Obsidian is the better app overall, scoring 9.3 to 8.9. Obsidian wins on 3 of the 5 scores, Notion on 2.
Writers, students and researchers building a long-term personal knowledge base
Teams who want docs, wikis and task boards in one place
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Obsidian | Notion |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity & Notes | Productivity & Notes |
| Category rank | #2 of 10 | #4 of 10 |
| Developer | Dynalist Inc. | Notion Labs |
| 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
Notion
- Flexible enough to replace several separate apps
- Excellent for shared team docs and wikis
- Huge template gallery to get started fast
- Large pages and databases can feel slow
- No end-to-end encryption for your notes
Notion lets you build almost anything from blocks: notes, wikis, task boards, CRMs and project trackers, all linked by powerful databases. Notion AI can write, search across connected apps and run agents that update pages for you. It is excellent for teams. The catch is speed: large workspaces can feel sluggish, offline support is limited, and nothing is end-to-end encrypted. Best if you like to design your own system.
Full Notion review
