Obsidian Pricing
- Productivity pricing
- $4/mo at the smallest
- Free plan
Obsidian pricing starts at $4 a month, which is $48 over twelve months. There is a free plan. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 9 August 2026.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
Obsidian ranking and coverage
- In Productivity
- #4 of 28
- Overall
- #21 of 122
- Terms score
- 7.3 /10
- Referenced here
- 0 pages
Cost position 8.9 · Portability 6 · Subscription flexibility 7 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
Obsidian pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Free for personal and commercial use; Sync $4 per user/month billed annually |
|---|---|
| Smallest invoice | $4 a month, or $48 a year |
| How that is reached | Sync at $4 a month |
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | No trial offered |
| How it charges | freemium |
| Priced plans published | 5 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 9 August 2026 |
Every Obsidian plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 9 August 2026. Charged as freemium. No free trial is offered.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian app | $0 | per one-time | Free without limits, no sign-up. Commercial licence is optional, not required |
| Sync | $4 | per month | per user - Billed annually, or $5 monthly. End-to-end encrypted, with version history |
| Publish | $8 | per month | Per site, billed annually, or $10 monthly |
| Catalyst | $25 | per one-time | Optional supporter licence for beta access and community badges |
| Commercial | $50 | per year | per user - Optional. Obsidian states it is not required for commercial use |
What Obsidian actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.
| Plan | Quoted | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Syncper user | per month | $4 | $48 |
| Publish | per month | $8 | $96 |
| Commercialper user | per year | $4.17 | $50 |
Obsidian pricing over time
Read from 33 archived captures of the vendor's pricing page , spanning May 2020 to September 2026. Every figure below links to the capture it came from, so you can check it against the page as it stood on the day.
- Publish changed once between 27 May 2020 and 3 September 2026, from $16 to $8, down 50% overall.
- Sync changed once between 27 May 2020 and 3 September 2026, from $8 to $4 per user.
- Catalyst has been published at $25 in every capture we read, from 27 May 2020 to 3 September 2026.
- Commercial has been published at $50 per user in every capture we read, from 27 May 2020 to 3 September 2026.
Publish
Sync
Catalyst
| Published price | Charged | Seen from | Last seen | Capture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25 | Not stated | 27 May 2020 | 3 September 2026 | Archive |
Commercial
| Published price | Charged | Seen from | Last seen | Capture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | per user | 27 May 2020 | 3 September 2026 | Archive |
Compiled 18 September 2026 from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Plan names were matched against the archived page text and the first currency-anchored figure within 160 characters was recorded, rejecting any figure with a competing plan name standing between it and the name it was matched to. The currency and the unit were read from each capture rather than assumed: captures served in a currency other than $, and captures where no plan name sat beside a figure, are listed as unread rather than dropped. Archived pages show the price as served to the archive's crawler, which may differ by region from the price you are shown.
Obsidian pricing against its competitors
Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.
| Product | Cheapest paid entry | Free plan | Against Obsidian |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | $4 a month | Yes | This product |
| Notion | $10 a month | Yes | +$6 a month (+150%) |
Which Obsidian plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want a personal knowledge base at no cost | Obsidian app | Free without limits and no sign-up. The commercial licence is explicitly optional, including at work. |
| You need notes synced across devices reliably | Sync | $4 per user a month billed annually, with end-to-end encryption. You can use iCloud or Dropbox free instead, at the cost of conflict handling. |
| You want to publish notes as a website | Publish | $8 per site a month billed annually. |
| You are a student, teacher or non-profit employee | Ask for the 40% discount | Applies to both Sync and Publish. |
| You want to support the project | Catalyst or Commercial | $25 once, or $50 per user a year. Both are voluntary; neither unlocks functionality you lack. |
| Several people must edit the same page at once | Do not use Obsidian | This is a single-person tool. Notion or Confluence for real-time collaboration. |
Verdict by who you are
Researcher or writer keeping long-lived notesYes
Plain Markdown files on your own disk means the notes outlast the software, the company and any pricing change. For a twenty-year reference library nothing else compares.
Privacy-conscious individualYes
Works fully offline, collects no telemetry, and stores nothing on their servers unless you buy Sync.
Team needing shared documentationNo
Shared vaults exist but are not comparable to real-time collaborative editing.
Non-technical user wanting defaultsCompare first
The flexibility is the risk. It is genuinely possible to spend weeks configuring plugins instead of writing.
Company worried about commercial licensingYes
Obsidian's own FAQ states you are not required to pay for commercial use. Using it at work is free.
Should you buy Obsidian?
Buy Obsidian if…
- Personal knowledge management and research
- Anyone who wants their notes to outlast the app
- Writers and academics working with long-lived reference material
Do not buy Obsidian if…
- Real-time collaborative team documentation
- Non-technical users who want defaults rather than choices
- Structured databases and project tracking
What leaving Obsidian would cost
moderate lock-in
Obsidian scores on self-hostable. Portability 6/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
The commercial licence is optional, and they say so
This gets reported incorrectly often enough to correct directly. Obsidian’s own FAQ answers “Do I have to pay for commercial use?” with: “No. You are not required to pay for a commercial license.” It goes on to encourage organisations to buy one at $50 per user per year to keep the project user-funded.
So using Obsidian at work is free. The $50 licence is a voluntary contribution with some recognition attached, and the $25 Catalyst licence is the same idea for individuals, buying early access to betas and community badges rather than any functional unlock.
What actually costs money
Two optional services:
- Sync: $4 per user per month billed annually, or $5 monthly. End-to-end encrypted with AES-256, version history, and shared vaults.
- Publish: $8 per site per month billed annually, or $10 monthly. Turns a vault into a website.
Students, faculty and non-profit employees get 40% off both. Refunds are available within 7 days on Sync and Publish; Catalyst and Commercial licences are non-refundable.
You can skip Sync entirely by putting your vault in iCloud, Dropbox or OneDrive, or by versioning it with Git. That works and many people do it. What you give up is end-to-end encryption, reliable mobile behaviour and conflict handling, which is what the $4 buys.
Files you own is the whole point
A vault is a folder. Notes are .md files. Attachments sit beside them. There is no database, no
proprietary format and no export step, because there is nothing to export from.
The consequences are worth spelling out. If Obsidian were discontinued tomorrow, your notes would open in any text editor. If a future version changed in ways you disliked, you could stop updating. If you want to process your notes with a script, they are already plain text. Obsidian also collects no telemetry and stores nothing on its servers unless you use Sync.
For a reference library you expect to keep for twenty years, that architecture is the feature, and no hosted competitor can match it.
Where it is the wrong tool
Teams. Obsidian is built around one person’s vault, and while Sync supports shared vaults, it is not comparable to real-time collaborative editing. If several people need to write the same page at once, Notion or Confluence is the right answer and Obsidian will frustrate everyone.
It also has no databases, no boards and no project tracking. And because almost everything is configurable through community plugins, there is a genuine risk of optimising your note-taking setup instead of taking notes. That is a real failure mode, not a joke, and worth watching for.
Obsidian questions, answered
- Is Obsidian worth it?
- Obsidian's central promise is unusual and worth taking seriously: your notes are ordinary Markdown files in a folder you control, so nothing is hostage to the company's survival, pricing or roadmap.
- How much does Obsidian cost?
- Free for personal and commercial use; Sync $4 per user/month billed annually. The cheapest paid tier we recorded is Sync, published at $4 a month, which works out at $4 a month or $48 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Obsidian have a free plan or free trial?
- Obsidian has a free plan. No free trial is offered.
- What is the best Obsidian alternative?
- It depends on the job. Notion: Far better for collaboration and databases, hosted on their servers. Logseq: Similar local-first philosophy with an outliner structure. Apple Notes: Free, synced and sufficient if you do not need linking or plugins.
- Can I self-host Obsidian?
- Yes. Obsidian can be run on your own infrastructure, so the data stays under your control.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about Obsidian. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from Obsidian's own pricing page on 9 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
5 rows, each with its billing period
-
Original screenshots : yes
2 captured by us: pricing page, homepage
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
1 primary source, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
-
Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Where Obsidian appears on this site
No buyer guide, article or other profile here references Obsidian yet. Its own record is verified and dated, but it has not been placed against alternatives in a comparison, so there is nothing further to link to. Until then the category index is the best place to see what it sits beside.
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Sync and Publish pricing verified, along with the optional commercial licence
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Obsidian pricing - checked 9 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
