13 Best Obsidian Alternatives in 2025

Obsidian has earned its reputation as a go-to note-taking tool for students, professionals, and knowledge workers.

With its flexible design and powerful linking system, Obsidian makes organizing your thoughts and building a network of interconnected ideas feel effortless.

But here’s the catch: Obsidian doesn’t come with built-in AI. If you’re after smarter, automated workflows to help boost productivity and streamline tasks, you’ll need to rely on plugins or third-party integrations—something that can quickly become complex. 

The good news? 🤔

Many Obsidian alternatives offer similar functionality and integrate AI to make note-taking and task management even more efficient.

In this guide, we’ll explore the top 13 Obsidian alternatives that blend ease of use, powerful features, and AI-driven capabilities. Let’s get started! 🚀

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⏰ 60-Second Summary

Here’s a quick overview of the best Obsidian alternatives:

• ClickUp: Best for AI writing, note-taking, and doc management
• Notion: Best for brainstorming ideas and centralizing team documentation
• Joplin: Best for personal knowledge management
• Evernote: Best for organizing ideas and tasks across projects
• Apple Notes: Best for idea jotting and syncing across iOS devices
• Logseq: Best for visually representing interconnected ideas
• AnyType: Best for note-taking and visualizing links between notes
• Google Keep: Best for keeping track of ideas and checklists
• OneNote: Best for creating digital notebooks and organizing notes
• Roam Research: Best for organizing interrelated ideas and complex research tasks
• Coda: Best for streamlining project management with visual representation
• Reflect: Best for summarizing notes and creating content
• Mem.ai: Best for encrypting data and grouping related notes

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What Should You Look for in an Obsidian Alternative?

When searching for the best Obsidian alternative, prioritize features that enhance your ability to take, classify, and reference your notes for your personal knowledge base. This will enhance your knowledge-management experience. 

Here are some essential ones to consider:

• Centralized dashboard: Choose a note-taking tool that consolidates all your notes, lists, tasks, and projects for streamlined organization and quick access to critical information
• Knowledge management system: Look for tools with features like knowledge graphs and linked notes to visualize and organize your ideas for better personal knowledge management
• Voice and audio notes: Select a note-taking app that lets you record voice notes or attach audio notes for capturing thoughts during meetings or on the go
• Real-time collaboration: Prioritize apps that support team collaboration and enable you to share, edit, and comment on notes with team members in real time
• Integration and file attachment: Choose tools that integrate with popular platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox Paper and allow you to attach files, images, and code snippets effortlessly
• Archive and retrieval options: Ensure the app lets you archive notes and easily retrieve them when needed, maintaining an organized internal knowledge base

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The 13 Best Obsidian Alternatives to Explore

Explore the 13 best AI-driven Obsidian alternatives designed to enhance personal note-taking, knowledge management, note summarization, task management, team collaboration, and much more:

1. ClickUp (Best for AI writing, note-taking, and doc management)

ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform that brings teams together to plan projects, organize information, and collaborate seamlessly. Fully customizable with just a few clicks, ClickUp helps teams of all sizes work more efficiently, reaching new productivity levels.

Unlike Obsidian, ClickUp Docs allow real-time or asynchronous collaboration on your notes and other content, ensuring everyone can access the latest information. Whether you’re jotting down quick meeting notes or creating detailed action plans, ClickUp Docs keep you connected to your tasks and projects for improved accountability. 

It’s the perfect document management and note-taking tool for teams who need to manage projects, track changes, and keep their documentation aligned with their workflow.

ClickUp Notepad is also a handy tool for quickly jotting down scattered ideas, organizing them with checklists, and turning them into actionable tasks. It offers rich editing features, allowing you to format your notes with colors, headers, and bullet points to keep them visually organized.

Additionally, ClickUp Brain makes you more productive with AI-driven automation. It streamlines content creation and automates task updates, meeting summaries, and more, helping you work smarter, not harder.

It can transcribe video conversations during asynchronous meetings, converting them into accessible, searchable notes with ClickUp Clips. This makes it effortless to follow up on action items and gather insights—without the need for manual note-taking.

It can also catch you up on missed conversations, generate automatic daily or weekly standups, and summarize conversation threads as well as documents for complete context.

ClickUp also offers various customizable templates to elevate your note-taking experience. For example, the ClickUp Meeting Notes Template helps you capture key discussions and action items with ease, ensuring your meetings are organized and actionable. 

ClickUp’s Cornell Notes Template, on the other hand, provides a structured note-taking format that enhances learning, helping you retain and review important information.

Additionally, the ClickUp Knowledge Base Template offers a framework for teams to create and organize a digital library of information. It includes sections for knowledge articles, FAQs, and essential resources, making it easy to share and access critical information across your team.

ClickUp best features

• Access version history and revert docs to previous versions if needed
• Create and manage checklists, note ideas, and add reminders for later within ClickUp Notepad
• Integrate with popular tools like Google Workspace, Slack, and more with ClickUp Integrations
• Write blogs and newsletters, generate ideas for social media campaigns, and automate repetitive tasks using ClickUp Brain
• Search for content, comments, conversations, and tasks seamlessly across your ClickUp workspace and integrated apps via ClickUp’s Connected Search
• Visualize ideas and brainstorm together with your team using ClickUp Whiteboards

ClickUp limitations

• While the mobile app offers core features, it may not have the full range of functionality available on the desktop version
• The breadth of the tool’s features can pose a learning curve for new users, especially those who are less tech-savvy

ClickUp pricing

• Free forever
• Unlimited: $7/month per user
• Business: $12/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing
• ClickUp Brain: Add to any paid plan for $7/month per member

ClickUp ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (9,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,000+ reviews)

2. Notion (Best for brainstorming ideas and centralizing team documentation)

Notion provides a unified workspace for organizing notes, tasks, documents, and projects seamlessly. You can tailor it to your needs by creating custom layouts, databases, and dashboards.

Notion’s AI features further optimize your work by suggesting edits to your content and generating fresh ideas, saving you valuable time and effort. This makes it a powerful organizational tool and a smart assistant that helps you take notes more efficiently.

Notion best features

• Manage tasks, projects, and data in one central hub
• Get AI writing assistance, generate AI insights, and make data-driven decisions
• Use Kanban boards, calendars, and timelines to structure your workflow

Notion limitations

• Customizations can be challenging to create and maintain for long-term use
• Search functionality and navigation are not as intuitive as you’d expect

Notion pricing

• Free forever
• Plus: $12/month per seat
• Business: $18/month per seat
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Notion ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (5,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (2,000+ reviews)

3. Joplin (Best for personal knowledge management)

Joplin is a powerful, open-source note-taking app renowned for its flexibility and robust privacy features. Unlike Obsidian, it supports both personal knowledge management and team collaboration.

Users can apply effective note-taking strategies by creating linked notes, to-do lists, and rich text documents while integrating multimedia like audio notes and images. 

Its AI capabilities include summarizing notes and automatic transcription, streamlining knowledge organization, and task management. These features cater to both individual users and teams looking to enhance productivity and stay organized.

Joplin best features

• Take markdown notes with rich formatting for detailed documentation
• Clip web pages to save research directly to your note system
• Collaborate in real-time with teams for shared project management

Joplin limitations

• Limited customization compared to other note-taking apps
• Users have noted that its interface feels less polished compared to Notion

Joplin pricing

• Basic: €2.99€/month per user
• Business: €5.99/month per user
• Teams: €7.99/month per user (minimum two users required)

Joplin ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A 
• Capterra: N/A (Not enough reviews)

4. Evernote (Best for organizing ideas and tasks across projects)

Evernote is a good choice if you’re seeking a versatile, user-friendly tool to organize your thoughts, track tasks, and boost productivity. It simplifies personal knowledge management, project task coordination, and research.

Unlike Obsidian, Evernote offers powerful features such as AI transcription, advanced search capabilities, and seamless device syncing. Its AI Edit function helps you write, summarize content, translate text, and even perform spell checks, making your workflow more efficient and streamlined.

Evernote best features

• Sync across devices and access all your notes on mobile, desktop, or web effortlessly
• Convert images, audio, or video into editable text for quick data input
• Format your notes with headings, highlights, and lists for clarity

Evernote limitations

• Limited to one device on the free version
• Limited markdown support and graph view for networked thinking

Evernote pricing

• Free forever
• Personal: $14/month per user
• Professional: $17/month per user
• Teams: $24/month per user

Evernote ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.4/5 (2,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.4/5 (8,000+ reviews)

5. Apple Notes (Best for idea jotting and syncing across iOS devices)

Apple Notes is a user-friendly note-taking tool exclusive to the Apple ecosystem. It’s ideal for creating, organizing, and managing notes effectively on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. 

Its features include rich text formatting, handwriting tools with Apple Pencil support, and seamless iCloud syncing that allows you to access your notes across all your devices. 

The AI-powered search helps you quickly find specific notes or content, making Apple Notes a powerful tool for personal knowledge management.

Apple Notes best features

• Automatically sync notes between iOS, iPadOS, and macOS using iCloud
• Add sketches, photos, scanned documents, and links to enrich your notes
• Share notes with team members for real-time edits and collaboration

Apple Notes limitations

• The tool lacks advanced features like markdown support
• It lacks task management capabilities 

Apple Notes pricing

• Free forever

Apple Notes ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

6. Logseq (Best for visually representing interconnected ideas)

Like most note-taking apps, Logseq is designed to help you organize and manage your knowledge effectively. 

What sets this AI tool apart is its outline-based structure and linked references that allow you to create dynamic internal links between notes. For instance, you can link meeting notes to project tasks for seamless tracking. This Logseq feature is great for building a personal knowledge graph, visualizing connections between ideas, and structuring tasks or projects. 

Logseq best features

• Summarize notes, organize knowledge bases, and optimize workflows with AI tools
• Organize notes visually with a graph view for better context
• Manage tasks directly within notes using this markdown note-taking app

Logseq limitations

• It’s not ideal for real-time collaborative editing and teamwork
• Some users have reported that its built-in sync feature is unreliable, which can hinder productivity

Logseq pricing

• Free forever

Logseq ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

7. AnyType (Best for note-taking and visualizing links between notes)

AnyType is a versatile, offline-first note-taking and project management tool designed to help you organize your thoughts, tasks, and projects in a highly visual and interconnected way. It combines features like graph view, templates, and custom “types” (e.g., tasks, books, contacts) to create a dynamic knowledge base.

AnyType’s AI features, such as automated task linking and knowledge graph generation, simplify managing complex workflows, making it a strong competitor to Obsidian.

AnyType best features

• Create interconnected content for a second brain knowledge base
• Use offline-first mode to access and edit notes anytime, anywhere
• Customize note-taking templates for particular tasks or workflows, unlike other apps

AnyType limitations

• The free plan offers only 1 GB of network storage, which may be restrictive for some users
• Unlike some competitors, it focuses solely on note-taking and lacks the broader features of an all-in-one productivity tool

AnyType pricing

• Explorer: Free 
• Builder: $99/per year
• Co-creator: $299 (for three years)
• Business: Custom pricing

AnyType ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

8. Google Keep (Best for keeping track of ideas and checklists)

Google Keep is a simple yet powerful app that allows you to create and manage tasks, notes, and checklists across all your devices. 

Its user-friendly interface makes it ideal for quickly organizing thoughts and staying on top of your to-do lists.

One of Google Keep’s standout features is its AI-powered “Help Me Create a List” tool, which leverages Google’s Gemini AI to generate customized lists. Whether it’s a “grocery list for a vegetarian family” or a “packing list for a picnic,” this feature helps you quickly capture and organize ideas. 

Google Keep best features

• Create voice notes that automatically transcribe text for easy reference
• Organize thoughts visually using color-coded labels and categories
• Add location-based reminders for tasks like groceries or errands

Google Keep limitations

• The tool offers no advanced formatting for plain text editing or intricate layouts
• It doesn’t offer advanced note-taking and project management features for scaling tasks

Google Keep pricing

• Free forever

Google Keep ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (200+ reviews)

9. OneNote (Best for creating digital notebooks and organizing notes)

OneNote is a comprehensive digital note-taking tool from Microsoft, perfect for managing notes, tasks, and projects. It allows you to create multiple notebooks, organize them into sections, and structure your data hierarchically.

With a wide range of formatting options, templates, and features like audio recording and tagging, OneNote is ideal for brainstorming, task management, and project planning. Its real-time collaboration capabilities enable team members to edit notebooks simultaneously, making it a strong alternative to Obsidian for team-based workflows.

OneNote best features

• Use OCR technology to search text within images
• Collaborate in real-time with team members on shared notebooks
• Clip web pages directly to your notebooks for research

OneNote limitations

• The free version of the tool offers limited storage of 5GB, which might be restrictive for some users
• It offers no advanced task management features like dependencies or Gantt charts

OneNote pricing

• Free Forever
• Microsoft 365 Personal: $6.99/month per user
• Microsoft 365 Family:  $9.99/month per user

OneNote ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (1800+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (1700+ reviews)

10. Roam Research (Best for Organizing interrelated ideas and complex research tasks)

With Roam Research, you can create interconnected notes that visualize relationships between ideas. It also serves as a basic project management tool, suitable for researchers, writers, and team members handling complex tasks, fostering non-linear thinking. 

Roam also integrates AI to help summarize notes and generate insights, ensuring mobile users can stay productive. Its advanced feature set, like daily notes for journaling and block references to reuse specific text, makes it ideal for synthesizing vast information.

Roam Research best features

• Organize research effortlessly using tagging and bidirectional links
• Access block references to reuse or quote text across projects
• Generate structured insights from plain text editor notes

Roam Research limitations

• It offers no free plan, making it inaccessible for personal use
• Some users have noted that it lacks diverse formatting options for customization

Roam Research pricing

• Pro: $15/month per user
• Believer: $500/ per user (for five years)

Roam Research ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

11. Coda (Best for streamlining project management with visual representation)

Coda brings the simplicity of a plain text editor with advanced features to help individuals and teams manage tasks, projects, and documents seamlessly. 

Its unique ability to combine text, tables, and integrations into a single note makes it ideal for tasks like tracking projects, creating visual representations, and managing team activities.

Coda’s AI-powered features, such as workflow automation and data summarization, boost productivity and minimize manual effort, making it an excellent tool for efficiently handling a wide range of tasks.

Coda best features

• Build custom docs, using building blocks like tables and visuals to create tailored solutions
• Integrate with tools like Gmail, Slack, or Jira seamlessly
• Automate workflows and create automated updates and notifications for recurring tasks

Coda limitations

• Its formatting and personalization features can feel restrictive
• Users have noted that some features aren’t optimized for mobile devices

Coda pricing

• Free Forever
• Pro: $12/month per user
• Team: $36/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Coda ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (460+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (90+ reviews)

12. Reflect (Best for summarizing notes and creating content)

If you’re looking for a note-taking tool that doubles as a productivity multiplier, Reflect is worth exploring. It offers seamless synchronization across devices and integrates AI to transform your notes into actionable insights.

With features like summarization, grammar improvement, content rephrasing, note translation, and outline generation, you can quickly turn ideas into structured content This makes it ideal for students, professionals, and creative thinkers who need their notes to work harder.

Reflect best features

• Summarize notes for quick review and actionable takeaways
• Organize ideas effortlessly using linked notes and tags
• Rephrase and simplify writing to improve clarity

Reflect limitations

• No free plan for individual users
• No advanced collaboration tools for team use

Reflect pricing

• Monthly: $10/month per user (billed annually)

Reflect ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

13. Mem.ai (Best for encrypting data and grouping related notes)

Mem.ai is an AI-powered note-taking tool that simplifies organizing thoughts and tasks. Its advanced AI features allow you to group related notes and suggest connections. 

Whether you’re managing personal projects or working with a team, Mem.ai streamlines productivity by automating manual tasks like categorizing and retrieving notes.

Mem.ai secures your data using encryption and two-factor authentication. It also provides effortless search functionality, allowing you to instantly access notes using Smart Search, even without remembering specific keywords.

Mem.ai best features

• Collaborate in real time with shared workspaces for team productivity
• Integrate with key tools like Google Calendar, Slack, and Zapier for a better workflow
• Generate insights easily with Mem Chat, which assists in brainstorming and decision-making

Mem.ai limitations

• No official support for non-English languages, as its AI is optimized for English only
• No free plan; requires users to subscribe to a costly paid option

Mem.ai pricing

• Mem: $14.99/month per user
• Mem Teams: Custom pricing

Mem.ai ratings and reviews

• G2: N/A
• Capterra: N/A

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Optimize Your Note-Taking Process With ClickUp

Note-taking is essential for staying organized, whether you’re working solo or with a team. While Obsidian is a popular choice for minimalists, it lacks advanced features for workflow automation and team collaboration.

For a more advanced solution, ClickUp offers a comprehensive set of tools beyond basic note-taking. It helps you brainstorm, organize ideas, and manage projects effortlessly while automating tasks, sparking creativity, and boosting team collaboration—all within one platform.

So why wait? Sign up on ClickUp today and discover a more efficient way to work!

Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.

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