Most people wanting an Obsidian alternative still like Obsidian. They like it on the laptop where they set it up. What wore them down is everything around it: the sync that is a separate subscription, the phone that opens a vault three seconds late, the six plugins holding the task system together, and the fact that there is no way to open a note from a borrowed computer.
Obsidian is a superb local editor with an ecosystem bolted on. If the bolting is the part you enjoy, nothing else comes close. If it isn't, the alternative you want is one where sync and the browser are simply part of the account.
What an Obsidian setup actually costs to run
The app is free. The system around the app is where the money and the evenings go. Figures below are from Obsidian's own pricing and sync pages.
| the job | how Obsidian does it | what it costs |
|---|---|---|
| the editor itself | free, no sign-up required | nothing |
| sync between devices | Obsidian Sync Standard | $4 per month billed annually, so $48 a year, for 1 GB, one vault, a 5 MB maximum file size and one month of version history |
| a bigger vault or longer history | Sync Plus | $8 per month billed annually, so $96 a year, for 10 GB, ten vaults, 200 MB files and twelve months of history |
| reading notes in a browser | no private web client exists | Publish is $8 per site per month billed annually, and it publishes to the public web |
| tasks with dates | a community plugin | free, plus the setup and the upkeep |
| a today view | a second plugin and a query you write | free, plus the setup and the upkeep |
| early builds and a badge | Catalyst | $25 one-time |
| use inside an organisation | a commercial licence, which the pricing FAQ says outright you are not required to buy | $50 per user per year |
Every figure there is in US dollars. The 5 MB maximum file size on Sync Standard is the row people trip over. One scanned contract or a screen recording and you're either on Sync Plus at $96 a year or back to syncing a folder by hand.
Local files are the best and the hardest part
A vault is a folder of Markdown files. That is a genuinely excellent decision, and it's the reason Obsidian users are so hard to convert: the notes are readable in any text editor, greppable from a terminal, and they survive the company disappearing. An app that keeps your data in an account cannot make that promise, and init.Tasks keeps your data in an account.
The cost arrives the moment there is a second device. Files on a disk do not sync themselves, so you pick one of three routes and each has a bill. Obsidian Sync is the paid one, and it's the only one that understands vaults rather than files. iCloud or Dropbox is cheaper and produces conflicted copies when two devices edit the same note. Git is free and correct, and it means resolving merge conflicts on a phone, which nobody does twice.
None of this is Obsidian's fault. It's the arithmetic of local-first storage, and it's the trade you accepted when you chose files you own. init.Tasks makes the opposite trade: data lives in your account with realtime sync, so it's on the laptop, the phone and the browser without you arranging anything, and there's no folder to back up because there's no folder.
The plugin tax
Obsidian's community plugin catalogue is enormous and mostly free, which sounds like pure upside until you count what a task setup needs. Dated to-dos, a today view, recurring items, a kanban if you want one, and a query language to tie them together. That's four or five plugins, each with its own syntax, each maintained by one person in their spare time.
They break. Not often, and rarely badly, but an update lands and a query returns nothing, and the fix is a forum thread. Meanwhile the thing you actually wanted was a list of what's due on Thursday.
There's a deeper mismatch too. A note-first app treats a to-do as a line of text with a marker on it, so a start date and a deadline are two bits of syntax rather than two fields, and nothing enforces the difference. Keeping "I can begin Monday" separate from "this is due Monday" matters more than it sounds, and it's the sort of thing an app either models or doesn't. If you want the graph-versus-structure argument in full, Notion versus Obsidian covers it, and Logseq versus Obsidian covers the outliner variant.
There is no web client
This is the gap that sends the most people looking. Obsidian is a desktop and mobile application, and there is no official way to open your vault in a browser. Publish exists, but it does a different job — it turns a set of notes into a public website, which is the opposite of quietly checking a private note from a machine that isn't yours.
For some people that's fine, even preferable. For anyone on a locked-down work laptop, or borrowing a machine, or wanting to add one line from a Chromebook, it's the end of the conversation.
Where Obsidian wins
Several things here are not close.
Ownership. Plain files, no account required, working entirely offline, with no company able to change the terms on you. That's a real guarantee and init.Tasks does not offer it — data lives in a synced account, and the honest version is that you're trusting a service.
The plugin ecosystem. Canvas, graph view, dataview queries, spaced repetition, whiteboards, a Zotero bridge. Whatever your workflow is, someone has built most of it, and it's free.
Platform reach. Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. init.Tasks runs on iOS, macOS and web, so Linux and Android users can stop here.
And for pure note-taking, Obsidian is better than what I'm describing. Backlinks, aliases, transclusion and the graph are real thinking tools, not decoration. A personal knowledge management app built around linked notes does something a project structure genuinely cannot.
How to move without abandoning the vault
- Don't delete anything. The vault is a folder; keep it, keep Obsidian, and stop paying for Sync if that's the part you're cutting.
- Separate the two halves. Notes that are thinking stay in Obsidian. Notes that are really project material move.
- List your live projects from the last month of file changes. Sorting the vault by modified date is a more honest inventory than your memory.
- Rebuild the areas first, projects second, to-dos last. Four to six areas.
- Convert plugin-based tasks by hand rather than in bulk. Half of them are stale and the conversion is where you find out.
- Give it a month before cancelling anything, and keep one long note in the vault recording what you moved.
If your vault had grown into a project tracker with a wiki attached, the Notion route is the closer comparison to read next.
init.Tasks looks like a terminal and behaves like one: 23 themes, keyboard-first navigation on web and Mac, and a to-do list and a second brain sharing one account across iOS, macOS and web. Notes, links and files attach to any project. An MCP connection is coming in september for anyone who wants an assistant reading and filing on their behalf.
Nothing to download, nothing to install. Put your name on the waitlist and invites land in september.
FAQ
Is there a free Obsidian alternative?
Several, though they charge you somewhere else. Logseq and Joplin are free and open, with Joplin offering sync you configure yourself. Apple Notes is free and syncs, but has no linked-notes model. init.Tasks is free while in beta with pricing undecided, so treat it as a candidate on the list rather than a settled free option.
Do I have to pay for Obsidian sync?
Not necessarily, but the free routes cost you in other ways. Obsidian Sync is $4 per month billed annually, which is $48 a year for 1 GB, one vault and a month of version history. iCloud, Dropbox and Git all work without paying Obsidian, and all three will eventually hand you a conflicted copy or a merge conflict to resolve on a phone.
Does Obsidian have a web version?
No. Obsidian runs on desktop and mobile only, and there is no browser client for your own vault. Obsidian Publish turns selected notes into a public website, which is a publishing tool rather than a private way in. If browser access matters to you, that alone narrows the field a long way.
Is Obsidian good for task management?
It can be, once you assemble it. Dated tasks, a today view and recurring items all come from community plugins, each with its own syntax and its own maintainer. That works well for people who enjoy building the system and poorly for people who wanted the system to already exist.