Obsidian vs Notion: which one fits your notes in 2026

Obsidian vs Notion comes down to one question: does anyone else edit your notes? If nobody does, pick Obsidian. If someone does, pick Notion.

Obsidian is a notes app for one person. Each note is a Markdown text file in a folder on your device, the app is free for any use with no account, and it runs with no signal at all. Notion is a shared workspace that lives in the cloud. Two people can type on the same page at once, and it costs nothing until a shared workspace outgrows the free plan's block limit.

Find your row:

Every fact and price here comes from Obsidian's and Notion's own sites and help centres, read on 29 October 2026. This comparison is built from their documentation, not from weeks of hands-on testing, and there are no star ratings. Prices are list prices in US dollars as of October 2026, before tax.

Each app got the same seven questions:

1. What does one person pay, and what changes when a second person joins?
2. Where do the notes live, and do they open on a plane?
3. Does it run on what you carry: an iPhone or Android phone, a Mac, Windows or Linux laptop?
4. How long until you're writing instead of setting things up?
5. Can two people edit the same page at once?
6. Is there AI, and what does it cost?
7. If you leave in three years, what do you take with you?

Obsidian saves each note as a Markdown file in a folder it calls a vault. You link one note to another by typing two square brackets, and each note lists every other note that points to it. Built-in plugins add a daily note named after today's date, a canvas for laying notes out side by side, and Bases, which shows your notes as a table, a list, cards or pins on a map.

It's free for any purpose, work included, and you download it without an account, per Obsidian's licence page. Every paid part is optional: Sync from US$4 a month billed yearly, Publish at US$8 a site a month billed yearly, and a commercial licence at US$50 a user a year that funds development and lists your organisation as a supporter.

Pick it if you want notes that stay on your own device, open without a signal and read fine in any text editor. Skip it if you want a finished layout on day one, or a page your family edits at the same time as you.

Notion is a cloud workspace made of pages and databases. A page holds text and to-do checkboxes, plus images and tables. A database is a table of pages with properties you sort and filter, such as a status or a due date, and it handles subtasks too. When two people open the same page, each sees the other's avatar move beside the block they're working on.

Notion's pricing page calls its Free plan the one "for individuals": used alone, it takes as many pages and blocks as you like. Add members and a free workspace hits a block limit, after which you can still read and edit but can't add. Plus is US$10 a seat a month and Business US$20, both billed yearly, and Notion says paying yearly saves up to 20%. Students and teachers with a school email get Plus free for one member.

Pick it if you share plans with other people, or you'd rather start from a template than design a system. Skip it if you want your notes on your own device first, or you don't want an account standing between you and a shopping list.

Read the offline row first if you travel or commute underground. Obsidian never needs a signal, because the files sit on the device. Notion makes you choose: on Free you pick the pages to download, and on the paid plans your recent and favourite pages download on their own.

Then read the account row. Opening Obsidian for the first time drops you into a blank vault with nothing to sign. Notion asks you to sign up first, and its site keeps a gallery of templates to start from. Neither one is wrong. Obsidian's blank page suits someone who likes to build, and Notion's template suits someone who'd rather fill one in.

List prices for 12 months, for one person and for three people working together:

For one person, the cheapest full setup is Obsidian plus a cloud drive you already pay for. Obsidian's sync guide walks through iCloud, OneDrive and Google Drive, plus Git and an app called Syncthing. The same guide warns that iCloud Drive on Windows can duplicate or corrupt files, so a Windows laptop with an iPhone is where Sync's US$48 a year earns its place.

For three people editing together, Obsidian Sync Standard costs US$216 a year less than Notion Plus. The saving buys you a slower kind of sharing. In a shared vault, everyone's edits merge when they sync, and nobody sees anyone else typing.

Two discounts change the sums. Obsidian's pricing page takes 40% off Sync and Publish for students, teachers and people at nonprofits, and Notion gives Plus free to one student or teacher. Refunds differ as well: Obsidian refunds Sync and Publish within 7 days, while Notion refunds within three days of a monthly sign-up and 30 days of a yearly one.

Obsidian keeps a vault as a folder on your own disk. Obsidian's storage page says the notes are plain text, so another editor can open and change them, and Obsidian picks up the change. Its pricing page adds that your data stays on your device where Obsidian can't reach it, and that the apps collect no telemetry. Turn on Sync and the notes are encrypted end to end with AES-256, so Obsidian's staff can't read them either.

Notion keeps your workspace in its cloud, behind your login. That's what makes live sharing work, and it's why offline use is a list of pages rather than everything. For Notion AI, Notion says it won't train its models on your data unless you opt in, and that it passes data to its AI providers only to run the features you use.

Pick by the bad day you can picture. No signal on a long flight? Obsidian wins outright. A dropped laptop goes the other way: Notion's pages were never only on the laptop, and an Obsidian vault is safe only if you set up Sync or a cloud drive. And if the worry is an app changing its prices in five years, Obsidian's notes are still text files in a folder.

Obsidian is built around links. Type two square brackets and a name, and the note links to it. If that note doesn't exist yet, the link shows in a muted colour until you click it and the note is made. Open any note and the backlinks panel lists every note that mentions it, so a note on one author collects every book of theirs you've written up. The local graph draws those links as dots and lines.

Its daily note is the plainest way to start a habit log. It opens a note named after today's date, built from a template if you set one, so the same three lines (hours slept, steps, one thing you got done) wait for you each morning. If the log is meant to stick, how to build a habit covers making the first two minutes easy, and a weekly reflection template gives the Friday read-back a shape.

Notion is built around databases. A reading list becomes a table with a status, a rating and a date finished, and you filter it down to what's still unread. Type @ and a page name to link a page, or @ and a date to drop a date stamp into the text. Notion Calendar comes with the Free plan.

Obsidian's answer to databases is Bases. It reads the properties at the top of each note and lays them out as a table, a list, cards or a map, and the data stays inside your notes. It handles a reading list or a habit tracker well. It has fewer moving parts than a Notion database, and you add the properties to each note yourself.

Notion wins here outright. Two flatmates open the bills page, see each other's avatars, and edit the same table at the same time. Comments sit beside the line they refer to, and an @-mention lands in that person's inbox. Paid plans charge per member, and guests are free but see only the pages they're invited to.

Obsidian shares through Sync. According to Obsidian's shared vault guide, every collaborator needs their own Sync subscription, a shared vault takes up to 20 people, and everyone gets the owner's permissions except the right to invite. Live editing on the same file isn't there: you don't see the other person's cursor, their edits appear after a sync, and clashing edits get merged. Version history lets you pull back an older copy.

That rules Obsidian out for a weekend trip four friends plan in one evening. It works for two people writing a long piece where each owns a chapter.

Notion builds AI in. Free and Plus come with a limited number of AI responses for trying it, per Notion's AI help page. Business includes Notion Agent, which drafts pages and fills in databases for you, plus AI meeting notes and 1,500 Standard and 500 Select credits per seat each month. Custom agents are free to try, then US$10 per 1,000 credits.

Obsidian sells no AI. Its pricing page lists Sync, Publish and two optional licences, and that's all. Because a vault is a folder of text files, any program that reads text files can read your notes. Community plugins add features Obsidian doesn't ship. Obsidian's own help warns that they run third-party code, so they stay off until you switch off Restricted Mode, and you update them by hand when you choose to.

If AI is the reason you're choosing, Notion is the shorter path. If you'd rather choose which AI reads your journal, if any, Obsidian leaves that choice with you.

From Notion to Obsidian, use Obsidian's Importer plugin. Obsidian's Notion import guide gives two routes:

• Connect your Notion account with an access token. Databases come across as Bases, with only the main view of each one, and a big workspace takes a while because of Notion's rate limits.
• Import Notion's HTML export as a .zip. Databases don't survive, but you need no token and no internet. Obsidian says to skip Notion's Markdown export here, because it leaves important data out.

From Obsidian to Notion, Notion's import page takes Markdown files, several at once, or a .zip of them. Open a few linked notes after the import and check the links came through.

Leaving Notion for anything else, you can export a page as Markdown, with databases as CSV files and callout blocks as HTML. The whole workspace exports from the desktop app or the web, and Notion warns a big one can take up to 30 hours. Leaving Obsidian takes no export at all, because the vault you'd carry out is already a folder of text files.

You don't have to pick only one. Split them by one rule, who reads it: anything shared lives in Notion, anything private in Obsidian, and your to-dos stay on one list outside both.

To find out which one you'll open, give each app real notes for a weekend:

1. Saturday morning, make an Obsidian vault and move in five real notes, say a reading list, a recipe, Monday's to-dos, a trip idea and one journal entry.
2. Link three of them.
3. Sign up for Notion and put the same five notes in, then turn the reading list into a database with a status column.
4. Share the trip page with a friend.
5. On Sunday, switch your phone to airplane mode and try to add a note in each app, because that's the moment you'll find out which one you can trust on a train.
6. Search each app for a word from inside a note.

Keep the one you opened without thinking. Every bit of friction you feel this weekend turns into a skipped note later.

• Obsidian, Pricing, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian, License overview, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian, Obsidian Sync, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Sync your notes across devices, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Collaborate on a shared vault, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, How Obsidian stores data, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Link notes, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Daily notes, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Bases, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Community plugins, read 29 October 2026
• Obsidian Help, Import from Notion, read 29 October 2026
• Notion, Pricing, read 29 October 2026
• Notion, Desktop and mobile apps, read 29 October 2026
• Notion Help, Sharing and permissions, read 29 October 2026
• Notion Help, Comments, mentions and reminders, read 29 October 2026
• Notion Help, Notion AI FAQs, read 29 October 2026
• Notion Help, Import data into Notion, read 29 October 2026
• Notion Help, Export your content, read 29 October 2026