Obsidian Versus Notion for Personal Knowledge Management

Obsidian often gets compared to Notion, however there are some major differences between the two software applications. While both are capable of maintaining a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system, and doing it quite well, they differ in some fundamental areas and approach.

Differences in Approach

Notion is designed around the concepts of blocks, pages, and databases. Any page can additionally have sub-pages under it, in a hierarchical manner. By contrast, Obsidian does not support databases (more on this later), but rather an Obsidian “vault” is a folder on your computer which is filled with markdown files, which are simply text files with simple formatting tags. There is no concept of embedding pages within pages or pages within databases within Obsidian, since it simply reads flat markdown files and renders them on the screen.

Differences in Speed

Obsidian stores files locally on your computer, and since the files it reads are simply text files, Obsidian runs extremely fast, even in vaults with 10,000+ notes. Instead, Notion hosts all of its files in the cloud, which can lead to some major slowdowns, especially as the size of a given workspace grows. Ultimately, this is the biggest factor that led to me choosing Obsidian over Notion, was that as my PKM grew in size I was unable to quickly and easily navigate through it in Notion.

Differences in Pricing Models

Notion has a somewhat generous free-tier available, after which a subscription model kicks in. Obsidian is 100% free for personal use. Obsidian offers premium functionality which is offered by subscription: Sync, which will sync notes across multiple devices seamlessly, and Publish, which offers one-click web-publishing functionality integrated directly in the Obsidian app, using your own custom domain, if desired.

Extensibility

This is one area where Obsidian is a clear winner. Whereas Notion offers no extensions or plugins beyond its (admittedly very extensive) API and subsequent native integrations, Obsidian offers whole community of free and open-source plugins which have been developed for use with it. Currently over 2,700 plugins are available to install, extending Obsidian’s functionality and customizing it to your particular use case. You can integrate tools, like Excalidraw drawings, mermaid diagrams, PlantUML and many other diagramming tools. You can have your Readwise highlights automatically sync to your Obsidian vault. You can even install plugins to manage free multi-platform sync functionality and web publishing without having to pay for Obsidian’s premium services.

Overall

I recommend Obsidian for note-taking or PKM if you are the type of person that likes to have a customized environment tailored to your specific needs, isn’t afraid to roll up your sleeves a bit, and play around with setting up your workspace. If you know what you’re building is going to be database-heavy and want to have something that works quite well out of the box, then Notion might be for you.

Making Obsidian Work More like Notion

You can recreate some of the database type functionality in Notion through the use of the Bases core plugin. This plugin allows you to create dynamic database-like views of the properties (i.e., metadata) of your notes.