I guess for a lot of users like myself using Notion ship has sailed. Most of them have moved to Obsidian, with the new database feature of Obsidian, and it being free, I do not see why users would choose Notion over Obsidian.
tombert · 11m ago
Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work? I know it wasn't enforced but I think the free license limited you to personal use.
I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff.
I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now?
I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it.
[1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.
dragonwriter · 7m ago
> Have Obsidian stopped requiring that you pay for a commercial license to use for work?
I don't know if they ever required that, but they certainly do not now. They encourage purchase of a commercial license, but it explicitly is not required.
From the FAQ on their pricing page:
Do I have to pay for commercial use?
No. You are not required to pay for a commercial license, however if you are using Obsidian for work in an organization we encourage you to purchase a commercial license to keep Obsidian independent and 100% user-supported.
Tech-savvy people indeed do have some very interesting (while out of touch) perspectives.
tshaddox · 2m ago
I don't think Obsidian is even a major player in tech-savvy circles. I'd point to Apple Notes instead.
solardev · 15m ago
Who needs SaaS when you can engrave your own punch cards?
Illniyar · 1h ago
I've never heard of companies using Obsidian. Notion isn't really marketed or suitable for individuals (even if their free plan says otherwise).
layman51 · 43m ago
I think you're correct. But I remember back around 2020 when Notion became very popular, it was definitely marketed toward individuals like students, or professionals who wanted to do a lot of planning or organization related to their working/personal lives.
kepano · 31m ago
That's somewhat true for team collaboration, but not if you consider individuals on teams. There are people at least 10,000 companies using Obsidian, and some large corporate sponsors. See obsidian.md/enterprise
paxys · 22m ago
I'm an "enterprise user" of Obsidian, but all I use it for is personal note taking at work. My company shows up on that page because I get them to pay for a commerical license. Outside of that it isn't an official internal tool. I don't use it to work on projects together with my teammates, for example.
rafram · 17m ago
Oracle has 162,000 employees, but because about 25 people total asked for reimbursement for licenses, they're on that page.
mmargenot · 10m ago
I use Notion extensively as an individual, but I spend a lot of time thinking about knowledge management and have accordingly tuned it pretty closely to my typical workflows. Without that initial time investment it can be overwhelming.
sfennell · 59m ago
It is suitable for individuals, I used it for a couple years and was very happy with it. I only decided to move on because I wanted a local database that I could mine as my personal knowledge base.
paxys · 49m ago
Obsidian is great for solo use, but then so is Apple Notes and a dozen similar options. Where Notion shines is team based sharing and collaboration. There's really nothing else like it with the same feature set.
EGreg · 47m ago
What feature set exactly? Describe what makes it so amazing. Basically collaboration? Notes has that too.
I like Obsidian a lot (especially for the ease of plugin development), but my impression is that most people don't use such comparatively heavy applications for managing their personal lives. It's more likely that they use a Google Keep or sticky notes just placed in random places. That leaves mostly enterprise use cases for such knowledge management tools, and Notion is much more full-featured for enterprise than Obsidian is.
baxtr · 46m ago
One thing I prefer in Notion is the index site, which is something Obsidian lacks.
PS: I’m aware there are plugins that solve this issue, but none of them have worked well enough for me.
graphememes · 1h ago
web experience, many users do not use notion in an app
s0meON3 · 29m ago
Appflowy is a great alternative
ujkhsjkdhf234 · 1h ago
You need to get out of your bubble. Notion is so much more popular than Obsidian you cannot imagine. My dentist office uses Notion for example. Migrating out of Notion is also very difficult and for most people it isn't worth the hassle. Obsidian not being web based is also a con not a pro to the average person. The number of people leaving Notion for Obsidian is a rounding error.
savolai · 1h ago
Yep. Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users. It could probably be made even smoother but I cannot imagine obsidian being competitive, having used it. Just too much hassle for things Notion handles smoothly.
I would like to have more of the content available offline automatically though, i.e all text and image content, and big files downloaded on request. Closer to local first than this.
solardev · 13m ago
> Notion databases are also the best implementation seamless of ux I’ve seen for relational databases for end users.
Have you ever tried Airtable? How does Notion compare?
raincole · 27m ago
Yeah. I feel like the ratio is probably more than Windows vs Linux. Of course for many users the ship has been sailed and they've switched to Obsidian. But for many many many more users they never even heard of Obsidian.
TimorousBestie · 29m ago
I think the market is big enough for Notion and Obsidian to both exist.
prox · 1h ago
Yup. Too little, too late. Hard pass.
meowface · 48m ago
My only reasons for switching was performance and simplicity. (Okay, I guess now that I write out like that, it seems like a pretty substantial disillusionment.)
Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.
cschep · 1h ago
Are they comparable tools in a team context? The ease of linking documents to people and collaborating? Seems like solo, sure. But in a group.. Obsidian doesn't replace Notion at all.
jmetrikat · 58m ago
obsidian’s great for solo use, but for team collaboration, anytype is closer to notion-built-in group sync, permissions, and offline support. you don’t need plugins or external services for multi-user editing; it just works across devices
photon_garden · 1h ago
I was a big Notion fan for years and am now solidly in the Obsidian camp.
Speed and local-first was originally the main differentiator, but over time Steph Ango's "file over app" philosophy has become my favorite feature.
Yesterday I used Claude Code to automate some Obsidian cleanup and it was trivial because everything's just a file.
mxschll · 1h ago
Local-first becomes even better in combination with local LLMs.
wahnfrieden · 1h ago
You are not their current market, at all (individual vs team use) and your solution is unsuitable for theirs
jjfoooo4 · 1h ago
People using their free offering for personal use is a critical part of Notion's sales pipeline. It's a hell of a lot easier to sell a piece of software to a company when all it's internal users have already trained themselves how to use it in their personal time. Those users are probably the ones generating the enterprise sales lead in the first place
See also: Google Docs
wahnfrieden · 1h ago
Yes but users who are satisfied by an alternative (Obsidian) which can't be used with teams aren't their audience. If the user wanted to introduce the tool to their team, they wouldn't be satisfied with Obsidian. Google Docs is one link share away from team-sharing. Obsidian requires ditching Obsidian to share the practice with your team.
SpaceManNabs · 1h ago
Never knew people viewed notion and obsidian in the same space.
i usually compare obsidian to joplin... seems like i should be looking more at obsidian because i was considering starting a new wiki in notion.
maz1b · 6m ago
Offline mode is one of those features that sounds simple enough, but in reality gets pretty complex pretty fast, particularly if you want to do more meaningful capabilities or operations esp at scale.
trentnix · 1h ago
I'm a Notion fan but the lack of a native Linux app has me shopping for a replacement. Obsidian seems, from what I've seen, focused on the ability to graph notes, which I don't really care about. I want note-taking, list-making, and markdown friendly.
I do want to keep Notion's ability to work in a browser and to maintain a single, accessible store of my notes.
What are my options?
LostMyLogin · 1h ago
Note-taking, list making, and markdown friendly kind of describe obsidian. You can organize the files however you wish.
roomey · 31m ago
Zim wiki is brilliant. I've been using it for years. It's very extendable
rafram · 14m ago
> Zim handles several types of markup, like headings, bullet lists and of course bold, italic and highlighted.
OK, I think this may be a bit less powerful than Notion and Obsidian.
cbdumas · 1h ago
> I want note-taking, list-making, and markdown friendly.
I feel like you just described Obsidian. You can do more with tagging and linking but you definitely don't have to
sfennell · 52m ago
I made the jump to AFFiNe (https://affine.pro/) a few months ago and have really liked using it. I am able to self host and have found it to be a _nearly_ 1:1 replacement for Notion. Affine's database implementation isn't nearly as nice though - but they are workable and they are improving.
My biggest gripe is that the OSS project is very oriented around a hosted product rather than the self hosted - so things like AI configuration is tricky at best and ive had to manually manipulate my account in the db to remove "free" user limitations.
cyanf · 1h ago
I have the same set of requirements you’re describing and Obsidian is perfect.
You can disable the graph feature and never link any notes.
c4wrd · 1h ago
Obsidian's plug-in ecosystem is fantastic. I've used Obsidian for three years as a replacement for Notion, and I have never used the Graph mode. My Obsidian plugins enable automatic task synchronization with TickTick (where I manage my tasks) and allow me to set up features like templates. I strongly recommend giving it a spin.
The only downside for me is the inability to use it from a web browser. This isn't a major issue for my workflows.
Obsidian has all of that and more if you go for some of the advanced extensions. It's not about "graphing notes" as much as connecting a note to another. It's really not that different from inserting a page into the text of another page in Notion
datadrivenangel · 1h ago
Obsidian is a markdown editor. The graphing is not pushed, and can actually be disabled in the app settings. Very customizable. Worth a try!
jmetrikat · 1h ago
if you’re open to something outside the browser, anytype runs natively on linux. local-first and e2e encrypted by default. you can sync via p2p or through backup nodes. markdown, lists, note-taking all covered - just no browser version yet
nomorewords · 1h ago
Have you tried affine?
kevdoran · 33m ago
I'm a little confused. They've supported offline for some time.
The article you posted doesn't mention "offline" at all. We use SQLite as a cache in the browser when available and in iOS/Android/desktop apps, but we didn't have any guarantee that a page you want offline is actually available offline.
It would "mostly work" offline before, but you could have cases where some blocks in a page aged out of the LRU, or they changed online in a way that invalidated the page but new content wasn't downloaded. When that happens we show a "go online to view" error instead of risking you viewing/editing a known-incorrect local snapshot of the page.
With "available offline", we now proactively download and keep up-to-date the content you want available offline. It will either work, or show an explicit error if things go wrong in the sync process. No more guesswork.
dcreater · 47m ago
Just use obsidian instead. Don't trust 3rd parties with your sensitive data if you dont have to - especially ones who've to IPO and delivet returns to investors
colordrops · 45m ago
And obsidian is not open source either. If you rely on any of the functionality besides just raw text editing, you may lose it one day.
static_motion · 30m ago
But everything is stored as .md, which is ubiquitous. You'll still have access to your notes and be able to edit them with your preferred text editor.
reorder9695 · 28m ago
I think the point they were making was obsidian by default does not upload to anyone's server, yes they sell obsidian sync but they also endorse using synthing instead.
My notes, which can include things like my location, appointments, plans, things I don't want a random company viewing never leave my device, which is the only way you can be sure they are not being viewed without an oss app.
ale · 58m ago
Although I’m sure implementing this into a big codebase is a technical headache I hope this encourages other big Electron apps like Figma (or even Tana, a direct competitor) to support an offline mode of sorts.
joeriddles · 33m ago
I'm surprised Figma doesn't support offline mode given this blog post about how they built it.
can confirm - even building on crdts from the ground up in anytype was no small feat. adding them later to a cloud-first product like notion must’ve been a massive lift.. it reshapes the whole architecture. seeing this shift with more providers would definitely be welcome - too many apps still treat offline as optional, not essential
levmiseri · 36m ago
For me one of the biggest issues with Notion (and to a smaller extent with Obsidian as well) is its ever present UI. When I write (or read) something, I don't want to see 20+ buttons scattered around distracting me from the content.
IA writer got this right, but it's too local and doesn't have colab or better online sync features. Shameless plug – I'm building https://kraa.io/about that's trying to be a writing app with a minimal, yet feature-rich, UI. (better offline and local-files functionality planned)
This is what differentiates Obsidian from many other note taking apps. Anyone who has an itch can build a plugin and customize it.
Unlike a venture-funded SaaS application there's no meaningful commercial incentive or issue with building something that will eventually get sherlock'd b the application vendor in the future.
jitl · 30m ago
Notion should enter "keyboard mode" as you start to type and fade out the header bar. You'll still need to close the sidebar since it's quite busy and we don't fade it automatically since it has an explicit toggle. I guess if you're building your own there's still too much noise. Good luck!
levmiseri · 21m ago
Yeah, that's a nice touch. Though the reading experience is also important. Notion is obviously super powerful and a more cluttered UI is hence probably unavoidable.
datadrivenangel · 27m ago
In Obsidian you can disable almost all of the UI very easily in settings.
levmiseri · 6m ago
Only the Hider plugin did 'most' of the job. But yeah, Obsidian is good with this (with plugins)
9x39 · 1h ago
That's cool. I typically don't use multiple or linked pages too often when I'm mobile, but there was always some kind of local cache for a page I had been reading or working on. This plugs one of the few annoyances I had.
Apparently in contrast to many of you, I think Notion is a better product for what I want, which is collaborative notes++. Personal info repo, shared project pages with people, and I straddle work and personal life using it everywhere. Tinkering with the backend is not a goal of mine, but I wonder if that's what people like about Obsidian.
neonnoodle · 50m ago
"It's true, we inserted disks into our beige towers and installed desktop software..."
"Let's get you to bed, grandma..."
trn217 · 20m ago
Just use Anytype. It‘s a free to use application where you actually own your data.
jchw · 1h ago
Well this is good I suppose, but what I find rather alarming is how bad Notion used to (recently, maybe not after this?) behave when there was a connectivity or server issue. I figured with OTs and CRDTs, collaborative editing of rich text documents with intermittent connectivity was a solved problem. However, with Notion I've actually lost data, sometimes a lot of it. (Once when Notion was having some kind of outage, I silently lost an entire page I was working on.)
Personally, I don't really like Notion very much. Not silently losing data is a low bar to clear for an application that edits rich text. Notion didn't clear it.
j45 · 7m ago
Can someone report if it’s real actual offline first mode without some kind of ceremony before doing so.
I had to leave Notion far too many years ago and life is elsewhere.
codingwagie · 51m ago
ive wasted so much time fiddling with notion documents
codruterdei · 38m ago
Oh, only 2 years after Notion AI. I guess we now know which is harder to create tickets for xD
DataDaemon · 49m ago
when e2ee?
jmetrikat · 42m ago
anytype has e2ee at its core - and you can verify it, since the code is open. can’t say the same for notion.
I bought a commercial license three years ago, and I don't really mind paying it, but then my job for the last year expressly forbid the use of Obsidian [1], and as such I didn't feel compelled to keep paying, though I still used it for personal stuff.
I looked at their website and it looks like the commercial license is optional now?
I don't really mind paying for it, I think it's a pretty decent notes app and I probably get more than $50/year of value out of it.
[1] I'm not 100% sure why, I think it might have been because the people doing the approvals thought that the Sync was an intrinsic to the app and they were afraid of company secrets going out.
I don't know if they ever required that, but they certainly do not now. They encourage purchase of a commercial license, but it explicitly is not required.
From the FAQ on their pricing page:
Do I have to pay for commercial use?
No. You are not required to pay for a commercial license, however if you are using Obsidian for work in an organization we encourage you to purchase a commercial license to keep Obsidian independent and 100% user-supported.
https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
PS: I’m aware there are plugins that solve this issue, but none of them have worked well enough for me.
I would like to have more of the content available offline automatically though, i.e all text and image content, and big files downloaded on request. Closer to local first than this.
Have you ever tried Airtable? How does Notion compare?
Notion was always very sluggish and bulky. If they added a simple way to very quickly load and write simple Markdown notes on desktop and mobile like Obsidian, I might not have switched. Meanwhile their mobile app was taking literally 10+ seconds to even open.
Speed and local-first was originally the main differentiator, but over time Steph Ango's "file over app" philosophy has become my favorite feature.
Yesterday I used Claude Code to automate some Obsidian cleanup and it was trivial because everything's just a file.
See also: Google Docs
i usually compare obsidian to joplin... seems like i should be looking more at obsidian because i was considering starting a new wiki in notion.
I do want to keep Notion's ability to work in a browser and to maintain a single, accessible store of my notes.
What are my options?
OK, I think this may be a bit less powerful than Notion and Obsidian.
I feel like you just described Obsidian. You can do more with tagging and linking but you definitely don't have to
My biggest gripe is that the OSS project is very oriented around a hosted product rather than the self hosted - so things like AI configuration is tricky at best and ive had to manually manipulate my account in the db to remove "free" user limitations.
You can disable the graph feature and never link any notes.
The only downside for me is the inability to use it from a web browser. This isn't a major issue for my workflows.
https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet
Even published a very cool article last July about all the (considerable) challenges one runs into when going after making wasm-sqlite work: https://www.notion.com/blog/how-we-sped-up-notion-in-the-bro...
It would "mostly work" offline before, but you could have cases where some blocks in a page aged out of the LRU, or they changed online in a way that invalidated the page but new content wasn't downloaded. When that happens we show a "go online to view" error instead of risking you viewing/editing a known-incorrect local snapshot of the page.
With "available offline", we now proactively download and keep up-to-date the content you want available offline. It will either work, or show an explicit error if things go wrong in the sync process. No more guesswork.
My notes, which can include things like my location, appointments, plans, things I don't want a random company viewing never leave my device, which is the only way you can be sure they are not being viewed without an oss app.
https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology...
IA writer got this right, but it's too local and doesn't have colab or better online sync features. Shameless plug – I'm building https://kraa.io/about that's trying to be a writing app with a minimal, yet feature-rich, UI. (better offline and local-files functionality planned)
https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/obsidian-focus-mode
This is what differentiates Obsidian from many other note taking apps. Anyone who has an itch can build a plugin and customize it.
Unlike a venture-funded SaaS application there's no meaningful commercial incentive or issue with building something that will eventually get sherlock'd b the application vendor in the future.
Apparently in contrast to many of you, I think Notion is a better product for what I want, which is collaborative notes++. Personal info repo, shared project pages with people, and I straddle work and personal life using it everywhere. Tinkering with the backend is not a goal of mine, but I wonder if that's what people like about Obsidian.
"Let's get you to bed, grandma..."
Personally, I don't really like Notion very much. Not silently losing data is a low bar to clear for an application that edits rich text. Notion didn't clear it.
I had to leave Notion far too many years ago and life is elsewhere.