Obsidian vs Trello 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
Boards and cards for people who hate project plans
At a glance
- Obsidian starts cheaper, at $4.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Obsidian | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $4 | From $6 |
| 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
Trello
Boards and cards for people who hate project plans
Trello is a wall of cards dragged between columns, which is enough structure to run an editorial calendar and not enough to put anybody off using it. The free plan covers ten collaborators, so a creator with two contractors never pays. Anything needing dependencies, a timeline or real reporting hits the ceiling inside a quarter.
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.