Software Alternatives & Reviews

Obsidian.md VS Foam

Compare Obsidian.md VS Foam and see what are their differences

Obsidian.md

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Foam

Personal knowledge management and sharing on VSCode & GitHub
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01
  • Foam Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-06-28

Obsidian.md

Categories
  • Knowledge Management
  • Knowledge Base
  • Markdown Editor
  • Markdown Viewer
  • Personal Notes
  • Note Taking
  • Notes
Website obsidian.md  
Pricing URL Official Obsidian.md Pricing  

Foam

Categories
  • Note Taking
  • Knowledge Base
  • Knowledge Management
  • Task Management
Website foambubble.github.io  
Pricing URL-

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Foam videos

These panels DESTROYED my STUDIO....REVERB? - ArrowZoom Foam Review

More videos:

  • Review - Arrowzoom Foam Review
  • Review - Ryobi Foam Blaster VS. Amazon Foam Cannon | Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Obsidian.md and Foam)
Knowledge Management
96 96%
4% 4
Note Taking
90 90%
10% 10
Knowledge Base
89 89%
11% 11
Task Management
89 89%
11% 11

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Obsidian.md and Foam

Obsidian.md Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    🏁 Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    👍 Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    👎 Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    🏁 Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com
Logseq vs Roam Research vs Obsidian: which one should you choose?
Block Reference and block embeds: Adding block reference and block embeds in Logseq is simple. You use double-open parentheses (( and type to search the block you want to link. In Obsidian, you have to first add the link to the note and then use # to embed headers and ^ to embed blocks.– Obsidian also makes it hard to see the origin of block references, as they are only...
Source: medium.com
Best 5 Obsidian Alternatives
Bi-directional note-taking applications have become more and more popular on the productivity scene this past year. Obsidian is one of the fastest-growing productivity tools right now, based on plain text Markdown files stored in a local folder, it gives your notes the security and longevity they deserve.
Obsidian vs. Roam vs. LogSeq: Which PKM App is Right For You?
Obsidian as an application sits on top of qlocal files stored on your computer. The files themselves are not imported into Obsidian, they are simply opened and viewed there. That means that if you ever decide to stop using Obsidian, what you are left with is a folder full of plain text files and images. While some features in Obsidian may use special formatting, the...

Foam Reviews

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md seems to be a lot more popular than Foam. While we know about 1447 links to Obsidian.md, we've tracked only 43 mentions of Foam. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Obsidian.md mentions (1447)

  • Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally
    Great job! I played around with this on a couple of small knowledge bases using an open Hermes model I had downloaded. The “related notes” feature didn't provide much value in my experience, often the link was so weak it was nonsensical. The Q&A mode was surprisingly helpful for querying notes and providing overviews, but asking anything specific typically just resulted in less than helpful or false answers. I'm... - Source: Hacker News / 14 days ago
  • Why use Obsidian for software development?
    I like to use Obsidian as a super notebook that is also quite simple. To get started with Obsidian you need to download the software from their official website. After installation you can start, Obsidian uses the markdown file format. It's similar to a text file, but it has features such as tags where you can organize the texts. I don't know about you, but I think it's really useful to use Markdown because it's... - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
  • How to improve your GitHub vanity metrics FAST
    In practice I write in Obsidian, the best thing since slice bread for me. And it was obsidian-git, running every 10 minutes or so, who was keeping my GitHub vanity metrics very green. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • DevDocs
    Not a complete answer, but I hope Markdown is or becomes the standard for offline docs and text for local/offline consumption. I only ever write in markdown anyway (usually with http://obsidian.md). The closest thing I know of for a service like RSS to download documents is [Dash for macOS - API Documentation Browser, Snippet Manager - Kapeli](https://kapeli.com/dash). - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: Is there a service for uploading Markdown files that render beautifully?
    Have you tried Obsidian? The have a markdown file publishing service. [1]: https://obsidian.md. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
View more

Foam mentions (43)

  • Why I Like Obsidian
    You can also use Foam, a FOSS VSCode extension that is compatible with the basic markdown files from Obsidian. You can just open your vault in it and it will probably work if you're not using the fancy features in Obsidian. https://foambubble.github.io/foam/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Obsidian 1.5 Desktop (Public)
    No mention of Foam? https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ Fine, I uhh, I'll speak for it. Foam is to VSCode, what Org (and Org-Roam) are to Emacs. As a former org-roam user, I ended up preferring it because my end goal was to convert my notes to HTML and blog posts, and org is poor at that as HTML is not valid org code whereas it is in Markdown. There's just a whole host of markdown-it plugins [1] out there to add... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Does Obsidian note taking work for you?
    You don't have to use Obsidian btw, I think Foam does most of the same stuff inside Visual Studio Code. Source: 8 months ago
  • For taking notes, Do you use VS Code or other program?
    Yes, you can make VS Code a great note-taking tool with the very lightweight Foam extension, that adds cross-note referencing and easy task management. https://foambubble.github.io/foam/. Source: 8 months ago
  • Fediverse instance to create a regional repository of knowledge
    Maybe Anagora or something else based on FOAM? Source: 9 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Obsidian.md and Foam, you can also consider the following products

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.

Roam Research - A note-taking tool for networked thought

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

TiddlyWiki - a non-linear personal web notebook

Nuclino - Nuclino works like a collective brain, helping teams bring all their knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place. It's a modern, simple, and blazingly fast way to collaborate.