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Obsidian

Local-first knowledge base on a folder of Markdown files

Notes & Knowledge Base ★ 20.6k stars Easy setup Proprietary

Obsidian is a powerful personal knowledge base that works on a local folder of plain Markdown files. While the app is proprietary, your notes remain fully local and portable, and self-hosted sync is possible via plugins.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Plain Markdown file storage
  • Bidirectional links and graph view
  • Large community plugin ecosystem
  • Local-first and private

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Notes stay portable and local
  • Highly extensible

Trade-offs

  • Core app is closed source
  • Official sync is a paid service

Obsidian replaces

Self-hosted Evernote alternativesSelf-hosted Notion alternativesSelf-hosted OneNote alternatives

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