Software Alternatives & Reviews

Org mode VS Obsidian.md

Compare Org mode VS Obsidian.md and see what are their differences

Org mode

Org: an Emacs Mode for Notes, Planning, and Authoring

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.
  • Org mode Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-15
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01

Org mode

Categories
  • Task Management
  • Project Management
  • Note Taking
  • Todos
Website orgmode.org  
Pricing URL-
Details $

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  
Details $-

Org mode videos

org mode is awesome

More videos:

  • Review - 2018-11-14: Building a Second Brain in Org Mode - Tasshin Michael Fogleman

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Org mode and Obsidian.md)
Task Management
50 50%
50% 50
Knowledge Management
0 0%
100% 100
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Note Taking
12 12%
88% 88

User comments

Share your experience with using Org mode and Obsidian.md. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

Org mode Reviews

Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?
Before going full Org Mode, I used MS OneNote, and liked it very much. My notes from that period has tons of images and annotated screenshots dumped into them. I miss that in my Emacs workflow nowadays. My dream software would be pieces of Org Mode on a OneNote-like canvas, with support for easily pasting images and drawing on them (especially using a graphics tablet, or at...

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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md should be more popular than Org mode. It has been mentiond 1447 times since March 2021. 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.

Org mode mentions (173)

  • My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file
    Obligatory reference to Emacs Org-Mode [1]. Author's approach is basically Org-Mode with fewer helpers. Org-mode's power is that, at core, it's just a text file, with gradual augmentation. Then again, Org-Mode is a tool you must install, accessible through a limited list of clients (Emacs obviously, but also VSCode), and the power of OP's approach is that it requires no external tools. [1] https://orgmode.org. - Source: Hacker News / 9 days ago
  • Show HN: Heynote – A Dedicated Scratchpad for Developers
    This reminds me a lot of [Org Mode](https://orgmode.org/). Do you have plans to add other org-like features, like evaluating code blocks? I don't personally see myself moving away from org-mode, but it would be nice to have something to recommend to people who are reluctant to use emacs, even if it's only for a single application. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • How to combine daily journal with general database of people, places, things, etc.
    If you want to spare a couple of detours, you probably could start with Emacs Org-mode according to Greenspun's eleventh rule: "Any sufficiently complicated PIM or note-taking program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Org mode.". Source: 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Local Wysiwyg HTML Editor for Mac
    Wow, no one has recommended Org mode (https://orgmode.org). I started using Emacs nearly 20 years ago specifically because of Org. I use Org for all my static sites, note taking, to-do lists and calendar. Org has a lightweight markup language that has far more features than Markdown (e.g., plain text spreadsheets!), but the markup isn't visible to the extent that Markdown is in most editors. Emacs with Org files... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Think in Analog, Capture in Digital
    Just another reason for one to get into org-mode[1] and org-roam[2]. Combine this with the concept of Zettelkasten[3] and you have a wonderful way to organize and store all your notes and writings, and even a way to know at what point you should move your idea from analog to digital (based on it's maturity, e.g. "evergreen state"). 1. https://orgmode.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

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

What are some alternatives?

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

Todoist - Todoist is a to-do list that helps you get organized, at work and in life.

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.

Workflowy - A better way to organize your mind.

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

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

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