Obsidian is the better app overall, scoring 9.3 to 8.6. Obsidian wins on 4 of the 5 scores, Craft on 1.
Writers, students and researchers building a long-term personal knowledge base
Writers and Apple users who want beautiful notes and docs with little effort
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Obsidian | Craft |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity & Notes | Productivity & Notes |
| Category rank | #2 of 10 | #7 of 10 |
| Developer | Dynalist Inc. | Craft Docs Ltd |
| Pricing | Free + paid plans | Free + paid plans |
| Usable for free | Yes | Yes |
| iPhone & iPad | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android | ✓ | — |
| Mac | ✓ | ✓ |
| Windows | ✓ | ✓ |
| Linux | ✓ | — |
| Web | — | ✓ |
Strengths and weaknesses
Obsidian
- Notes are local files that stay yours forever
- Fast and fully usable offline
- Free for personal and commercial use
- Steep learning curve with many setup choices
- Official sync and publishing are paid add-ons
Obsidian stores your notes as plain Markdown files on your own device, so you own them outright and they work offline. Backlinks, graph view, Canvas and Bases turn a folder of notes into a connected knowledge base, and a large library of community plugins adds almost anything else. It is free for personal and work use. The catch is the learning curve, and syncing between devices costs extra unless you set it up yourself.
Full Obsidian review
Craft
- Beautiful documents with almost no formatting work
- Fast, native apps on Mac, iPhone and iPad
- Easy sharing of polished pages on the web
- Database and team features trail Notion
- Best experience is limited to Apple devices
Craft makes writing and organizing notes feel good. Pages nest inside each other as cards, documents look polished with no effort, and you can share any doc as a clean web page. Daily notes, tasks, whiteboards and an AI assistant round it out, and the native apps work offline. It is strongest on Apple devices. The catch: databases and team features are lighter than Notion, and the best features need a subscription.
Full Craft review
