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    Obsidian Alternatives

    Obsidian is described as 'A second brain, for you, forever. The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same' and is a very popular Note-taking Tool in the Office & Productivity category. There are more than 50 alternatives to Obsidian for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, Online / Web-based, Linux and iPhone. Most alternatives are Note-taking Tools and Todo List Managers. The best alternative is Joplin. It's not free, so if you're looking for a free alternative, you could try Notion or Standard Notes. Other great apps like Obsidian are Microsoft OneNote (Freemium), Google Keep (Free), Typora (Paid) and Evernote (Freemium).

    This page was last updated Jan 7, 2022
    1. Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.
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      Joplin vs Obsidian opinions
      Most users think Joplin is a great alternative to Obsidian.
      andgregorik Joplin has a fracture of the features of Obsidian which is no wonder since Obsidian aims to become a powerful desktop knowledge base, unlike Joplin. For one thing, Joplin focuses on mobile<->desktop syncing and not on effective internal linking. They're similar at first glance only.
      Negative comment • about 1 year ago

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      yee42069 Joplin is all about hierarchical notes. Obsidian is about graph based organization.
      Negative comment • 6 months ago

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      Joplin doesn't have the same focus as Obsidian. It's more of an Evernote alternative
      Negative comment • 5 months ago

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      sCojQE5 Joplin is taking shots at Evernote, not Obsidian.
      Negative comment • about 1 year ago

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    2. With so many tools, it's hard to keep everyone on the same page. Notion is a new tool that unifies them all. It's like Google Docs, but everything is organized and discoverable by your team. Real collaboration in real-time.
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      Notion vs Obsidian opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Notion is a great alternative to Obsidian.
      passawitkaovilai Because Notion is online only, it can have high latency when pulling databases of pages which Obsidian have no issues with.
      Negative comment • 11 months ago

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    4. Standard Notes is a simple and private notes app. It allows you to write and sync your notes across all your devices, including your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and web browser.
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      Standard Notes vs Obsidian opinions
      pros, cons and recent comments
      hex111 i feel better paying for open source user friendlier projects, wysiwyg is just necessary for people to reasonably shift from the data robbery monopolies.
      Positive comment • 3 months ago

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    5. Microsoft OneNote, part of the Microsoft Office Suite, is a digital notebook application that gives people one place to gather notes and information.
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      Microsoft OneNote vs Obsidian opinions
      pros, cons and recent comments
      s20 This is a weird one, because while the two are very different, OneNote and Obsidian do have very similar goals. If Obsidian doesn't work for you, OneNote offers another way to collect notes and thoughts. I personally can't stand it, and it doesn't have a Linux app, but it's really well made software with a long track record, and it's free. So, yeah - good alternative if you don't mind the privacy issues.
      Positive comment • 29 days ago

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    6. Google Keep is a service provided by Google which integrates note-taking and web surfing.
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      Google Keep vs Obsidian opinions
      pros, cons and recent comments
      SimplyTolex Not similar. Google keep is like sticky notes + not private and not secure. Obsidian is about internal links and completely offline.
      Negative comment • 8 months ago

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      Light weight, clean, minimalistic and easy to use. Dead simple
      Positive comment • 4 months ago

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      s20 Although it's decent for what it is if you don't mind Google stealing your online soul, of course), Google Keep isn't remotely an Obsidian replacement. Honestly, it's just digital post-it notes, and Obsidian is so much more than that. This is a bad alternative.
      Negative comment • 29 days ago

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    8. Typora will give you a seamless experience as both a reader and a writer. It removes the preview window, mode switcher, syntax symbols of markdown source code, and all other unnecessary distractions.
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      Typora vs Obsidian opinions
      Most users think Typora is a great alternative to Obsidian.
      it complements Obsidian, but not really a replacement.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

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      GeorgeRey not really an alternative to Obsidian. More like a complement.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

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      It's a good alternative because it has Hyperlinking (internal/external), that means we can do backlinks (not automatic though) and it supports Zettelkasten method.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

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      s20 Typora is an excellent tool, and a beautiful one at that, but it's absolutely not an Obsidian alternative. It just doesn't do the same job at all. If you want an outstanding Markdown editor/reader, Typora is for you. But a knowledge base it ain't.
      Comment • 29 days ago

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    9. Evernote

      • Freemium • Proprietary
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Online
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Blackberry
      • Windows S
      • Android Tablet
      • Windows Phone
      • iPad
      • Apple Watch
      • Android Wear
      • Kindle Fire
      • Pebble
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      Evernote is a cross-platform, freemium app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving.
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      Evernote vs Obsidian opinions
      Some users think Evernote is a great alternative to Obsidian, some don't.
      riveravaldez Obsidian claims to keep your data as .md plain files, locally.
      Negative comment • about 1 year ago

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      ChrisWayg Evernote has the best web-clipper by far in comparison to any other apps I have used. Formatting can be a mess, as it is a proprietary format and not Markdown. Offline use has gotten worse than a few years ago. The apps have become slower, bloated and overloaded with features. Still using it due to lots of legacy data and the web-clipper, but currently I prefer more lightweight apps like Obsidian and Bear where my data is available in form of Markdown files.
      Comment • 6 months ago

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      s20 Don't get me wrong, Evernote is a knowledge base, but it's approach is so wildly different that it's hard to think of it as an alternative to Obsidian. Still, it's functional an had some pretty great features, so if Obsidian doesn't work for you, maybe this will? More comparable to OneNote, but it does the job.
      Positive comment • 29 days ago

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    10. Zettlr is a supercharged markdown editor that combines many writing editor features and collect them in one application. It aims at speeding up your workflow and help you write without any interruptions.
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      Zettlr vs Obsidian opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Zettlr is a great alternative to Obsidian.
      Good alternative to Obsidian but backlinks are not as magic as in Obsidian. If you rename a file it will not modify links. You cannot link to a specific header. You need to use some ID which is a bit troublesome at first. Also you don't have a graph showing you all the links. But as this is Opensource, this is the best alternative to Obsidian which is closed source.
      Positive comment • about 1 year ago

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      Sometimesa Offers back-linking just like Obsidian does but it is Open-Source. Obsidian is proprietary software.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

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      s20 Probably the best Open Source alternative to Obsidian, and what I was using for quite some time. Well, a few months anyway. It has backlinking and some other great features that make it more useful as a knowledge base, but if you're looking for a full replacement, you're going to miss a lot of features, not least of which is the graph.
      Positive comment • 29 days ago

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    11. Made by the company behind WordPress, Simplenote enables users to take notes, lists, and ideas. These notes are stored on the cloud and are accessible across multiple devices.
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    12. A hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.
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      CherryTree vs Obsidian opinions
      pros, cons and recent comments
      s20 Kind of the same thing? More of a hierarchical note taker, but it runs locally, is super stable, and keeps you organized, so if you don't need all the bells and whistles, this'll get the job done.
      Positive comment • 29 days ago

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    Showing 10 of 93 alternatives