What is Obsidian?
Local-first Markdown notes with a plugin ecosystem.
Who is Obsidian best for?
Obsidian is best for people who want notes kept as files on their own device, linked into a personal knowledge base.
Building a personal knowledge base
Links between notes, a graph view and backlinks make it easy to connect ideas, books and people over years of note-taking.
People who want to own their files
Notes sit on your own device in open file formats, work offline and stay readable in other apps if you ever leave.
Tinkerers who customize their tools
Thousands of community plugins and themes add calendars, kanban boards, task tracking and database-style queries.
Private journals and research
The app sends no telemetry, and the paid Sync service encrypts notes end to end so Obsidian cannot read them.
How much does Obsidian cost?
Obsidian is free with no limits, and you pay only for optional add-ons: Sync costs $5 or $10 per user a month and Publish $10 per site a month, a little less on yearly billing.
- The full app with no limits
- Notes stored on your device in open file formats
- Thousands of community plugins and themes
- 1 synced vault and 1GB of storage
- Files up to 5MB, 1 month of version history
- End-to-end encryption
- 10 synced vaults and 10GB of storage, upgradable to 100GB
- Files up to 200MB, 12 months of version history
- End-to-end encryption and shared vaults
- Turns notes into a public website
- Hosting up to 4GB per site
- Custom theme and domain, graph and full-text search
Billed yearly, Sync Standard is $4, Sync Plus $8 and Publish $8 a month. Two optional licenses support development: Catalyst is a $25 one-time payment with early beta access, and the Commercial license is $50 per user per year. Students, faculty and nonprofit staff get 40% off Sync and Publish. Sync and Publish can be refunded within 7 days; the licenses cannot. Full pricing on obsidian.md. We checked these prices on .
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What are the best Obsidian alternatives?
Three tools on Recaply do Obsidian's job. All three are open source, so you can run them on your own server.
NotesnookOpen SourceChoose it when you want to host it yourself and keep your data on your own server.
TolariaOpen SourceChoose it when you want open source code you can run and change yourself.
LogseqOpen SourceChoose it when you want a block-based outliner with linked references, and the app's own source code open to read and change
Questions about Obsidian
What is Obsidian?
Local-first Markdown notes with a plugin ecosystem.
Who is Obsidian for?
Obsidian is best for people who want notes kept as files on their own device, linked into a personal knowledge base.
Is Obsidian free?
Yes. Obsidian has a free plan: the full app with no limits.
How much does Obsidian cost?
Obsidian's paid plans are Sync Standard at $5 per user per month, Sync Plus at $10 per user per month and Publish at $10 per site per month.
Is there an open source alternative to Obsidian?
Yes. Notesnook, Tolaria, Logseq and Memos and 7 more are open source tools that do the same job, so you can run your own.
What are the best Obsidian alternatives?
The closest alternatives on Recaply are Notesnook, Tolaria and Logseq.
Where can I try Obsidian?
On its official website, obsidian.md.
Do I need a commercial license to use Obsidian at work?
No. Obsidian does not require a commercial license, even inside a company. The Commercial license, $50 per user per year, is optional; Obsidian asks organizations to buy it to fund development and lists buyers as featured organizations.
Does Obsidian offer a student discount?
Yes. Students, faculty and nonprofit employees get 40% off Obsidian Sync and Obsidian Publish. The app itself is already free, and Obsidian says it offers no other discounts or promotions.
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