanent store of notes, this is the deepest tool in its class.

Alternatives

• Bear

  Pick Bear if you want a more polished, tag-based Markdown notes app for Mac, iPhone and iPad: it is free to use, with Pro at $29.99 a year for iCloud sync.

• Logseq

  Pick Logseq if you want an open-source knowledge base that keeps notes as Markdown or Org-mode files, with PDF annotation and task management built in.

• Notes

  Stay with Notes if you want nothing extra to install: it is built into your Mac and covers tags, Smart Folders and locked notes at no cost.

At a Glance

Price

Free, including at work; optional Sync from $4 a month billed annually

Also On

Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android

Get It From

obsidian.md