Notion vs Obsidian
Both are productivity tools. Here is what separates them.
What Notion is
Notion is a workspace application where documents, databases and calendars are built from the same set of blocks, so written notes and structured records sit in one place rather than in separate tools. Third-party listings describe it as an all-in-one workspace covering note-taking, project management and task organisation, and that modular, block-based structure is what separates it from a straightforward document editor. Beyond writing and storing documents, Notion is used for recurring operational work. The vendor gives automating weekly reporting and responding to security alerts more quickly as examples of what teams route through it. Third-party listings note row-level permissions, which control who can see which records inside a shared database, alongside the collaboration features on shared pages. Notion launched with an API, so the workspace was scriptable from the beginning rather than through an add-on bolted on later. It integrates with Slack, and third-party listings note that content can be synced with connected apps so the same record does not have to be maintained in two systems. The product runs on the web and as mobile apps. Adoption is unusually broad for a tool with this much configuration in it. Notion reports over 100 million users in more than 50 countries. Among large companies, 62% of the Fortune 100 use it, as do over 98% of the Forbes Cloud 100. More than half of Y Combinator companies use it as well, which suggests it tends to be adopted early by small teams rather than rolled out later by an IT function. The user community runs to more than 1.4 million members. The flexibility is both the appeal and the cost. Because a workspace can be shaped almost any way, two teams on the same product can end up with structures that look nothing alike, and the work of deciding that structure falls to whoever sets it up first. Notion is made by Notion Labs Inc, is not open source, and is sold on free and paid tiers.
What Obsidian is
Obsidian is a note-taking app that keeps notes as plain text Markdown files on your own device rather than on a vendor's server. It uses open file formats, so the notes are not locked into the app that made them. The base app is free to use and needs no sign-up, and it is free for personal, commercial and non-profit use alike. A commercial licence at 50 USD per user per year is optional rather than required. A one-off Catalyst supporter licence at 25 USD grants early access to beta builds. Desktop builds cover Windows, Mac and Linux, with the Linux version packaged as AppImage, ARM64 AppImage, Snap, Deb and Flatpak. Mobile versions are distributed through the iOS App Store and Google Play, with a direct Android APK for anyone avoiding the store. A browser clipper extension is published on the Chrome Web Store, the Safari App Store, Firefox Add-ons and Microsoft Edge Add-ons. Canvas is included at no extra cost and gives you a surface for arranging material visually rather than as a list. A single canvas can hold text cards, embedded Markdown notes, images, video, audio, PDFs, web pages and other canvases. Canvas files are saved in the open JSON Canvas format. Two paid services sit on top of the free app. Sync costs 4 USD per user per month billed annually or 5 USD billed monthly, and encrypts vault contents end to end with AES-256. The Standard tier covers one synced vault, 1 GB of total storage, a 5 MB maximum file size and one month of version history. Sync Plus, at 8 USD per user per month billed annually, raises that to ten synced vaults, 10 GB of storage that can be increased up to 100 GB, a 200 MB maximum file size and twelve months of version history. Sync runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android and supports a headless server deployment, and shared vaults let more than one person work inside the same synced vault. Publish turns a vault into a website. It costs 8 USD per site per month billed annually or 10 USD billed monthly, hosts up to 4 GB of content and carries a seven day refund guarantee. Published sites support custom domains, password protection, backlinks, graph view and full text search, and they can be excluded from search engine indexing when the site is meant for a limited audience rather than the open web.
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