What is Obsidian used for?

Obsidian is a free, flexible note-taking app for private notes, with plugins, linked notes and optional paid Sync and Publish services. It is a good fit for personal knowledge management, research and study notes, and writers organizing long-form projects.

Yes. Obsidian has a free plan, and paid plans start at $5 per seat per month.

Is Obsidian open source?

No. Obsidian is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Obsidian include Octo, SiYuan and Logseq.

What are some alternatives to Obsidian?

Obsidian competes with Notion, Roam Research and Bear. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Obsidian alternatives.

Obsidian: features, pricing and alternatives

About Obsidian

Obsidian is a proprietary note-taking and knowledge management app that the vendor describes as free and flexible, built for private thoughts. Notes are written in Markdown and can be linked together so ideas connect, a style often used for evergreen notes and personal knowledge bases, and a graph view shows how notes relate.

The product has a large plugin ecosystem and an active community, and it supports a Web Clipper for saving web pages. Apps are available for Windows and other platforms. Optional paid services include Sync, for keeping notes updated across devices, and Publish, for putting notes online. An Enterprise option is also listed, along with a roadmap, changelog and community resources.

Obsidian is distributed as software that runs on your own devices and stores notes locally, so it is not a hosted notes service in the usual sense. It suits writers, researchers, students and developers who want notes in files they control.

Key features

Markdown notes linked together
Graph view of note relationships
Plugins and community extensions
Web Clipper for saving pages
Optional Sync service
Optional Publish service
Apps for several platforms

Good fit for

→Personal knowledge management
→Research and study notes
→Writers organizing long-form projects

Tags: note-taking; markdown; knowledge-management; plugins; local-first; second-brain

Obsidian: questions and answers

What is Obsidian used for?: Obsidian is a free, flexible note-taking app for private notes, with plugins, linked notes and optional paid Sync and Publish services. It is a good fit for personal knowledge management, research and study notes, and writers organizing long-form projects.
Is Obsidian free?: Yes. Obsidian has a free plan, and paid plans start at $5 per seat per month.
Is Obsidian open source?: No. Obsidian is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Obsidian include Octo, SiYuan and Logseq.
What are some alternatives to Obsidian?: Obsidian competes with Notion, Roam Research and Bear. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Obsidian alternatives.