SHSelfHostIndex

Obsidian vs MarkText Workspace

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
OB Obsidian Local-first knowledge base on a folder of Markdown files VS MA MarkText Workspace Self-hosted markdown document workspace
FeatureObsidianMarkText Workspace
CategoryNotes & Knowledge BaseOffice Suites
LicenseProprietaryMIT
LanguageJavaScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentbinarydocker, source
GitHub stars★ 20,632★ 12,572
First released20202022
ReplacesEvernote, Notion, OneNoteDropbox Paper, Notion

Why pick each one

Choose Obsidian if…

  • Notes stay portable and local
  • Highly extensible
Obsidian details

Choose MarkText Workspace if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 12.6k GitHub stars
MarkText Workspace details

Frequently asked questions

Is Obsidian or MarkText Workspace better?

Neither is universally better. Obsidian has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Obsidian and MarkText Workspace free and open-source?

Yes. Obsidian is licensed under Proprietary and MarkText Workspace under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Obsidian and MarkText Workspace with Docker?

Obsidian: check the project docs for container support. MarkText Workspace: yes.

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