Obsidian vs Paperless-ngx
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?
Compare Obsidian with
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Compare Paperless-ngx with
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Feature Obsidian Paperless-ngx Category Notes & Knowledge Base E-books & Media Library License Proprietary GPL-3.0 Language JavaScript Python Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 2,048 MB Deployment binary docker, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 20,632 ★ 44,077 First released 2020 2022 Replaces Evernote, Notion, OneNote Evernote, DEVONthink
Why pick each one
Choose Obsidian if… Notes stay portable and local Highly extensible Obsidian details
Frequently asked questions Is Obsidian or Paperless-ngx better? Neither is universally better. Paperless-ngx has the larger community, while Obsidian is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Obsidian and Paperless-ngx free and open-source? Yes. Obsidian is licensed under Proprietary and Paperless-ngx under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Obsidian and Paperless-ngx with Docker? Obsidian: check the project docs for container support. Paperless-ngx: yes.