Evernote vs Obsidian Comparison 2026
Evernote stores notes in the cloud and indexes them for search, including text inside scans and images, from $8.25 a month billed yearly after a free plan. Obsidian keeps a vault of plain Markdown files on your own disk, free with no limits and no account, with Sync as an optional $4 a month add-on for working across two devices. One is a hosted service you subscribe to. The other is a free app whose notes outlive it, and syncing is the only thing you might eventually pay for.
The notes app that indexes what it captures
Notes that stay as plain files on your own disk
At a glance
- Obsidian starts cheaper, at $4.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Evernote | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $8.25 | From $4 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated |
Evernote
The notes app that indexes what it captures
Evernote is a note store built around finding things again rather than around writing them. Web clips, scanned pages and photographs are searchable including the text inside images, which is why it has outlasted several tidier competitors. For a creator it is where the research, the receipts and the half-formed ideas go before any of them turn into work. The free plan is deliberately narrow now and the paid tiers carry upload allowances rather than feature gates. Sync across devices is the thing people pay for.
Obsidian
Notes that stay as plain files on your own disk
Obsidian keeps a vault of Markdown files on the local disk and builds links, backlinks and a graph over them. For a creator that means the idea list, the script drafts and the research notes outlive the app: no export, no account, nothing to be locked out of. The app itself is free without a sign-up. Sync and Publish are paid add-ons rather than the product, and a commercial licence is asked for only when notes are used for work at a company.
Our note
Try it before paying for anything, since the free app is the product and the add-ons only matter once you are working across two devices. The commercial licence is the one people miss: it applies to using notes for company work, not to writing for your own channel.
Why people weigh these two
- Obsidian instead of Evernote
- Obsidian keeps notes as plain files on your own disk from $4 with a free tier, for anyone who wants the archive to outlive the app.
- Evernote instead of Obsidian
- Evernote indexes whatever it captures from $8 with a free tier, a hosted archive where Obsidian keeps the files on your own disk.
Which one should you pick
Pick Evernote if you want search across images, scans and clipped web pages, with paid sync across devices built into the subscription at $8.25 a month billed yearly. It suits a capture-heavy workflow more than a writing one.
Pick Obsidian if you want ideas, research and drafts to outlive whichever app is fashionable, kept in files nothing can lock you out of. The app is free entirely until you are working across two devices, at which point Sync is $4 a month. Its commercial licence, $50 a year, only applies to using notes for company work, not to writing for your own channel.
Common questions
- Which is actually free?
- Obsidian's core app is free with no limits and no sign-up, for as long as you use it on one device. Evernote's free plan is real but narrower, and its useful paid tier starts at $8.25 a month billed yearly.
- What does Obsidian's Sync add-on cost, and is it required?
- It is $4 per user a month billed annually, and it is optional: needed only for encrypted syncing, version history and shared vaults across more than one device. The core app works without it.
- Which one is better for search inside scanned documents and images?
- Evernote. Its whole design is finding things again, including text inside photographs and scans. Obsidian searches plain text files well but is not built to read text out of an image.
- Do I need a commercial licence to use Obsidian for my own channel?
- No. Its commercial licence, $50 per user a year, applies to using notes for work at a company, not to writing for your own channel. That is the detail people most often miss about it.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.