Zotero vs Obsidian
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Zotero
This research tool helps you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share your academic and professional work. Save articles, books, and webpages, add notes and highlights, and generate bibliographies in thousands of styles. Collaborate with others and sync your library across devices.
- Collect research from various sources
- Organize with collections and tags
- Annotate PDFs and webpages
- Generate citations and bibliographies
- Collaborate in group libraries
- Sync across devices
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Zotero is a free, easy-to-use research tool that helps you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share your work. COLLECT • Save journal articles, newspaper articles, books, webpages, and more via the Share button in Safari and other apps • Automatically download article PDFs to read • Quickly add physical books and articles to your Zotero library by scanning book barcodes or article DOIs with your iPhone or iPad camera ORGANIZE • Use collections and tags to organize your research • View and edit bibliographic information for your research items ANNOTATE • Read PDFs, EPUBs, and webpage snapshots and add highlights and notes, or use an Apple Pencil to make freehand annotations CITE • Instantly generate citations and bibliographies in over 10,000 formats and journal styles including APA, Chicago, IEEE, MLA, Turabian, and Vancouver SHARE • Collaboratively collect sources and mark up PDFs in group libraries with your colleagues • Synchronize your personal and group research libraries to access them via Zotero’s desktop app and the Zotero website • Use the Zotero desktop app to insert your annotations into Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs documents and automatically generate bibliographies from the sources you used Visit zotero.org to learn more about everything you can do with Zotero. Having trouble? Have an idea? Post bug reports and feature requests to the Zotero Forums at forums.zotero.org to talk directly to Zotero developers. ZOTERO AND PRIVACY Since 2006, the Zotero team has been committed to creating the best research software, and we believe that includes putting you in full control of your own work. We’re an independent, nonprofit organization, and we’ll never sell your data.
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
Zotero and Obsidian both sit at 4.6 stars, but that hides the real split: 78% of Zotero's written reviews are positive against 62% of Obsidian's. Obsidian's advantage is chart position (#124 vs unranked) and ratings volume (2.7K vs 425). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for Zotero against 4.5 for Obsidian. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Obsidian has 2.7K ratings behind it against 425, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 78% of Zotero's written reviews are positive against 62% of Obsidian's.
Zotero ships an update every 2 weeks, Obsidian every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on September 24, 2026.
| Parameter | Zotero | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (425 ratings) — better | 4.5 (2.7K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 77.9% of reviews — better | 62.1% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 425 | 2.7K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 weeks — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | — | #124 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.6 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 197 MB | 38 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Zotero | Dynalist Inc. |
Customer experience
Zotero
Obsidian
User reviews
Zotero
From 425 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 👍 Simple and powerful
- 🚀 Convenient and useful
- 🚀 Seamless syncing across devices
- 🚀 Excellent reference management
- 👍 Great annotation and PDF reading experience
Room to improve
- 🐛 Crashes frequently
- 🐛 Syncing issues with WebDAV
- 🐛 Metadata not automatically extracted from PDFs
- 🐛 Annotation tools could be improved
- 🐛 Limited sorting and filtering options
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
Zotero
Reported bugs
4 issues- Unable to unzip PDF snapshots
- Annotations disappearing or moving unexpectedly
- Dark mode not working as expected
- Inability to add citations directly from the app
Requested features
6 requests- Eraser tool for annotations
- More color options for pen and highlighter
- Ability to open PDFs in external apps
- Bookmarking and table of contents support
- Improved search functionality
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- Offline access to downloaded PDFs
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
Zotero
No in-app purchases
Obsidian
No in-app purchases
