Joplin vs Obsidian: notes you own vs notes you rent

In Joplin vs Obsidian, pick Joplin if you want notes you fully own and can sync through your own server with end-to-end encryption, and pick Obsidian if you want the best linked-thinking experience and plugin ecosystem and are fine with a closed-source app. Joplin is open source (AGPL-3.0), free, and syncs natively to Joplin Server, Nextcloud, WebDAV or several cloud drives. Obsidian is free but proprietary, stores notes as plain Markdown files, and sells its own sync service at $4 a month billed annually as of October 2026. Both keep your notes on your devices; the difference is how much of the stack you control.

Joplin vs Obsidian at a glance

	Joplin	Obsidian
Licence	AGPL-3.0, open source	Proprietary, free
Price	Free; optional Joplin Cloud from €2.99/month	Free; Sync $4/month (annual), Publish $8/month (annual)
Storage	Local database; Markdown notes, export to files	Plain Markdown files in a folder (vault)
Self-hosted sync	Yes: Joplin Server, Nextcloud, WebDAV, S3 or a folder	No official option; Syncthing or community plugins
End-to-end encryption	Yes, for every sync target	Yes, in Obsidian Sync
Linking and graph	Note links; graph via plugins	Backlinks, graph view, canvas built in
Plugins	Yes, smaller ecosystem	Very large community plugin ecosystem
Web clipper	Official, for Chrome and Firefox	Official Web Clipper extension
Platforms	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, terminal	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS

Prices are as listed on each vendor's site as of October 2026.

Ownership: what "notes you own" means

Both apps are local-first. Your notes live on your device, and neither locks your content in a proprietary cloud. The ownership question is about the software and the sync layer.

Obsidian stores each note as a Markdown file in an ordinary folder. That is a strong form of ownership over content: any editor can open the files, and you can back them up with anything. But the app itself is closed source. You cannot audit it, fork it or keep it running if the company changes course, and the only official sync is a paid service.

Joplin is open source end to end. The desktop, mobile and terminal apps are AGPL-3.0, with about 56,600 GitHub stars and more than 2,000 commits in the last year. Notes are written in Markdown but stored in a local database, and you can export them as Markdown files at any time. Sync is built in and pluggable, so you choose where encrypted notes go.

Sync and self-hosting

This is where Joplin pulls ahead for self-hosters. It supports these sync targets out of the box:

• Joplin Server, the official self-hosted sync server, which runs in Docker with PostgreSQL
• Nextcloud or any WebDAV server
• S3-compatible object storage
• Dropbox, OneDrive or a local or network folder
• Joplin Cloud, the paid hosted service, from €2.99 a month (2 GB)

End-to-end encryption works with every target, so even a third-party cloud only stores ciphertext.

One licensing nuance: Joplin Server is not AGPL. It ships under the Joplin Server Personal Use License, which covers individuals. Businesses that want to self-host it buy Joplin Server Business, from €3.33 per user per month billed annually. Teams that prefer to stay fully open source can sync through Nextcloud or WebDAV instead.

Obsidian has no self-hosted sync of its own. Obsidian Sync costs $4 a month billed annually or $5 billed monthly and includes end-to-end encryption and version history. The self-hosting workarounds are well established:

• Syncthing syncs the vault folder peer to peer between your devices, including Android. See our Syncthing guide.
• Any file-sync tool, such as Nextcloud, can sync the vault folder.
• The community Self-hosted LiveSync plugin syncs through a CouchDB server you run.

These work, but they are add-ons you maintain, and iOS file sync is the usual weak spot.

Writing and linking

Obsidian is built for connected notes. Wikilinks, backlinks, the graph view, Canvas and a huge range of community plugins (task managers, Dataview queries, spaced repetition, publishing) make it the stronger tool for a personal knowledge base or "second brain." The editor is fast and handles large vaults well.

Joplin is organised around notebooks and tags, closer to Evernote. It supports links between notes, a rich-text or Markdown editor, attachments, to-dos, and a reliable web clipper. Plugins add features such as a backlinks panel or note graph, but the ecosystem is smaller. For many people coming from Evernote or OneNote, that structure is a feature, not a limitation.

Pricing

Both apps are free to use. Obsidian is free for commercial use too; its $50 per user per year commercial licence is optional support. You pay only if you want Obsidian Sync ($4 a month annually) or Obsidian Publish ($8 a month annually per site).

Joplin is free with any self-managed sync target. Joplin Cloud starts at €2.99 a month for 2 GB, and Pro is €5.99 a month for 30 GB with notebook sharing. Self-hosted Joplin Server is free for personal use.

Other open-source options

If neither fits, the note-taking category has strong open-source alternatives to Obsidian:

SilverBullet is a self-hosted, browser-based Markdown notebook with wikilinks and queries, the closest thing to a self-hosted Obsidian. Logseq is an open-source outliner with backlinks and a graph. TriliumNext Notes is a hierarchical knowledge base with its own sync server; see Joplin vs TriliumNext for a direct comparison.

Which should you choose?

• Choose Joplin if you want an open-source app, built-in encrypted sync to a server you control, a notebook structure familiar from Evernote, and no subscriptions.
• Choose Obsidian if linked notes, graph navigation and plugins matter most, plain Markdown files in a folder are your idea of ownership, and a closed-source app is acceptable.
• Choose SilverBullet or Logseq if you want Obsidian-style linking with an open-source licence.

Browse every open-source Obsidian alternative and Evernote alternative in the catalog to compare stars and activity side by side.