Is Obsidian better than Evernote?

For notes you write and link yourself, yes: Obsidian is free with no note limit and keeps every note as a file on your device. For scans and web clips, Evernote is better, because its search reads the words inside photos and PDFs.

Yes. The app costs nothing and needs no sign-up, and a commercial licence is optional even at work. Sync is an extra at US$4 a month billed yearly, and Publish is US$8 a month billed yearly.

Can Obsidian import Evernote notes?

Yes. Export each notebook as an ENEX file from Evernote's Mac or Windows app, then open Obsidian's free Importer plugin and choose Evernote (.enex). Rename child tags and notebook stack files first if you want that structure kept.

Can I move my notes from Obsidian to Evernote?

Yes, through Evernote's desktop app. Gather your Markdown files in one folder, then open Settings, choose Import and select them. Links and backlinks between your notes stay behind.

Which works better offline, Obsidian or Evernote?

Obsidian, since every note is a file on your own device. Evernote's Mac and Windows apps keep all synced notes offline if you sign in first. Its phone apps keep the full text only of notes made on that phone, opened recently or set for offline use.

Obsidian vs Evernote (2026): which fits, what a year costs

Q: Is Evernote free?

Yes, with tight limits. Evernote Free allows 50 notes, one notebook and one connected device. Starter costs US$99 a year for 1,000 notes and three devices.

The short answer

Obsidian vs Evernote turns on what goes into your notes. If it's mostly your own writing, with ideas that build on each other over the years, pick Obsidian, which is free with no note limit and keeps every note as a plain text file in a folder you control. Notes that start as paper and web pages point to Evernote, because its search reads the words inside scans and photos and its clipper saves pages from every major browser. The catch is Evernote Free, which stops at 50 notes on one device, so a real library there costs US$99 a year or more.

Find your row:

If you	Pick	Why
Write notes that link to each other	Obsidian	Backlinks and a graph
Want hundreds of notes for free	Obsidian	No note limit on the app
Use Linux, or a phone and two computers	Obsidian	Five platforms, no device cap
Photograph receipts and whiteboards	Evernote	Search reads words in scans
Clip articles and PDFs every day	Evernote	Clipper keeps pages and PDFs
Share a note with someone who has no account	Evernote	A link opens it in a browser

How we compared them

Every fact and price here comes from Obsidian's and Evernote's own pricing pages and help centres, read on 30 October 2026. We built this comparison from their documentation rather than months of daily use, so there are no star ratings in it. Evernote charges different amounts in other countries, so open its plans page from where you live before you pay.

Both apps faced the same six questions:

What does a year cost, and where does free run out?
Which devices does it run on, and how many at once?
Where do the notes sit, and who can read them?
Does it find a note by link, tag or a word in a scan?
Can you hand a note to someone else?
If you leave, what comes with you?

Obsidian: best for linked notes you keep as files

Obsidian saves each note as a Markdown text file inside a vault, and a vault is an ordinary folder on your computer or phone. Obsidian's storage help says you can edit those files in any other text editor and the app catches the change. The vault syncs through Obsidian Sync, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive or Git.

Linking is the point of it. Type two square brackets and the start of a note's name, then press Enter to make the link. Each note's Backlinks tab lists the notes pointing at it. The Obsidian Web Clipper is a free extension for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge and other browsers. It saves a web page as a file in your vault, with templates for recipes, articles and book or film notes.

Obsidian's pricing page calls the app free without limits, with no sign-up, and a commercial licence is optional even if you use Obsidian at work. You pay only for extras: Sync costs US$4 a month billed yearly or US$5 billed monthly, and Publish, which turns a set of notes into a website, costs US$8 a month billed yearly. The download page has apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.

Pick it if you write more than you collect: study notes, a journal, a family history, the world of a novel. Skip it if you want to open an app and type with nothing to decide first, or most of your notes are photos of paper. Obsidian's search reads only the text in notes and canvases. If Notion is your other option, our Obsidian vs Notion guide covers that pair.

Evernote: best for scans, web clips and search

Evernote keeps your notes on its servers and syncs them to apps for iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and the web. You file notes into notebooks and label them with tags. Tasks inside a note carry dates and reminders and gather in a Tasks view, and Evernote has its own calendar too.

Capture is where it earns its fee. The Web Clipper saves articles, whole pages, PDFs and marked-up screenshots; Evernote says it works in all major browsers. The phone app's document scanner turns receipts, manuals, ID cards and handwritten pages into notes. On paid plans, search finds text inside PDFs, Office files, images and scanned documents. It also finds words in handwriting and in photos of whiteboards.

The free plan is small. Evernote's plans page caps Free at 50 notes, one notebook and one connected device. Starter costs US$99 a year for 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks and three devices. Advanced costs US$249.99 a year and drops the caps on notes, notebooks and devices. Paid plans open with a 7-day free trial, and Evernote won't charge your card if you cancel before it ends.

Pick it if your notes begin as paper or web pages and you'd rather search than file. Skip it if you want to write a lot without paying: at two notes a day, the 50-note cap fills in under a month. Torn between Evernote and Notion instead? See how their free plans compare in Notion vs Evernote.

Side by side

	Obsidian	Evernote
Free plan	Full app, no note limit	50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device
Paid, one person	Sync from US$48 a year	US$99 or US$249.99 a year
Apps	Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android	iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows, web
Where notes live	Markdown files in a folder on your own device	On Evernote's servers, synced down to each app
Editor	Markdown	Toolbar
Links	[[ ]] links, backlinks, graph	Note links
Search reaches	Text in notes and canvases	Words in PDFs, scans and handwritten pages
Sharing	A shared vault, with Sync for each person	Email invite or a public link
Leaving	Files are already yours	ENEX or HTML export, desktop only

Start with the free plan row. On Evernote Free, your phone and your laptop can't both stay signed in: Free allows one device at a time and Starter three. Evernote Web counts as one of them.

What a year costs

Here's what one person pays over 12 months, at US list prices:

Setup	Billed yearly	Billed monthly
Obsidian with iCloud or Dropbox	US$0	US$0
Evernote Free, up to 50 notes	US$0	US$0
Obsidian Sync	US$48	US$60
Evernote Starter	US$99	US$179.88
Advanced, Evernote's top personal plan	US$249.99	US$299.88

Obsidian's sync guide says iCloud syncs a vault between an iPhone and a Mac. It also warns that iCloud Drive on Windows can duplicate or corrupt files. If you use Windows and an iPhone, pay the US$48 for Sync.

For Sync's standard plan, Obsidian's plans page lists one synced vault, 1 GB of storage, files up to 5 MB and a month of version history, on as many devices as you like. Sync Plus takes files up to 200 MB and keeps 12 months of history, which a vault of large scanned PDFs needs.

At five notes a week, Evernote Starter's 1,000-note cap lasts almost four years.

Evernote's plans page gives eligible college students 40% off a year of Advanced. Obsidian's pricing page takes 40% off Sync and Publish for students, faculty and nonprofit employees. It refunds either one in full within 7 days of purchase. Obsidian sells no AI add-on there, while Evernote's plans page lists an AI Assistant for your notes, Semantic Search and AI Transcribe for meetings.

Writing and formatting

Evernote feels like a word processor. You type, choose a heading from the toolbar and drop in a table or a sketch, and PDFs and audio recordings attach to the note as well. It takes some Markdown shortcuts too: type # and a space for a heading, or a dash for a list.

Obsidian is Markdown all the way down. A heading is a line that starts with #, a link is a name in double square brackets, and that text is exactly what sits in the file. Learn a dozen symbols over a weekend and you're set. In return, every note opens in any text editor, with or without Obsidian. If symbols put you off, start with Evernote.

Links, tags and search

Obsidian is built around links. Type [ and pick a note, and the link exists. You can even [link to a note you haven't written yet. The link shows in a muted colour, and clicking it creates the note. The Backlinks tab splits into linked mentions and unlinked mentions, the second being notes that use a note's name without linking it yet. In the graph view, a note's circle grows as more notes point at it, so the ideas you come back to stand out.

Evernote sorts by container. A note lives in one notebook and notebooks group into stacks. Tags cut across both, with 20 allowed on Free and 100 on Starter. Evernote's note links guide adds a link to another note from the + menu, or with Cmd+Opt+K on a Mac. From there, backlinks jump you back and forth between linked notes. That's handy for a contents page, but links aren't the centre of the app the way they are in Obsidian.

Search splits the other way. Obsidian's search help says it looks only at the contents of notes and canvases, so a word printed on a scanned receipt stays invisible to it, while Evernote finds it.

Take a car's service history. Evernote reads each photographed garage invoice, so next spring a search for "brake pads" finds March's. In Obsidian you'd type a note per service and link each to a Car note, whose backlinks become the history, typed word by word.

Who holds your notes

Obsidian's notes never have to leave your device. Its pricing page says the apps need no personal information, can't reach your notes and collect no telemetry. Turn on Sync and the notes are encrypted end to end with AES-256 before they travel.

Evernote's notes live on Evernote's servers and sync down to your devices. You can lock a passage inside a note with a passphrase, but not a whole note or notebook. Evernote's encryption help says it uses 128-bit AES and never receives the passphrase, so a forgotten one can't be recovered.

Evernote can also change the rules under you: its limits article says the terms allow changes without advance notice, as happened with the device limit. Go over a limit and nothing is deleted: you can still view, edit, share and export every note. You just can't add new ones until you're back under it.

Offline, Obsidian wins by design, since the files sit on your disk. Evernote's offline help says the Mac and Windows apps keep every synced note in a local database, as long as you're signed in before the connection drops. On a phone it keeps only titles, tags and a short excerpt. You get the full note only if you made it on that phone, opened it recently or set it up for offline use.

Evernote is the easier one to share from. Evernote's sharing help gives three levels: invite people by email to view or edit, let anyone with the link view, or let anyone with the link edit. Link visitors work in a light editor that needs no Evernote account. A packing list for a family holiday fits this well: send the link, and your parents add to it from a browser.

Obsidian shares a whole vault, not a single note. Its shared vault guide says everyone needs their own Sync subscription and a vault holds up to 20 people. There's no live editing on the same file either: other people's changes appear after a sync, and clashing edits get merged. To show notes to the public instead, Publish puts them on a website.

Moving between Evernote and Obsidian

Moving your notes into Obsidian

Obsidian's Evernote import guide uses its free Importer plugin, which turns Evernote's export files into Markdown:

In Evernote's Mac or Windows app, export each notebook as an ENEX file. Evernote's export help says exports don't run on Evernote Web and take up to 100 notes at a time or a whole notebook, on Free as well as paid plans.
In Obsidian, open Settings, go to Community plugins, then install and switch on Importer.
Open Importer, choose Evernote (.enex) as the file format and pick your export file.
Choose Import, check the preview of your notes, then choose Import again.

Two details catch people out. Evernote's export drops the tag hierarchy, so rename a child tag as Parent/Child in Evernote first if you want it kept. And since each export holds one notebook, stacks disappear. Rename the file Stack@@@Notebook and Importer rebuilds the stack as folders. Open a dozen imported notes and check their pictures and tags before you cancel anything.

Going back to Evernote

There's no export step, because your vault is already Markdown files. Evernote's switching page says to gather the Markdown files you want in one folder. Then open Settings in the Evernote desktop app, choose Import and select them. It doesn't work from a phone. Every file arrives as a note you can edit. Links and backlinks between your notes stay behind, so rebuild the ones that matter with note links or tags.

Already in Obsidian? Your vault is a folder of Markdown files. Zip it and ActivityTracker's notes take the .zip in one go. Folders turn into notebooks and tags come across, while links between notes become real links.

See how notes work

Try both for one week

You don't have to pick only one: scan and clip into Evernote, write in Obsidian, and keep your to-dos on one list outside both.

Seven days of real notes tell you more than any feature table:

Monday: put five things in each app. A typed thought, a photo of a paper letter, a saved article, a recipe and a short to-do list.
Tuesday: search each app for a word that appears only in the photographed letter.
Wednesday: link the recipe in Obsidian to a note for its main ingredient, open that note's backlinks to find the recipe listed there, and tag the same recipe in Evernote.
Thursday: open both on your phone and then on your laptop, and see what Evernote Free asks of the second device.
Friday: switch on airplane mode and add a line in each app.
Sunday: tally how many notes you wrote. Times 52, that's your year, so compare it with Evernote's caps of 50 and 1,000.

Then keep the app your hand went to. A weekly reflection template gives that Sunday look back a shape.

Made-up example: Marcus has saved recipes in Evernote since 2016. He has 1,400 notes in nine notebooks, which puts him on Advanced at US$249.99 a year.

In October he exports each notebook from the Mac app as an ENEX file. He renames the two in his Baking stack Baking@@@Bread and Baking@@@Cakes, so Importer rebuilds the stack as folders in Obsidian.

The import takes one evening, and he opens 15 recipes to check the photos and tags before he starts linking. Every bread that needs sourdough starter links to a Starter note, whose backlinks now list 23 loaves.

He keeps the vault in iCloud between his iPhone and MacBook, so Obsidian costs him nothing, and drops Evernote to Free, where the old notes stay open and exportable.