Notion vs Obsidian vs Evernote: Which Note Taking App Should You Choose? Meta description: Notion, Obsidian, or Evernote? Here’s an honest comparison between these 3 popular note-taking apps to help you choose based on how you think
You’ve decided it’s time to become organized and start researching note-taking apps.
You run across 3 names over and over again: Notion, Obsidian, and Evernote. Everyone is so passionate about the one true app that’s right for them that you open 30 tabs in your browser trying to understand what makes each one unique.
Let’s put an end to the madness with an honest comparison of which app is best suited to your particular brain.
The Quick Answer
Choose Notion if you want a all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, projects, etc
Choose Obsidian if you think in connected ideas and need to fully own your notes
Choose Evernote for simple, reliable content capture and organization.
The Full Comparison
Notion
Notion is a bit of a departure from the other two apps in this list in that it’s really more of an all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, projects, and more.
The Good
A very flexible system that can grow with you and let you organize projects, notes, and more – basically anything you can think of in terms of information can be stored and organized in Notion.
Great team collaboration and workspace sharing tools
More generous free plan (especially for individual users)
Lots of customization available
The Bad
There’s a steep learning curve to Notion where you might end up spending more time customizing your system than actually using it
Most features require an internet connection
Can be too much for simple note-taking
Who It’s Good For
People that need to organize not just their notes, but tasks and projects as well
Teams and people that want to collaborate on shared workspaces and notes
People who like to build their own system for organizing and managing information.
Obsidian
Obsidian takes a different approach to note-taking than most apps out there.
Rather than forcing you to organize your thoughts in neat little sections, Obsidian lets you structure your own system of interconnected notes.
The Good
Obsidian has no limitations on what you can do with it – you can make any system you want by using the many community-developed plugins.
Your notes are stored as individual files on your device (or in cloud storage of your choice) and you control every aspect of how they’re organized.
It’s exceptionally good at helping you connect related ideas together.
Obsidian has excellent offline support (as it’s designed around the concept of local files)
The Bad
Like Notion, there’s a pretty steep learning curve with Obsidian. This one might take a while to get used to.
Fewer collaboration features than Notion.
It can be hard to get your head around in the beginning and doesn’t offer much value until you’ve had some time to develop your system.
Who It’s Good For
Writers, researchers, and students who want to build an interconnected system of notes for organizing their thoughts, research, and more.
Anyone who wants full control over their data and prefers a system where they decide how everything is organized.
People who want complete offline support and don’t want to worry about an internet connection.
Evernote
Evernote is one of the oldest note-taking apps around and has a reputation for being great at helping you save and find all the information you gather in it.
The Good
Excellent search feature that lets you look for notes and even text within images.
Ability to save and clip entire articles from the web with ease. Evernote also has a good reputation for being able to extract text from pictures and PDFs.
Evernote has been around for a long time and has had plenty of iterations to become a very reliable and stable note-taking app.
An intuitive, simple organizational system that most people should be able to grasp without much difficulty.
The Bad
Evernote’s free plan is much more limited than it used to be and other apps such as Notion offer much better benefits for free.
Interface and features aren’t quite as impressive as some other apps and Evernote hasn’t really innovated much in recent years.
Evernote doesn’t handle more complicated organizational systems as well as Notion and other similar apps.
Who It’s Good For
Anyone looking for an easy, stable app for saving and finding information after the fact.
People who just want a simple way of organizing their notes and don’t need advanced customization.
People who need to save articles and other information from the web and want an excellent search feature to find them later.
How They Compare Side-by-Side
Notion
Obsidian
Evernote
Best for:
All-in-one workspace
Connecting ideas
Simple capture & search
Data ownership:
Cloud-based
Local files (fully owned)
Cloud-based
Great for teams:
Excellent
Limited
Moderate
Learning curve:
Moderate to steep
Steep
Easy
Offline access:
Limited
Yes (default)
Partial
A Few Thoughts on Privacy
Since Evernote and Notion are both cloud-based, make sure you’re comfortable with how their privacy policies are set up if you plan on storing any confidential information in your notes.
Obsidian stores your notes as local files by default which can offer an additional layer of security if you’re concerned about your information being hacked.
The Most Common Mistakes
Getting sucked into thinking about how I want to organize my notes before even figuring out what I want to capture in the first place.
Getting sucked into the hype around a certain app and not taking the time to test drive a few different ones.
Ignoring whether or not the app will let me backup/export my notes somewhere else.
Final Thoughts
There really is no ‘best’ note-taking app out of this group – just different apps that are suited for different ways of thinking.
Notion is rewarding to people that like to build elaborate systems for organizing their lives.
Obsidian is suited for people that think in interconnected ideas and want full control over their data.
Evernote is a great tool for people that just want to gather information and have it be easily searchable later.
Try out a couple of different apps for at least 2 weeks and go with whichever one you feel most comfortable with.
Your Turn
Which of these 3 you tried out and did you stick with it? Let me know in the comments below!
