Software Alternatives & Reviews

Readwise VS Obsidian.md

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

Readwise logo Readwise

Effortlessly rediscover and organize your Kindle highlights

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.
  • Readwise Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-10
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01

Readwise videos

Readwise: How to use Spaced Repetition with your books

More videos:

  • Review - Keep track of Kindle highlights with Readwise [#49] Adam Franklin

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Readwise and Obsidian.md)
Bookmark Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Knowledge Management
0 0%
100% 100
Bookmarks
100 100%
0% 0
Note Taking
5 5%
95% 95

User comments

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Reviews

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

Readwise Reviews

  1. Great help to review books

    I imported my kindle highlights, as many others. Now I daily review some highlights (thanks to a dashboard, I am motivated). And where I didn't create highlights, as I only listened to the audiobooks, I get the highlights from others. It also allows to create beautiful quotes. It adds the book cover and matches quote and background with colours found on the book title! Really nice!

    👍 Pros:    Review books|Beautiful quotes|Dashboard motivates

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md seems to be a lot more popular than Readwise. While we know about 1454 links to Obsidian.md, we've tracked only 81 mentions of Readwise. 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.

Readwise mentions (81)

  • FEATURE REQUEST: Get notes without logging in
    I'm between apps at the moment! I would have used Notion except it wasn't possible to use the app on an e-ink screen. I need an app I can compose a synopsis on at the same time as export Kindle highlights to using https://readwise.io/, which narrows the options. I'm looking at Logseq at the moment. Source: 10 months ago
  • Pocket: It gets worse the more you use it
    Very much agree that Pocket has gotten worse as I've used it over the years. It's so bad I've mostly moved to the much better Readwise (https://readwise.io/). I'd be fully over if they actually supported a decent export (see below). It's sad because I'm probably in the 99th percentile of Pocket users in terms of usage and am happily paying them for Premium. I can't remember a significant improvement to Pocket in 2... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • What’s the best way to take notes while reading?
    I tend to read highlight and annotate using a Kindle, and subscribe to https://readwise.io/ to transfer my notes to the web. I would like to have the workflow to be able to write up summaries of books, if only for my own reference. At the moment reading my notes is like reading a book in itself. Source: 10 months ago
  • How to take notes on technical books?
    Some of the things I am doing include highlighting using a Kindle, and with a subscription to https://readwise.io/ downloading those highlights to my laptop. It's possible to automatically orgnanise them into chapters and sections. Source: 10 months ago
  • Looking for an app that will help me see my notes again.
    If it syncs with whatever notes app you're using Readwise might suit your needs. Source: 10 months ago
View more

Obsidian.md mentions (1454)

  • UX Case Study: Markdown Heading
    The closest editor that follows our first principle is Obsidian editor:. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • I switched from Notion to Obsidian
    The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian. - Source: dev.to / 7 days 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 / 10 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 / 27 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
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Knotes - An efficient, beautiful Kindle highlights & notes manager

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.

Klib - Kindle & iBooks Highlights Manager

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

Clippings.io - Organize the notes you make on your Kindle

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