For a long time, if you took digital notes, you probably used Evernote. It was the king of the castle for capturing everything from meeting scribbles to recipes. But things have changed. Prices have gone up, performance has wavered, and a lot of us are starting to look around.
And that’s where Obsidian comes in, a newer tool with a seriously dedicated following. The whole Evernote vs Obsidian debate isn’t just about which app has cooler features. It’s about two completely different ways of thinking about how to store and connect your digital life.
Picking the right tool is about more than just jotting down ideas. It’s about building a "second brain" you can rely on for years, whether it’s for your personal journal or for managing tricky work projects. This guide will give you a straight-up comparison of how they work, what they’re good at, and what they’ll actually cost you, so you can figure out which one fits you best.
Evernote vs Obsidian: What is Evernote?
Think of Evernote as the ultimate digital filing cabinet. It was built on a simple promise: help you "remember everything." You can throw anything at it, text notes, pictures, PDFs, voice memos, and articles you clip from the web.
It’s all organized into notes, notebooks, and stacks, which feels a lot like the physical folders and binders we’re all used to. The main appeal is that it just works, right out of the box, syncing across all your devices with minimal fuss. It’s made for people who want to quickly capture multimedia notes from anywhere without having to think too much about the setup.
Evernote vs Obsidian: What is Obsidian?
Obsidian is a different beast altogether. It’s less of a filing cabinet and more of a personal wiki for your brain. Instead of saving your notes to a company’s cloud, Obsidian works with plain text Markdown files that live directly on your computer. You own your data, full stop.
The big idea here isn’t just to store information, but to connect it. By linking notes together, you create this web of ideas that can help you see relationships you never would have noticed before. The visual graph view lets you see this web, sparking new thoughts. It’s a favorite for writers, researchers, and anyone who loves to customize their tools and wants to make sure their notes are theirs forever.
A head-to-head comparison of Evernote vs Obsidian
These two apps come at knowledge management from opposite directions. Evernote is about capturing and filing away, while Obsidian is about connecting and building. Here’s a look at how they compare in the areas that really matter.
Evernote vs Obsidian: Note-taking experience and formatting
Evernote gives you an editor that feels like a familiar word processor, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You click buttons to make text bold, add images, and attach files without needing to learn any code. Its Web Clipper tool for saving webpages has been a fan favorite for years, though some users have mentioned it’s gotten a bit less dependable recently.
Obsidian, on the other hand, uses plain text files and a simple formatting language called Markdown. This means there’s a bit of a learning curve; you’ll type "##" to create a heading or "*" to make something italic. It makes for a very clean, focused writing experience, but it’s not as slick for creating notes with lots of images or complex layouts. The focus is squarely on the words.
The bottom line: Evernote is easier for quick, visual notes where formatting matters. Obsidian is better for focused, text-heavy writing and for creating a knowledge base that’s easy to move to other apps in the future.
Evernote vs Obsidian: Organization and knowledge discovery
Evernote works like a traditional filing system with Notebooks and Stacks, and you can add tags to link notes across different folders. The search is pretty capable and can even find text inside your scanned documents and images. But as your collection of notes grows over the years, many users have found that the search can start to feel slow and clunky, which kind of defeats the whole "remember everything" purpose.
Obsidian uses a more fluid, web-like approach. You create "[[bi-directional links]]" between notes, weaving your thoughts together. The Graph View then shows you a visual map of all these connections, which is amazing for spotting patterns and sparking new ideas. It’s less about finding the "right" folder for a note and more about seeing how it connects to everything else. Plus, with community-made plugins, you can do some really advanced stuff, like creating automatic indexes of your notes.
The bottom line: Evernote is a digital storage unit for your files. Obsidian is a dynamic web for your ideas that can help you think more clearly.
Evernote vs Obsidian: Data ownership, portability, and security
This is a big one. Evernote stores your notes on its servers in its own special format. This makes syncing easy, but it also means you’re locked into their world. You have to go along with their prices, their rules, and hope the company sticks around. Recent price hikes have made this "vendor lock-in" a real worry for people who want to keep their notes accessible for the long haul.
Obsidian is built on a "local-first" idea. All your notes are simple Markdown text files sitting in a folder on your own computer. You’re in complete control. This gives you total privacy and makes your data easy to back up or move. You’re responsible for your own backups, but you’re never trapped. If Obsidian vanished tomorrow, all your notes would still be there, perfectly readable.
The bottom line: Obsidian is the clear winner for anyone who cares about owning their data, privacy, and future-proofing their notes. Evernote gives you convenience, but you trade away control.
Evernote vs Obsidian: Collaboration and sharing
Evernote lets you share individual notes with other people, giving them permission to view or edit. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not a true collaborative tool like Google Docs and can feel a bit awkward for team projects.
Obsidian is really built for one person. Collaboration just isn’t what it’s for. There is a paid service to publish your notes as a website, but you can’t have multiple people editing a note at the same time.
The team knowledge gap: This points to a major weak spot for both apps when you try to use them for work. They’re fantastic for your knowledge, but they don’t help you share it as a team. How do you get a key insight from a developer’s Obsidian vault or a product manager’s Evernote notebook to a support agent dealing with a live customer? The short answer is: you don’t, at least not easily.
This is where tools designed to put knowledge into action come in. An AI platform like eesel AI connects to the places your team already works, like Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and your help desk. It doesn’t make you move everything to a new app; it just taps into your existing knowledge to provide instant answers for support tickets or internal questions.
The true cost: A pricing comparison for Evernote vs Obsidian
The way a product is priced often tells you a lot about its philosophy.
| Feature/Plan | Evernote | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Core Use | Limited Free Plan | Free for Personal Use |
| Personal Plan | $10.83/month (billed annually) | Free |
| Professional Plan | $14.16/month (billed annually) | Free |
| Commercial License | Included in paid plans | $50 / user / year |
| Sync Service | Included in paid plans | Optional: $4/month (billed annually) |
| Publishing | Not a core feature | Optional: $8/site/month (billed annually) |
Evernote’s Model: Evernote uses a standard subscription model. Its free plan is now so limited (only 50 notes and one notebook) that you pretty much have to pay to use it seriously. At over $120 a year for a personal plan, it’s a pricey option, and that’s a sore spot for many long-time fans.
Obsidian’s Model: The main Obsidian software is totally free for personal use. They make money on optional add-ons for power users and businesses, like Sync and Publish. This approach means you can get started without paying a dime and only open your wallet for extra features if you actually need them.
The bottom line: Obsidian gives you way more for free. The "cost" of Obsidian is more about the time you might spend tinkering with it. The cost of Evernote is a hefty yearly subscription fee.
This video offers a balanced overview to help you choose between the user-friendly Evernote and the customizable Obsidian based on your specific needs.
Beyond Evernote vs Obsidian: When your personal knowledge needs to scale
So, you’ve picked your tool and spent months, maybe years, building this incredible personal brain. That’s great! But what happens when your teammates need that information?
That’s where personal tools hit a wall. All that useful knowledge is stuck in individual accounts, invisible to the people who need it. Manually hunting down answers and sharing them doesn’t work when you’re busy, leading to the same questions getting asked over and over.
This is exactly the problem eesel AI is built to solve. Instead of being another place to hoard information, it acts as a smart layer that connects to all your company’s knowledge, wherever it lives.
By connecting to your help desk, company wiki, and shared documents, eesel AI’s AI Agent can resolve customer tickets on its own, and its Internal Chat can answer employee questions in Slack or MS Teams. It turns all your scattered team knowledge into a single, automated resource that works around the clock, without making everyone switch to the same note-taking app.
Evernote vs Obsidian: Which tool should you choose?
The choice in the Evernote vs Obsidian debate really comes down to what you care about most. There’s no single "best" app, just the one that’s best for you.
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Choose Evernote if: You want something that just works out of the box for capturing all sorts of media, you don’t mind paying a subscription, and you’re not too worried about being tied to one company’s system.
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Choose Obsidian if: You want total control over your data, love the idea of linking your thoughts together, and enjoy customizing your software to fit your exact needs.
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And if your goal is to make knowledge useful for your whole team: You might need to think beyond a personal note-taking app. A platform like eesel AI is built to connect all the places your team already keeps its knowledge and turn that information into instant, helpful answers.
Frequently asked questions
Your choice depends on your priorities. Choose Evernote for easy multimedia capture and robust syncing, especially if you’re comfortable with a subscription. Opt for Obsidian if you prioritize data ownership, powerful linking capabilities, and extensive customization.
Evernote stores your notes on its proprietary cloud servers, leading to vendor lock-in. Obsidian saves your notes as plain text Markdown files locally on your computer, granting you complete data ownership and effortless portability.
Obsidian is free for personal use, with optional paid services for syncing or publishing. Evernote offers a very limited free tier and requires a paid annual subscription for serious personal use.
Evernote generally has a gentler learning curve due to its familiar, word processor-like interface. Obsidian uses Markdown for formatting, which requires a small initial learning investment but offers a focused writing experience.
Evernote allows limited sharing of individual notes but isn’t built for robust team collaboration. Obsidian is primarily a personal knowledge management tool and does not support real-time multi-user editing for teams.
Obsidian works directly with local files, so you can access and edit all your notes entirely offline. Evernote typically requires an internet connection for full functionality, particularly for syncing across multiple devices.
