Notion vs Obsidian
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Notion
This AI-powered workspace helps you write notes, manage tasks, organize projects, and collaborate with others. It offers features like AI meeting notes and interactive maps to streamline your workflow for personal, student, or professional use.
- AI-powered note-taking and summarization
- Task and project management
- Collaborative workspace
- Customizable templates
- Interactive maps view for databases
- AI for content generation and analysis
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Notion is an AI-powered all-in-one workspace that helps individuals and teams write notes, manage tasks, organize projects, and collaborate in one place. Whether you’re tracking personal to-do lists, writing and organizing class notes, or managing projects with a team, Notion helps users plan work, stay organized, and achieve goals. "AI's everything app" — Forbes Notion is a productivity app where you can write, plan, and organize your notes, projects, tasks and more. Ask Notion AI about project updates, upcoming tasks, and suggestions for a more streamlined workflow. Simplify writing notes, project and task management, and collaboration. Whether for personal, student or professional use, Notion scales to meet your individual needs with customization tools for everyone. NEW features: • AI Meeting Notes: Perfect meeting memory. Your notetaker catches every detail and delivers actionable summaries, right where you work. • Maps View: Turn databases into interactive maps. Use the new Place property to pin restaurants, trips, offices, clients, and more. FREE FOR PERSONAL USE Individuals manage day-to-day tasks, notes, and personal organization. • Create as many notes, docs, and content as you want. • Use one of thousands of templates to get started. FREE TO TRY WITH YOUR TEAM Teams run on Notion every day, from next-generation startups to established enterprises. • Import Google Docs, PDFs, and other content types easily to get started • Write and organize meeting notes, or transcribe with AI. • Collaboration and team work at your fingertips, in one connected workspace. • Connect tools like Figma, Slack, and GitHub to Notion. FREE FOR STUDENTS Students organize notes, assignments, and study plans in one place. • Your study planner, class notes, to do lists and more, your way. Loved by millions of students worldwide. • Get organized for your best school year yet with beautiful, customizable templates created by students, for students. NOTES & DOCS Communication is made efficient with Notion's flexible building blocks. • Create docs with beautiful templates, images, to-dos, and 50+ more content types. • Meeting notes, projects, design systems, pitch decks, and more. • Find exactly what you need using Search with powerful filters to find content across your workspace. TASKS & PROJECTS Catch all details big and small in any workflow. • Workflow manager: Create your own priority labels, status tags, and automations to choose the exact info you want to track. • Capture every detail in a table. Break projects into manageable tasks to get the work done. AI One tool that does it all - search, generate, analyze, and chat - right inside Notion. • Create notes. Transcribe meeting notes with AI. • Turn databases into interactive maps. Use the new Place property to pin restaurants, trips, offices, clients, and more. • Write better. Use Notion AI to help write and brainstorm. • Get answers. Ask Notion AI questions about all your content and get answers in seconds. • Autofill tables. Notion AI turns overwhelming data into clear, actionable information — automatically. SYNCS WITH BROWSER, MAC, AND WINDOWS APPS. • Pick up on mobile where you left off on desktop. MORE PRODUCTIVITY. FEWER TOOLS. • Track to-dos, write notes, create docs, and manage projects in one connected workspace. THINK IT. MAKE IT.
Obsidian
Organize your thoughts and ideas with a powerful knowledge base that utilizes local Markdown files. This app acts as your personal second brain, accessible on your mobile device for seamless note-taking and idea connection.
- Local Markdown file storage
- Customizable toolbar
- Graph view for connections
- Community plugins
- Themes
- iCloud sync
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Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. It is a second brain, for you, forever. Now available on the go for iOS! Features include: - Customizable toolbar - Pull down quick actions - Graph view - Community plugins - Themes - Sidebar pinning for tablet - iCloud vaults
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Obsidian at none against Notion's 6. Obsidian also leads on iOS requirement (15.6 vs 18.0). Notion's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks) and rating (4.8 vs 4.5). On price, review sentiment, ads and chart position there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Notion sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Obsidian asks for nothing beyond the download.
Notion holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Notion has 90K ratings behind it against 2.7K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 55% of Notion's written reviews are positive against 62% of Obsidian's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Notion ships an update every 3 days, Obsidian every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on September 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Notion | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (90K ratings) — better | 4.5 (2.7K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 54.9% of reviews | 62.1% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 90K — better | 2.7K |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #44 — better | #124 |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 680 MB | 38 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Notion Labs, Incorporated | Dynalist Inc. |
Customer experience
Notion
Obsidian
User reviews
Notion
From 90K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Great tool for school organisation
- 👍 Game-Changer for Productivity
- ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Versatile and customizable
- 👍 Calendar view is amazing
- 👍 Amazing & altruistic
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frustrating Search and Useless AI
- 🐛 Buggy and nagging (iPad M1)… moving to click up if it does get more stable
- 🔒 No offline mode
- 🐛 Glitchy iPad experience
- 🐛 Terrible on iPad
Obsidian
From 2.7K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Powerful features
- 👍 Customizable and flexible
- 🔒 Secure and private
- 💡 Innovative note-taking approach
- 🚀 Smooth mobile experience
Room to improve
- 🐛 Sync issues and unreliable iCloud integration
- 🔋 Slow startup and performance issues on mobile
- 👎 Steep learning curve for new users
- 👎 Limited sorting and organization options
- 👎 Lack of WYSIWYG editing on mobile
Bugs and requests
Notion
Reported bugs
10 issues- Columns glitchy on mobile
- Inability to edit titles
- Keyboard issues on iPad with Bluetooth keyboard
- Notion logging out users periodically
- Notion deleting user data without warning
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- Sync issues between desktop and mobile
- Inability to copy/paste multiple blocks of text on mobile
- Notion app freezing and crashing
- Inability to access offline data
- Inability to move/rearrange to-do list items on mobile
Requested features
16 requests- Apple Calendar integration
- Time blocking for morning & night routines
- Offline mode
- Multiple tabs for iPad
- Ability to edit titles
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- Ability to change font, size, and better calendars
- Handwriting support
- More font options
- Ability to resize images on mobile
- Ability to move pictures from side to side on mobile
- Password protection for pages and databases
- Widgets
- Ability to adjust text size on iPad
- Ability to split screen 2 documents at once
- Default mode settings (minimal page comments, backlinks off)
- Offline sync
Obsidian
Reported bugs
3 issues- Sync issues leading to data loss
- Freezing and crashing on mobile devices
- Editing bugs and text input issues
Requested features
5 requests- Improved sorting and organization options
- WYSIWYG editing on mobile
- Better integration with other cloud storage services
- More intuitive onboarding process for new users
- Native mobile widgets and share sheet integration
In-app purchases
Notion
- Notion AI$9.991 Month
- Notion – Plus Monthly$11.991 Month
- Notion Business$23.991 Month
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- Notion AI$95.991 Year
- Notion – Plus Yearly$119.991 Year
- Notion Business$239.991 Year
Obsidian
No in-app purchases









