Is Obsidian better than Apple Notes?

For notes that link to each other and should last, yes. Obsidian shows backlinks and keeps every note as a text file you own, on Windows and Android as well as Apple devices. For quick notes and shared lists on an iPhone and a Mac, Apple Notes is better.

Yes. Obsidian is free for any use, work included, with no sign-up required. Obsidian Sync is optional and costs US$4 a month billed yearly.

Does Obsidian work with iCloud?

Yes, between Apple devices. Keep the vault in the Obsidian folder of iCloud Drive and it syncs your Apple devices for no extra cost. Obsidian warns that iCloud Drive on Windows can duplicate or corrupt files.

Can I move my Apple Notes to Obsidian?

Yes, on a Mac. Obsidian's Importer plugin converts Apple Notes to Markdown, scans and PDFs included. It doesn't run on iPhone yet, and it skips locked notes.

Can Apple Notes import Markdown files?

Yes, on a Mac. File > Import Markdown takes single files or a whole folder and can keep the folder structure. Apple Notes also exports a note as a Markdown file or a PDF.

Can I use Obsidian and Apple Notes together?

Yes. Use Apple Notes for quick capture and shared lists, and Obsidian for notes you'll link and keep for years.

Obsidian vs Apple Notes (2026): which fits, what it costs

The short answer

Obsidian vs Apple Notes is settled by two questions. Is every device you use made by Apple? And do your notes need to link to each other? Apple devices and short notes: Apple Notes. A Windows laptop or an Android phone in the mix, or notes that build on each other over months: Obsidian.

Apple Notes comes with every Apple device and syncs through iCloud. It shines at quick jobs, like scanning a receipt or keeping a shopping list your partner ticks off from another phone. Obsidian is a free app that saves each note as a Markdown text file in a folder on your own device. It links notes in both directions and has apps for five platforms. Expect an evening of choices before it feels like yours.

Find your row:

If you	Pick	Why
Jot things on your iPhone all day	Apple Notes	Already on the phone
Share a grocery list or a trip plan	Apple Notes	Live editing through iCloud
Scan receipts and forms	Apple Notes	Scanner inside the note
Use Windows, Linux or Android too	Obsidian	Apps for all of them
Write notes that build on each other	Obsidian	Backlinks and a graph
Want notes that outlast the app	Obsidian	Text files in your folder

How we compared them

We took every fact and price from Apple's and Obsidian's own help and pricing pages on 30 October 2026. This comparison is built from their documentation, not from weeks of hands-on testing, and there are no star ratings. Prices are US list prices before tax.

Each app got the same six questions:

What does a year cost for one person?
Which phones and computers does it run on?
Where do the notes live, and who else can read them?
Does it link notes, and can search find a word inside a photo?
Can two people edit the same note at once?
If you leave, what comes with you?

Apple Notes: best for quick notes on Apple devices

Apple Notes is the notes app Apple puts on every iPhone, iPad and Mac. Notes kept in iCloud appear on each device signed in to your Apple Account, and in a web browser at iCloud.com. Inside a note you can scan a document with the camera or draw with your finger. You can also record audio and watch the transcript appear as you talk. Type # and a word to tag a note, and Smart Folders gather notes by tag or by the date you made or edited them.

The app costs nothing. Your notes live in iCloud storage, and every account gets 5 GB free. Per Apple's iCloud+ plans page, 50 GB costs 99 US cents a month in the US (US$11.88 a year), and the same space holds your photos and backups.

Search is where it pulls ahead. Apple's search guide says a search reaches into scanned documents and handwriting. It even reads what a picture shows, so typing "bike" finds the photo of a bike. If you're weighing more iPhone apps than these two, see the best note taking app for iPhone.

Pick it if you only use Apple devices and most of what you write is short, like a list or this week's ideas. Skip it if part of your day runs on Windows or Android, where Apple offers iCloud.com in a browser rather than the app, or you want each note to show what points back at it.

Obsidian: best for linked notes on any device

Obsidian keeps your notes in a vault, which is an ordinary folder on your disk with a Markdown file for every note. Type two square brackets and the name of a note to link it. Open that note, and its backlinks tab lists every note that links in. The graph view draws each note as a circle and each link as a line, and a circle grows as more notes point at it. The daily note opens a page named after today's date, which makes a journal or a log one click away.

Obsidian's pricing page calls it free without limits, with no sign-up required, and its licence page says any use counts, work included. You only pay if you want extras: Sync is US$4 a month billed yearly or US$5 billed monthly, and Sync Plus is US$8 or US$10. Its download page has apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, plus iOS and Android.

Pick it if your notes grow into something you'll keep for years, like a thesis or a family recipe book, or you carry an iPhone and a Windows laptop. Skip it if you want to open an app and type with nothing to decide first, or you scan and sketch in your notes every day, which Apple Notes builds into the note itself.

Side by side

	Apple Notes	Obsidian
Price	Free	Free for any use
Account	Apple Account for iCloud	Only to buy Sync or Publish
Apps	iPhone, iPad, Mac, plus iCloud.com	Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android
Where notes live	iCloud, or On My Mac	Markdown files in a folder
Sync	iCloud, 5 GB free	Sync from US$4, or iCloud Drive
Links	Typed with >>, one way	Typed with [[ ]], with backlinks
Search reaches	Text, PDFs, scans, handwriting, photos	Text in notes and canvases
Live co-editing	Yes, over iCloud	No, edits merge on sync
Extras	Scanner, drawing, audio transcripts	Community plugins and themes

Read the apps row first. If you write on a Windows work laptop and an iPhone, it decides things before price comes up.

Then read the search row. Obsidian's search help says it searches only the contents of notes and canvases, so the words on a photographed receipt stay hidden from it, while Apple Notes reads them fine.

What a year costs

List prices for one person over 12 months:

Setup	A year
Apple Notes in iCloud's free 5 GB	US$0
iCloud+ 50 GB for Apple Notes	US$11.88
Obsidian, vault in iCloud Drive	US$0
Obsidian Sync, paid yearly	US$48
Same plan, paid monthly	US$60
Sync Plus, paid yearly	US$96

On Apple devices alone, both apps can cost nothing. Text notes take little room, so the iCloud bill comes from your photos and backups, not your notes. Obsidian's sync guide shows how to keep a vault in the Obsidian folder of iCloud Drive so it syncs between your Apple devices, and it says to keep that folder downloaded so the vault opens fast.

Add a Windows laptop and the sums change. The same guide warns that iCloud Drive on Windows can duplicate or corrupt files. Pay the US$48 a year for Obsidian Sync instead. Its standard plan holds one vault of up to 1 GB, with files up to 5 MB and a month of version history. A vault full of scanned PDFs belongs on Plus, which takes files up to 200 MB and keeps 12 months of history.

If you're a student, faculty member or nonprofit employee, Obsidian's pricing page takes 40% off Sync. Change your mind in the first 7 days and you get a full refund.

Where your notes live, and who can read them

By default, Apple holds the keys to your iCloud notes. Apple's iCloud security overview says the data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with the keys kept in Apple's data centres so Apple can decrypt it for you, say when you sign in on a new phone. Turn on Advanced Data Protection and Notes becomes end-to-end encrypted, with the trade that Apple can't help you back in if you lose access to your account.

A single note can carry a lock too, with your Mac's login password or a custom one. Apple's warning is blunt: forget a custom password and can't use Touch ID, and Apple can't get those notes back.

Obsidian starts from the other end. Your notes sit in a folder on your device, and Obsidian's pricing page says it can't reach them and its apps collect no telemetry. Edit a note in another text editor and Obsidian picks up the change, per its storage help. Sync encrypts the notes end to end with AES-256 before they leave the device.

So picture your bad day. Lose your iPhone, and Apple Notes is back the moment you sign in on the next one, while an Obsidian vault is only safe if it was synced somewhere. Lose interest in the app ten years from now, and Obsidian's notes are still text files you open in anything.

Links, tags and search

In Apple Notes you link one note to another by typing >> and the start of its title. Add a slash and you link to a section of that note. A link named after a note's title updates when the title changes. Apple's link guide stops there: the link runs from one note to the other, and the guide describes no list of the notes pointing back.

That list is the centre of Obsidian. Obsidian's backlinks help splits it into linked mentions, the notes that link to the one you're reading, and unlinked mentions, notes that use its name without a link yet. You can even link to a note before it exists. The link shows in a muted colour, and opening it makes the note.

Take a reading log. In Obsidian, each book gets a note that links to its author, and the author's backlinks tab then lists every book of theirs you've read, with no index to keep up by hand. Apple Notes does it with tags instead. One note per book, a #reading tag on each, and a Smart Folder that collects them. If the log is part of a bigger plan to read more, how to build a habit covers making the first step small enough to stick.

For capture on the move, Apple Notes has the edge. On an iPhone, Scan Text drops the words from a sign or a page straight into the note. Obsidian's answer is the daily note: open today's page and type.

Apple Notes wins this one. Apple's sharing guide gives two ways. Send a copy, which is a snapshot nobody can change, or share a link that lets other iCloud users edit a note or a whole folder in real time. You choose who gets in and whether they can edit. Two rules to know: any note you drop into a shared folder is shared with everyone in it, and a locked note can't be shared for editing.

Obsidian shares through Sync. Its shared vault guide says every collaborator needs their own Sync subscription, a vault takes up to 20 people, and everyone gets the owner's permissions except the right to invite. There's no live editing on the same file. You don't see the other cursor, edits show up after a sync, and clashing edits are merged.

A grocery list two people add to from the shop belongs in Apple Notes.

Moving from Apple Notes to Obsidian, and back

The move into Obsidian runs on a Mac. Obsidian's Apple Notes import guide uses its Importer plugin, and it doesn't run on iPhone yet:

In Obsidian's settings, open Community plugins, install Importer and switch it on.
Open Importer, pick Apple Notes as the file format and choose Import.
Allow Obsidian to read the folder named group.com.apple.notes when your Mac asks.
Check the preview of how your notes will look, change the template if you want, then import.

Importer brings across tables, images, drawings, scans, PDFs and the note links Apple added in iOS 17. It skips locked notes. Take those locks off first, or the notes stay behind in Apple Notes. Scans come out by age, with older ones as uncropped images and scans you edited as PDFs.

Going back is a Mac job too. Apple's import and export guide says File > Import Markdown takes single files or a whole folder, and a "Preserve folder structure on import" option keeps your vault's folders. The notes land in a folder called Imported Notes. Apple Notes also exports any note as a PDF or a Markdown file, and Edit > Copy as Markdown copies part of a note for other apps.

Once you're in Obsidian, community themes change how it looks, and some people pick one that feels closer to Apple Notes. Add plugins one at a time. Obsidian's help warns that community plugins run third-party code, so they stay off until you turn off Restricted Mode.

Leaving Obsidian or Apple Notes? ActivityTracker's notes take a folder of Markdown files or a .zip export. Folders become notebooks, tags come across, and links between notes become real links.

See how notes work

Try both for one week

You don't have to choose only one. A common split is quick capture and shared lists in Apple Notes, and anything you'll build on in Obsidian, with your to-dos kept on one list outside both.

To find out which one you'll open, give each a real week:

Monday, make an Obsidian vault in iCloud Drive and move in five notes you already have.
Link three of them, then open one and read its backlinks.
Tuesday, scan a receipt into Apple Notes and search for a word printed on it.
Wednesday, share one Apple Notes list with someone and add to it from both phones.
Friday, look back and count which app you opened without thinking. A weekly reflection template gives that Friday read-back a shape.

Keep the one your thumb went to. A tool you have to remind yourself to open loses notes.

Made-up example: Lena has six tomato plants on her balcony and a flat move with her partner in December.

In Obsidian she makes a note for each plant. Every evening she logs watering and harvests in the daily note and links the plant she means. By Friday the tomato note's backlinks list all five days she mentioned it.

The move goes in Apple Notes. She shares a packing checklist with her partner, who ticks boxes from the other room, and scans the lease and the movers' quote into one note. Searching "deposit" finds the line on the scanned lease.

She keeps both. iCloud Drive moves the garden vault between her iPhone and MacBook at no charge. The flat notes fit in the free 5 GB, so Apple Notes costs her nothing either.