Software Alternatives & Reviews

Obsidian.md VS Notion

Compare Obsidian.md VS Notion and see what are their differences

Obsidian.md logo Obsidian.md

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Notion logo Notion

All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01
  • Notion Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Notion videos

The Most Powerful Productivity App I Use - Notion

More videos:

  • Review - I switched to Notion for a week... Here's what happened!
  • Review - Notion is Truly an All-in-One Productivity Tool (App Review)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Obsidian.md and Notion)
Knowledge Management
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
19 19%
81% 81
Note Taking
64 64%
36% 36
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Obsidian.md and Notion

Obsidian.md Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    🏁 Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    👍 Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    👎 Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    🏁 Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
One thing to note: Notion bills itself as an Evernote competitor for personal users. It can be—but it's too much for most people, and its offline functionality isn't the best. If you love the idea of Notion, go right ahead and try the free Personal Plan, but for me, it's really best as a team notes app or an AI-powered notes app. Something like Obsidian (which we'll look at...
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
This app is the kind of thing that, if you’re into it, will have you exploring its various ins, outs, and add-ons for days and weeks on end. Obsidian uses the Markdown format for its notes (which means they can be used on a variety of other apps). Your notes and other media are kept locally in a Vault (in other words, a main folder). There are ways to sync between devices...
The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com
Logseq vs Roam Research vs Obsidian: which one should you choose?
Block Reference and block embeds: Adding block reference and block embeds in Logseq is simple. You use double-open parentheses (( and type to search the block you want to link. In Obsidian, you have to first add the link to the note and then use # to embed headers and ^ to embed blocks.– Obsidian also makes it hard to see the origin of block references, as they are only...
Source: medium.com

Notion Reviews

  1. As someone who's always on the lookout for the perfect productivity app, I was excited to try out Notion. It promises to be an all-in-one tool for everything from note-taking to project management to personal wikis.

    From the moment you open Notion, you can tell that it's different from other productivity apps. The interface is sleek and modern, and it's easy to navigate. The app is divided into pages, which can be customized with different templates to fit your needs. You can create to-do lists, databases, wikis, calendars, and more.

    One of the things I love about Notion is the ability to create relationships between pages. For example, you can create a database of your favorite books and then link to a page with your book reviews. Or you can create a to-do list and link to a page with notes about the task. This feature makes it easy to keep all of your information in one place and to connect related items.

    🏁 Competitors: Microsoft Loop
    👍 Pros:    Highly customizable|All in one|Collaboration|Cross platform
    👎 Cons:    Steep learning curve

20 Obsidian Alternatives: Top Note-Taking Tools to Consider
Notion is a popular alternative to Obsidian for its simplicity, minimalistic interface, and large community. On top of note-taking, you can use Notion as a task management tool to create simple to-dos or build a personal knowledge base. You can also embed links, images, videos, code snippets, etc. Notion also has bi-directional functionalities enabling you to interconnect...
Source: clickup.com
The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
Notion integrates with Zapier, so you can connect it to thousands of other apps to do things like automatically generate GitHub or Jira issues from new Notion database items. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or check out these templates for inspiration.
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
In fact, its lack of limitations may be a problem for some users. If you like to really get into the workings of a complex app and screw around with it until it does everything you want it to do — and then some — then you may want to check out Notion and play a bit with its features. (For example, I currently use Notion to track my various workflows and upcoming tasks.)...
12 Best ClickUp Alternatives for Innovative Management in 2023
Benefits of Notion compared to ClickUp: Notion allows users to interlink content between project boards. There’s no need for copying and pasting information as this interlinking connects already existing cards and allows easy access to information. Combined with notes, this leads to a robust database of valuable information that is surprisingly very useful for project...
Source: ayanza.com
Best Gitbook Alternatives You Need to Try in 2023
Another alternative to Gitbook is Notion. This all-in-one workspace allows users to organize notes, tasks, wikis, and more. If you are looking for a tool for internal collaboration, Notion is a good choice. It has a large community of users that share templates you can import to your account.
Source: www.archbee.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md should be more popular than Notion. It has been mentiond 1453 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Obsidian.md mentions (1453)

  • I switched from Notion to Obsidian
    The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian. - Source: dev.to / about 20 hours ago
  • Why single vendor is the new proprietary
    > why does open source need to "win" Open source does not need to win. But your ability to be in control of your computer needs to be preserved. A proprietary fridge cannot control your diet, while a proprietary App Store can control what software you install on YOUR phone (unless you live in EU, hello DMA!). The tail wags the dog, so to speak. Proprietary software has also been shown to break user workflows or... - Source: Hacker News / 5 days ago
  • Replatforming from Gatsby to Zola!
    So I've had my fair share of personal websites and blogs. I have built them on stacks ranging from the most basic HTML and CSS, to hosted frameworks like Wordpress and Laravel, to the more modern single page applications built in Vue and React. For a simple content blog I think you can't go wrong with a Static Site Generator though. These days I am almost exclusively writing everything in Obsidian. Which is great... - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
  • Show HN: Godspeed is a fast, 100% keyboard oriented todo app for Mac
    Consider making an Obsidian[^1] plugin, or writing to Obsidian-compatible Markdown files :) [^1]: https://obsidian.md/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Setting Up Obsidian for Content Planning and Project Management
    Obsidian is a writing application created to allow for offline / private note taking in markdown format, in an interface that looks a lot like our regular programming IDE. It is very flexible, with a good collection of community plugins that you can use to customize Obsidian to your heart contents. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
View more

Notion mentions (438)

  • My blog post workflow
    I manage my non-work and work-adjacent tasks in Notion. Whenever I have an idea, regardless of how big or small or silly or achievable it is, I'll add it to Notion, and use labels to categorise it by type of output (e.g. blog, silly project, website update). Today I wanted to write a short post for my site. I clicked on the filtered blog post view, and selected this one (because I hoped it would be a quick one!). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • 6 AI tools that feels illegal to know🤖
    Notion.so redefines workspaces. With its intelligent organization and collaboration features, it's more than a productivity tool—it's a digital haven. Discover the art of streamlined and efficient teamwork. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Dead Matter Refund Policy and Discord
    A quote as I could not directly send a discord screenshot and am not sure that people want to make an account at notion.so simply to see the FAQ:. Source: 7 months ago
  • UI frameworks are stuck in the last decade
    I work on a large SPA: https://notion.so It’s a document editing application. A document title might occur in the browser’s titlebar, in the header of the main editor, in a “mention” (a link to the document), and in multiple places in the user’s sidebar - like in both their “Favorites” section and in the the contents of their team. When the user edits the document title, we need to update all those UI bits to... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • [H]Notion One Year Subscription Pro Account | unlimited storage unlimited uploads - $5 [W] Paypa/BTC/
    Notion (Notion.so) is an all-in-one workspace where you can write, plan, collaborate and get organized - it allows you to take notes, add tasks, manage projects & more. Imagine a lego structure. Notion provides the building blocks and you can create your own layouts and toolkit to get work done. Source: 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Obsidian.md and Notion, you can also consider the following products

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.

Evernote - Bring your life's work together in one digital workspace. Evernote is the place to collect inspirational ideas, write meaningful words, and move your important projects forward.

Roam Research - A note-taking tool for networked thought

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.