Obsidian

In a 17,000-note vault built over several years, the question is never "where did I put that?", it's whether the tool that holds those notes will exist in five years, and whether you can get them out if it doesn't. Obsidian was designed around one answer to that question: your notes are plain .md files on your own disk, readable by any text editor, backed up however you want, and completely independent of Obsidian the company. That architecture drives almost every consequential decision in the product.

This page covers Obsidian as it stands in April 2026: what changed with the February 2025 pricing restructure, what the Bases feature actually delivers in beta, how AI works (and where it doesn't), and a specific security incident from April 16, 2026 that every plugin-using Obsidian user should understand.

What Obsidian actually is in April 2026

Obsidian launched in public beta on March 13, 2020, built by Erica Xu and Shida Li, who previously created Dynalist, a browser-based outliner. In February 2023, Steph Ango (the designer of the "Minimal" theme) became CEO. The company is bootstrapped, operates as Dynalist Inc., and has publicly committed to never taking venture capital. The entire product is funded by optional paid add-ons: Obsidian Sync, Obsidian Publish, and Catalyst supporter licenses.

The core mechanics: notes live in a "vault", any folder on your filesystem. Files are plain .md files. [[wiki-style links]] between notes create a bidirectional graph. A built-in graph view visualizes all connections. No account is required. No telemetry runs by default. The app works fully offline.

As of April 2026, the community plugin library has grown to 2,700+ independently developed plugins. Significant core features shipped in recent versions include:

• Canvas (December 2022): An infinite spatial whiteboard for arranging and connecting notes, cards, and images. Now used heavily for project mapping and visual thinking workflows.
• Bases (v1.10.0, October 1, 2025, Catalyst early access): A native database-view plugin that replaces the Dataview plugin's query language with a GUI, filtering, sorting, grouping, and summarizing notes using YAML frontmatter properties. Added group-by, table summaries, list view, and Maps in v1.10.0. Still in Catalyst beta as of April 2026 but broadly adopted by users who had previously relied on community plugins for database-style views.

Obsidian itself is closed-source, this is a common misconception worth correcting. The plugin SDK is open and the plugin ecosystem is largely open source, and your note files are permanently yours in an open format. But the Obsidian application code is proprietary. For users to whom true open-source matters at the application level, Logseq is the alternative to evaluate (more on that below).

Where Obsidian sits versus Notion and Logseq

The migration direction from Notion to Obsidian is common enough that it has its own well-worn template in r/ObsidianMD. The friction points are real and structural, not cosmetic.

Obsidian vs. Notion

The fundamental difference is data ownership. Obsidian stores plain .md files on your disk. Notion stores everything in a proprietary cloud database, exporting produces a flat directory that loses most relational structure. On collaboration: Notion has real-time multi-user editing, comments, and permissions; Obsidian has none and is architecturally a single-user tool. On AI: Notion AI moved to the Business tier ($20/user/month) in May 2025; Obsidian's AI is plugin-mediated but can run entirely locally. On offline: Obsidian works without a network; Notion degrades meaningfully offline.

The Bases beta has narrowed Notion's longtime database advantage. Patrick Hearn covered the rollout for XDA Developers (July 24, 2025), noting Bases was closing the gap on structured views, though Obsidian still lacks board, timeline, and gallery view types as of April 2026.

"Your data is yours. You can open your notes in any text editor, back them up however you want. [Notion] is beautiful and powerful, no doubt about that. But it's also a closed system. Your notes live in their cloud."

. Kevin T'Syen, Medium, on switching from Notion to Obsidian

Obsidian vs. Logseq

This comparison matters more technically. Both are local-first, markdown-based, and designed for personal knowledge management. The critical divergence is the data model. Obsidian is document-first: notes are free-form pages, and structure comes from the author. Logseq is outliner-first: every line is a "block" that can be individually referenced, transcluded, and queried. This is not a superficial UI difference, it shapes how knowledge gets organized and retrieved. Logseq's block transclusion lets you pull the same paragraph into multiple notes without copying; Obsidian requires a plugin (Breadcrumbs, Templater) to approximate this.

On open source: Logseq is fully free and open source. Obsidian is not, at the application level. On sync: Logseq uses git-based sync or its own Sync service; Obsidian offers Sync at $4-5/month with end-to-end encryption. On databases: Obsidian now has Bases (native GUI); Logseq has a query syntax. For daily journaling and networked thought workflows, Logseq's block model is often preferred. For long-form writing, structured vaults, and users who want a document-based experience, Obsidian typically wins.

How AI actually works inside Obsidian

Obsidian is an AI-adjacent productivity tool, not an AI app. The core product contains no AI features. Every AI capability requires finding, installing, and configuring a community plugin, plus either providing an API key to an external LLM provider or running a local model. Steph Ango has been publicly skeptical of AI integrations that compromise privacy, and the "file over app" philosophy extends to AI: users choose if, how, and where AI touches their notes.

The four most-used AI plugins as of April 2026:

• Smart Connections (Brian Petro): Uses local embeddings to surface semantically related notes as you write. RAG-based retrieval over your personal knowledge base without cloud dependency. The core is free; the Pro tier ($299/year) adds in-editor suggestions, mobile support, and Bases integration. Over 10,000 GitHub stars. This is the closest Obsidian gets to AI-powered knowledge retrieval.
• Copilot for Obsidian (Logan Yang): A full chat interface inside Obsidian with Vault QA mode, natural-language queries against your vault using RAG. Supports OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, LM Studio, and Ollama. The free tier covers basic chat; Plus adds agent tools and long-term memory. Over 10,000 GitHub stars and actively maintained.
• Text Generator: Open-source plugin for LLM-based content generation inside notes, outlines, summaries, continuations, and custom prompts based on current note context. Supports OpenAI and local models. Free.
• Local LLM via Ollama: Copilot and Smart Connections both support Ollama as a model backend, enabling fully offline AI inference using models like Llama 3, Mistral, or Phi-3. Users running privacy-sensitive research can keep all data on-device.

The honest framing: setting up any of these requires comfort with API keys, model selection, and sometimes local inference software. The setup friction is real.

"It's not the easiest thing to set up; it takes a bit of know-how, but LM Studio is approachable. Privacy + functionality is what I call a win."

. Patrick Hearn, XDA Developers, August 7, 2025, on building a local LLM setup with Obsidian

The dominant AI use pattern inside Obsidian is retrieval, using embeddings to surface connections between existing notes. Generative use (drafting new content) is less common because Obsidian's markdown editor is less fluid for generation workflows than dedicated AI writing tools. For users to whom data privacy is the priority, the local-first AI stack. Obsidian + Smart Connections + Ollama, is a genuine, if technically demanding, alternative to cloud-dependent AI writing environments.

The PHANTOMPULSE incident and other plugin-trust risks

On April 16, 2026, Elastic Security Labs published a report on campaign REF6598, in which threat actors used Obsidian's community plugin sync to deliver a Windows remote access trojan called PHANTOMPULSE, targeting individuals in the financial and cryptocurrency sectors. The attack exploited user trust in the plugin ecosystem, not a vulnerability in Obsidian's code.

Attackers posed as venture capital representatives on LinkedIn and Telegram, building credibility before directing targets to open a shared Obsidian vault and enable "Install community plugins" sync. This caused the Shell Commands plugin and a cosmetic Hider plugin, pre-staged in the attacker's vault, to silently sync and execute, with no further user interaction required. PHANTOMPULSE used the Ethereum blockchain for command-and-control resolution, encoding the C2 address in blockchain transactions to resist traditional sinkholing. On macOS, attackers used obfuscated AppleScript droppers with Telegram as a fallback C2.

No patch was issued because no code flaw existed. The fix is behavioral: never sync a vault from an untrusted source, and vet any plugin requesting shell or network access before installing. The Shell Commands plugin is legitimate and widely used, the vector was a malicious actor pre-staging it in a shared vault. The attack surface is social, not technical. The incident drew coverage from The Hacker News and GBHackers and is now a reference case in plugin-trust discussions.

Who Obsidian is for

Obsidian attracts a specific kind of user: self-directed, systems-oriented, and willing to invest time in configuration in exchange for long-term control over their data. The most upvoted threads in r/ObsidianMD are workflow discussions, not support requests. That tells you the community's center of gravity.

The profile of a well-matched Obsidian user: a researcher, academic, journalist, or writer who accumulates and cross-references large bodies of notes over years; a developer comfortable with markdown, YAML frontmatter, and plugin configuration; a privacy-focused user who does not want notes on a vendor's server; a long-term PKM practitioner who has already migrated through Evernote, Notion, or Roam and wants data permanence above all else.

The profile of a poorly matched user: a team that needs real-time collaboration (Obsidian's single-user architecture makes this structurally impossible); a non-technical user who wants a polished, zero-setup experience (Notion or Apple Notes is a better starting point); someone who primarily works on mobile (desktop experience is dramatically better); and anyone who wants AI to do the organizational work for them (Tana or Mem.ai serve that use case directly).

The commercial license change on February 20, 2025 eliminated a real friction point for business users. Organizations with two or more employees previously needed to pay $50/user/year for commercial use. Obsidian removed that requirement, citing user confusion, and made the app free for any use. An optional commercial support tier ($50/user/year) still exists but carries no feature differences.

The performance ceiling on mobile is a documented real-world limitation. A forum post from March 2025 documented an iPhone 14 Pro freezing entirely with a 40,000-note vault, unable to interact with anything on launch. The same vault ran acceptably on Windows PC and iPad. Steph Ango acknowledged in December 2025 that mobile startup time had been a known problem, and claimed improvement to under 500ms for most vaults. For large, long-term vaults, mobile remains the weak point.