Obsidian is a note-taking app that keeps your notes as plain Markdown files on your own device. The app is free for everyone, with no sign-up, and that includes work use: the $50-a-year commercial license is now optional. You pay only for add-ons. Sync Standard costs $4 per user a month billed yearly, or $5 monthly, for one vault and 1 GB; Sync Plus costs $8 for ten vaults and 10 GB, with end-to-end encryption and version history. Publish, for putting notes on the web, costs $8 per site a month billed yearly or $10 monthly. Students, faculty and nonprofits get 40% off both.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Oct 3, 2026This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
Your notes in Obsidian are plain text files in a folder on your computer. That one design choice explains most of what follows. The app works offline, nobody else can read your notes unless you share them, and if Obsidian disappeared tomorrow you'd still have every file. It also explains the business model, because Obsidian earns money only from optional services.
Yearly billing selected; checked October 3, 2026.
| Price | What it does | |
|---|---|---|
| The app | Free | Notes, links, graph, Canvas and plugins on every platform |
| Sync Standard | $4 a month yearly, $5 monthly | One vault, 1 GB, files up to 5 MB, a month of history |
| Sync Plus | $8 a month yearly | Ten vaults, 10 GB (up to 100 GB), files up to 200 MB, a year of history |
| Publish | $8 per site a month yearly, $10 monthly | Turns notes into a website |
| Catalyst | $25 once | Early beta access and community badges |
| Commercial | $50 per user a year | Optional support from organizations |
Students, faculty and nonprofit staff get 40% off Sync and Publish. Sync and Publish can be refunded within seven days, no questions asked. Catalyst and Commercial licenses are support payments, not services.
Most people with one vault and mostly text can live on Standard. A gigabyte holds a lot of Markdown. The limits start to bite with images and PDFs, since Standard caps files at 5 MB, and with a month of version history, which is short if you ever need to recover an old draft. Plus raises the file cap to 200 MB, keeps a year of history and supports up to ten vaults.
Sync encrypts your notes end to end with AES-256, so Obsidian can't read them. It also handles shared vaults, where a team edits the same notes and sees changes in real time. That covers light collaboration, though Obsidian is still no replacement for Google Docs when several people write the same page at once.
You don't have to use Sync at all. A vault is just a folder, so iCloud Drive, Dropbox or Git can move it between devices for free. They're more fiddly on phones, and that's the real reason many people end up paying the $4.
Publish turns a set of notes into a website. You can use your own domain, pick a theme and protect pages with a password, and visitors get search and the graph view. Obsidian says the sites are fast and set up for search engines without any configuration. It's a good fit for a digital garden or a set of course notes. A blog that needs comments, newsletters or e-commerce is better off on a proper publishing platform.
The free app is where Obsidian shines. Notes link to each other, and the graph view shows how ideas connect. Canvas gives you an infinite board for diagrams and research. Thousands of community plugins add things like Kanban boards and task systems. The Web Clipper saves pages from your browser straight into a vault.
There's no built-in AI assistant. People who want one add it through community plugins and connect the model they prefer. Since everything lives in local files, you stay in control of what any AI tool gets to see.
Two habits save new users a lot of trouble. First, live with the core features for a few weeks before installing plugins. It's easy to spend more time building a system than writing in it, and every plugin is one more thing that can break after an update. Second, decide where the vault lives on day one. If you plan to pay for Sync later, keep the vault out of iCloud or Dropbox, because running two sync services on the same folder is a common way to end up with duplicate or conflicting files.
Back up the folder like any other important data. Version history in Sync helps, but a plain copy of the vault on another drive costs nothing.
The choice usually comes down to ownership. Notion AI puts databases and an AI assistant in one hosted workspace that a whole team edits together. Obsidian keeps your notes local and lets you build exactly the system you want, which suits individuals who think in links. Our Notion AI vs Obsidian comparison goes into detail. If you mainly want AI to work across your documents, NotebookLM, now called Gemini Notebook, is free and built for exactly that.
Not the app. The app is free on every platform with no sign-up and no feature limits, and since 2025 that also covers work use. The only paid parts are optional: Sync to keep vaults in step across devices, Publish to put notes on the web, and supporter licenses.
Sync Standard costs $4 per user a month billed yearly, or $5 monthly, for one synced vault, 1 GB of storage, files up to 5 MB and a month of version history. Sync Plus costs $8 a month billed yearly for ten vaults, 10 GB, files up to 200 MB and a year of history, with storage upgradable to 100 GB.
Yes, if you sync the files yourself. Because a vault is just a folder of Markdown files, you can keep it in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or a Git repository instead. Obsidian Sync is the easier option, with end-to-end encryption, version history and shared vaults, but it isn't required.
No. Obsidian's pricing page says a commercial license isn't required, though it encourages organizations to buy one at $50 per user a year to support development. Companies can also contact Obsidian for bulk purchases.
Not as a built-in assistant. Obsidian focuses on notes, links and plugins, and people who want AI add it through community plugins that connect their vault to the model of their choice. Because notes are local files, you decide what any AI tool can read.
Anthropic's assistant, built around long-context reasoning and code. Strong at $20; the usage limits are the unpublished part.
Google's assistant, bundled with storage and Workspace access. Plus is $4.99, Pro $19.99 with a 1 million token context, and Ultra from $99.99.
Visual automation with 3,000+ apps, billed in credits: a free plan with 1,000 a month, then $9 to $29 a month billed yearly for 10,000 credits.