Obsidian

What is Obsidian?

Obsidian is a note-taking and knowledge-management app built by Obsidian.md (founded in Toronto in 2020) that stores every note as a plain-text Markdown file on your own device. Instead of a cloud database, your notes live in a folder called a “vault,” which means you can open, search, or back them up with any text editor, script, or version-control tool, independent of whether Obsidian itself still exists in ten years.

Its core appeal is that notes stay private on your device, accessible even offline, with no one else — not even Obsidian — able to read them. The app is built around bidirectional linking and a visual graph view, and it’s extended through a large community plugin ecosystem covering everything from task management to citation tools.

At Smart Remote Gigs, we looked at whether a local-first tool like Obsidian actually holds up for a freelancer juggling multiple clients — where a permanent personal archive matters — versus where the lack of built-in collaboration becomes a real bottleneck.

🚀 Key Features for Freelancers

• Local Markdown files: Every note is a standalone .md file freelancers own outright — useful for anyone who’s been burned by a note app raising prices or shutting down and locking their archive behind it.
• Bidirectional linking and graph view: Freelancers managing research, client notes, and project documentation can link related notes and visually trace connections instead of digging through folders.
• Community plugin ecosystem: With 1,000+ community plugins, freelancers can add task management, database-style queries (Dataview), or Git-based sync — building the exact toolkit a specific workflow needs rather than paying for bundled features they won’t use.
• Obsidian Sync (paid add-on): Keeps a vault updated across a laptop, desktop, and phone with end-to-end encryption — the practical way to work from client notes on the go without relying on a third-party cloud folder.
• Obsidian Publish (paid add-on): Turns a vault, or part of one, into a public website with its own graph view and full-text search — a lightweight option for a freelancer who wants a public knowledge base or portfolio notes without a separate site builder.

⚖️ Pros & Cons

💰 Pricing Breakdown (Is it worth it?)

Obsidian’s free plan is about as generous as free tiers get: the full app, unlimited vaults, and every core feature and plugin, with no sign-up required. The optional paid pieces are Obsidian Sync, for keeping notes updated across devices with end-to-end encryption, and Obsidian Publish, for turning a vault into a public website.

For a solo freelancer who’s fine self-managing sync through a cloud-storage folder, Obsidian can realistically cost nothing. Where it gets real is commercial use: the free license only covers personal use, so a freelancer running client work through Obsidian technically needs the $50/year commercial license on top of anything else.

⚔️ The Kill-Matrix: Obsidian vs Competitors

Obsidian’s real competition splits two ways: cloud-first, collaboration-heavy tools like Notion, and legacy note-taking apps like Evernote that have leaned harder into subscriptions in recent years.

🗣️ What Real Users Are Saying

[See sourced reviews below]

💬 Have You Used Obsidian?

This review is built from research, not a lab test — if you’ve actually run your freelance notes and client work through Obsidian, drop your real experience in the comments below. We read every one, and strong reader input gets folded into future updates of this review.