Obsidian is the better app overall, scoring 9.3 to 8.7. Obsidian wins on 4 of the 5 scores, TickTick on 0, with 1 tied.
Writers, students and researchers building a long-term personal knowledge base
Students and planners who want tasks, calendar, habits and focus in one app
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Obsidian | TickTick |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity & Notes | Productivity & Notes |
| Category rank | #2 of 10 | #6 of 10 |
| Developer | Dynalist Inc. | Appest Limited |
| 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
TickTick
- Huge feature set for the price
- Useful free plan with habits and focus timer
- Apps for every major platform, including Linux
- Interface feels busy with so many features
- Fewer third-party integrations than Todoist
TickTick packs more into one app than almost any task manager. Alongside lists and natural language input, you get a calendar view, habit tracker, Pomodoro focus timer and Eisenhower matrix, on every major platform. The free plan is unusually useful, and Premium is good value. The trade-off is a busier interface than Things or Todoist, and fewer integrations. Great if you want tasks, time and habits in one place.
Full TickTick review
