Obsidian vs Todoist Comparison 2026
Both cover project management. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Notes that stay as plain files on your own disk
A task list that survives being ignored for a week
At a glance
- Obsidian starts cheaper, at $4.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Obsidian | Todoist | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $4 | From $5 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
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.
Only on this side
- Covers writing & scripts
Todoist
A task list that survives being ignored for a week
Todoist takes a typed sentence like "post the newsletter every Tuesday at 9" and turns it into a scheduled recurring task, which is the feature the whole product is built around. Five projects on the free account is enough for one person running one operation. Paying raises the limits, adds reminders and calendar layouts, and opens filters that make a large list usable. Teams get their own tier above that, and none of it tries to be a project management suite.
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.