Notion vs Obsidian

March 12, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
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Notion
All-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. Allows real-time collaboration with comments and mentions for teams.
28
Obsidian
Obsidian is a personal knowledge base and note-taking software application that operates on Markdown files. It allows users to make internal links for notes and then to visualize the connections as a graph. It is designed to help users organize and structure their thoughts and knowledge in a flexible, non-linear way. Enables bi-directional linking for easy navigation between notes.

Notion and Obsidian, it turns out, are rather like two distant cousins who meet at a family reunion and realize they’ve been using the same bizarrely complicated systems to organize their thoughts. Both, for instance, allow you to take notes and link them together like some sort of intergalactic map of your mind. They even both speak the curious tongue of markdown, as though they were engaged in some sort of cosmic code that only those in the know can decipher. They also run on every major device you can think of, which is a bit like ensuring the Hitchhiker’s Guide works on everything from a spaceship console to your favorite pocket-sized interdimensional device.

Now, Notion, in all its glory, has been around since 2013, hailing from the United States like a well-meaning but slightly overzealous assistant. It’s a bit like a Swiss Army knife—one minute you’re setting up a to-do list, the next, you’re building a complicated wiki for your entire team. It throws an almost unreasonable number of features at you, all bundled in a sleek interface that’s equal parts pretty and perplexing. Collaboration? Absolutely. Visual layout options? You’ll be drowning in them. It’s not so much a tool as it is a whole workspace that’ll attempt to organize your life, whether you like it or not.

On the other hand, Obsidian, which made its appearance only in 2020, hails from Canada and has a more introspective nature. If Notion is the high-energy, slightly manic cousin trying to organize your life for you, Obsidian is the quiet one, scribbling in a corner, gathering information for a personal, intellectual adventure. It’s all about linking your notes in a way that only you can truly understand, letting you keep control of your data like some sort of note-taking deity. Forget fancy visual layouts—Obsidian’s approach is all about plain text files, local storage and the power of connections you create between your notes, like some elaborate but satisfying web of knowledge.

See also: Top 10 Note Taking apps
Author: Adam Levine
Adam is an expert in project management, collaboration and productivity technologies, team management, and motivation. With an extensive background working at prestigious companies such as Microsoft and Accenture, Adam's in-depth knowledge and experience in the field make him a sought-after professional. Currently, he has ventured into entrepreneurship, owning a thriving consulting and training agency where he imparts invaluable insights and practical strategies to individuals and organizations, empowering them to achieve their goals and maximize their potential. You can contact Adam via email [email protected]