Obsidian alternatives: where to take your notes and how to switch without breaking anything

Why switch to Logseq. It's the closest thing to Obsidian in spirit: Markdown (or Org-mode) files on your disk, links between pages, daily notes. The big difference is the license. Logseq ships under AGPL-3.0, so you can read the code, build it yourself or have it audited. It also thinks in blocks: every bullet is an item you can reference elsewhere. In developer discussions, it's the first name people drop when someone asks for an open source Obsidian.

Who it's for. People who write through the day in a journal, and anyone for whom open source is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Who it's not for. Anyone who needs reliable mobile sync tomorrow. The new database version is in beta, its real-time sync is in alpha with a data-loss warning from the team, its iOS app is in alpha and Android is listed as coming soon.

Its limit. Not everyone writes in bullets. If your notes are long-form prose, the outliner will feel tight. And official sync has no fixed price yet: the team asks for a donation during the beta, so you don't know what it will cost.

How to migrate. Logseq users share a standard setup for running both apps on the same folder: attachments in an assets folder, link format set to "relative path to file", "Use Wikilinks" turned off in Obsidian, daily notes named YYYY_MM_DD inside a journals folder. With those four settings you can keep both apps open on the same vault while you decide.

Price. The app is free. Official sync has no published price yet.

Why switch to Capacities. In Obsidian you build structure yourself: folders, templates, Dataview queries. Capacities starts from the other end. Every note is an object of a type (a person, a book, a project, a meeting) with its own properties. You organize by picking a type, not by inventing a folder tree. On PKM forums, that's the reason people give for choosing it over Obsidian.

Who it's for. People who want a tidy personal knowledge base without writing queries or babysitting ten plugins.

Who it's not for. Anyone who insists on plain Markdown files any editor can open. Here your notes live inside the app, although Markdown export is available on every plan.

Its limit. Obsidian Canvas doesn't import: those layouts have to be rebuilt. Anything that depended on a plugin may have no equivalent. The free plan gives you 5 GB of media, then 100 MB more each month. At least one user reports leaving Capacities over slowness, so watch how it behaves with your own volume of notes.

How to migrate. Capacities publishes a dedicated "Switching from Obsidian" guide. Import linked notes together, in one go, so links resolve. Keep media paths relative to the notes. Your top-level folders (People, Projects) can become object types, and a type property in the front matter does the same job note by note.

Price. Basic is free, and the company says the core product will stay that way. Pro costs $9.99 a month, Believer starts at $12.49 a month, and yearly billing saves 16%. Objects, spaces and offline mode are unlimited even on the free plan.

Why switch to Anytype. Anytype is one of the few apps with an official Obsidian importer, documented step by step. Every file becomes an object. Your [[ ]] links become real links, front matter becomes properties, and #tags fill the Tag property. You keep your structure instead of ending up with a pile of flat pages.

Who it's for. People who want an object model (like Capacities) but still want their data to work locally on their own devices.

Who it's not for. Anyone who needs a clear budget on day one. When we compared tools, Anytype's paid plan prices weren't reliably readable, with older and newer docs contradicting each other.

Its limit. Once you go past the free plan's limits, network sync stops and only local storage keeps working. Your notes don't vanish, but your devices stop updating each other. Check current pricing on Anytype's site before you get close.

How to migrate. Before importing, turn embeds like ![[Note Title]] into plain links [[Note Title]], and remove Dataview and Templater blocks, which Anytype can't interpret. Then go to Settings, Import, Obsidian. On Windows and Linux, zip your vault first and import the archive.

Price. There's a free plan, and paid plans add storage and sync.

Why switch to Notion. Obsidian is a personal tool that can share a little. Notion is a team workspace from the start: pages shared one at a time, databases, guests, comments. If your reason to leave is "my coworkers need to read and edit these notes", it's the obvious destination. We rate it 4.0/5 in our full review.

Who it's for. Teams that want a wiki, projects and docs in one place, with permissions page by page.

Who it's not for. Anyone who wants notes as files on their disk, or who writes offline most of the time. Notion lives online.

Its limit. The Markdown importer skips nonstandard extensions, and Obsidian's [[links]] are one of them: they arrive as text, not links. The free plan caps files at 5 MB and limits blocks once a workspace has several members. Cost climbs fast with team size, since you pay per seat.

How to migrate. Settings, Import, "Text & Markdown", then a .md file or a .zip. Split your vault into archives under 10,000 files, or the import will likely fail. Expect 5 MB per file on Free and 50 MB on paid plans, and roughly 120 imports per 12-hour window. Plan to relink your most important pages by hand.

Price. Free at €0, Plus at €11.50 per member per month, Business at €23.50 per member per month.

Why switch to AFFiNE. AFFiNE checks two boxes Obsidian doesn't check together: collaboration and open code. It's MIT licensed (with some backend exceptions), you can self-host it, and local workspaces are unlimited even on the free plan. It's the one to look at if your team wants out of Obsidian without moving to a closed vendor like Notion.

Who it's for. Small teams that want a shared space without depending on one host, and technical folks happy to run it on their own server.

Who it's not for. A team of more than ten that doesn't want to pay: the free plan stops at 3 members, Pro at 10 members.

Its limit. Version history only goes back 7 days on the free plan, 30 days on Pro. Files are capped at 10 MB on free. If your vault is full of heavy PDFs, check that number before you move.

How to migrate. Your vault is a folder of Markdown files, so that's the format you're moving. Prep it like you would for any destination (embeds turned into links, Dataview output pasted as text), then try the import on a copy of about twenty linked notes before sending the rest.

Price. Free at $0 with 10 GB and 3 members. Pro at $6.75 a month with 100 GB and 10 members. Team at $10 per seat per month billed yearly. There's also a one-time Believer license at $499.99.

Why switch to Joplin. If what bugs you about Obsidian is mainly the price of Sync, Joplin answers that head on. The app is open source, and its Joplin Cloud sync service starts at €2.99 a month. Its servers sit in Paris, which helps if your company asks where your notes live.

Who it's for. Freelancers and small teams who want Markdown notes and built-in sync without a $4 to $5 subscription per person.

Who it's not for. People who live in Obsidian's graph and backlinks views. Joplin organizes notes in notebooks, closer to an open source Evernote than to a networked knowledge base.

Its limit. The Basic plan caps at 2 GB and 10 MB per note. Sharing notes requires Pro. The Teams plan needs at least two users.

How to migrate. Start from a cleaned-up copy of your vault: embeds turned into links, Dataview queries replaced with text. Import about twenty linked notes, check images and internal links, then move the rest in batches, one folder at a time.

Price. Basic at €2.99 a month (€28.69 a year) with 2 GB. Pro at €5.99 a month (€57.48 a year) with 30 GB and sharing. Pro 100 GB at €9.99. Teams at €7.99 per user.

Why switch to SiYuan. SiYuan skips the subscription model. Local storage is completely free, forever. If you want sync, you pay a one-time $64 for PRO, which syncs to your own S3-compatible or WebDAV storage. No monthly bill, and your data stays wherever you put it.

Who it's for. Technical users who already have storage (a NAS, an S3 bucket) and are done with subscriptions.

Who it's not for. Anyone who doesn't want to configure anything: wiring up S3 or WebDAV takes some know-how. For them, the $148 lifetime plan with 8 GB of official cloud is simpler.

Its limit. There are no refunds. Do all your trial runs on the free version before paying. The $64 PRO tier includes no storage: you bring your own.

How to migrate. As with any destination, start from a prepped copy of the vault (embeds converted, Dataview removed). Try a small batch of linked notes first, check links and images, then import the rest folder by folder.

Price. Free locally. PRO at a one-time $64, no storage. Lifetime plan at $148 with 8 GB of official cloud.

Why switch to Craft. Some people leave Obsidian not to link notes better, but to write better. One user explained moving to Craft because text copied from Obsidian into an email lost its footnotes and links, and because writing among links kept distracting him. Craft puts the document itself first.

Who it's for. People who write meeting notes, proposals or notes to share, and want a clean result with zero setup. The Family plan covers six accounts, handy for a household.

Who it's not for. Anyone with thousands of linked notes: the free plan stops at 1,500 blocks in total across all documents, which fills up fast.

Its limit. Free means 1 GB, one space and 7 days of history. For a real note base, you'll go paid almost immediately.

How to migrate. Don't bring everything. Pick the notes you still write and reread, prep them (wikilinks converted, embeds replaced), and leave the archive in your Obsidian folder, which any text editor can still open.

Price. Plus at $6.40 a month (shown instead of $8). Family at $12 a month for six accounts. Team at $5 per user, three minimum.