Obsidian and Evernote both hold notes, and that is where the resemblance ends. Evernote is a hosted service: your notes live in its cloud and the capture tools, tasks, calendar, and AI features are attached to a subscription. Obsidian is a local app that reads a folder of plain text Markdown files and lets you add plugins on top. So in an Obsidian vs Evernote decision, the useful question is not which app looks nicer. It is whether your notes should live in someone else’s database or in a folder on your own disk. Everything below comes from what each company publishes about plans, storage, platforms, and exports, with sources linked inline. If your real shortlist is Notion, our Notion vs Obsidian comparison covers that pair instead.
The short answer
- Pick Obsidian if your notes are long-lived research, you work offline often, you dislike subscriptions, and you want to move files between devices and tools without asking permission.
- Pick Evernote if you capture a lot of material from the web and from paper, you want sync, search, tasks, and a calendar working together on day one, and you are comfortable paying for it.
- If you are still split, run both for two weeks with the same ten notes and notice which one you open without thinking about it.
How each app stores your notes
Obsidian states the model plainly: notes are stored privately on your device and stay reachable offline, and they are written as plain text Markdown, an open format the company presents as protection against lock-in, as described on the Obsidian homepage.
Evernote works the other way around. Your notes live in its service and sync down to your devices, and the plan limits are documented in its plan comparison: 50 notes on Free, 1,000 on Starter, unlimited on Advanced.
That difference matters years later, not on day one. With Obsidian, the day you stop using the app you still have a folder of readable text files that any editor can open. With Evernote, the documented export path is notes and notebooks as PDFs, which preserves how a note looked but not a file you can edit as plain text. Neither approach is wrong, but portability is the thing people underestimate when they start a decade of notes somewhere.
Obsidian vs Evernote: plans and prices compared
| Evernote | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Notes | 50 on Free, 1,000 on Starter, unlimited on Advanced | No limit |
| Synced devices | 1 on Free, 3 on Starter, unlimited on Advanced | Any number, once your vault syncs |
| Storage | 1GB on Free, 5GB on Starter, unlimited on Advanced | None included, files sit on your device |
| Entry paid tier | Starter, billed monthly or yearly | Sync from $4 per user per month, billed annually |
| Offline | Tied to the plan; Free syncs one device | Default: local files need no connection |
| Export | PDF, per the plan comparison | Plain text Markdown files you can copy anywhere |
| Plugins and API | See the feature list | Thousands of community plugins plus an open API |
| Collaboration | Shared notebooks and spaces, admin logs on business plans | Shared vaults on the Sync plan |
Prices and limits change, so check the official pages before you pay. The Obsidian pricing page lists Sync at $4 per user per month billed annually ($5 monthly), Publish at $8 per site per month billed annually ($10 monthly), and discounts for students, faculty, and nonprofits.
The Evernote comparison prices Starter and Advanced per billing period, and notes a 7-day trial of the paid plans, a 40% discount on one year of Advanced for eligible students, and a 14-day Enterprise trial.
The free tiers are where the gap is easiest to see: one app never expires and never counts your notes, the other stops at 50.
Where Obsidian is stronger
Offline is the default, not a feature. Notes are files on your machine, so planes, trains, and bad hotel wifi change nothing about whether you can read and write.
No subscription to keep your own notes. The app is free without limits and no sign-up, and the paid extras are optional. A solo note-taker can run Obsidian for years without paying anything.
Plugins and an open API. The plugin catalogue covers kanban boards, spaced repetition, and database-style tables, and the app exposes an API for building your own. This is the part Evernote cannot match without you paying for the vendor’s roadmap.
Predictable long-term cost. Sync covers the everyday cases (moving notes between devices, version history, encrypted transfer), and Publish is a per-site add-on rather than a personal tier you cannot avoid.
Where Evernote is stronger
Capture from everywhere. The feature list covers the Web Clipper, document scanning, an online notepad, a PDF editor, and advanced search, so a scanned receipt and a clipped article land in the same place without extra setup.
Search that does the thinking for you. Evernote documents Boolean, geographic, and filtered searches, which is a real advantage when you have thousands of notes and only remember roughly where you were when you saved one.
Tasks, reminders, and calendars in one app. You can add dates, set reminders, assign tasks to other people, connect Google or Microsoft calendars, and see everything in Evernote Calendar. Obsidian needs plugins and a synced vault for pieces of this. If your calendar lives in Notion instead, our Notion calendar setup covers the same connection.
AI features on the top plan. AI Assistant, semantic search, AI Edit, transcription, and meeting note summaries sit on Advanced, and business plans add user activity history for teams.
Sync, apps, and sharing without a project. iOS, Android, Web, Windows, and Mac clients are included, so a non-technical user gets a working setup in minutes instead of choosing a sync method.
Offline, sync, and search in daily use
The practical split is simple. Obsidian searches files that are already on your device, so results arrive with no connection and no server round trip. Evernote’s search runs against material stored in its service, which is exactly why its Boolean and location filters work across devices, and why a free account limited to one synced device and 1GB of storage runs out of room faster than people expect.
If your working pattern is “a thought, anywhere, for years to come”, Obsidian’s local model gets out of your way. If your pattern is “a form, a receipt, a webpage, all searchable from my phone in thirty seconds”, Evernote’s service model earns its subscription.
Switching from one to the other
Evernote to Obsidian. Export what Evernote allows, then let the community importer plugin turn exports into Markdown. Budget an afternoon for attachments and formatting, because a clipped web page rarely survives an import perfectly.
Obsidian to Evernote. Your vault is a folder, so the moving part is not the files but the structure: tasks, reminders, and backlinks do not exist as concepts in Evernote, and you will re-create them by hand.
Either direction. Keep the old account active for a month. A note you cannot find at the moment you need it is worse than two subscriptions for thirty days. If your notes feed other tools, the Zapier + Notion workflows piece shows how the same automation pattern works when notes live in a database rather than a folder.
Three questions that decide it
- Do you regularly work without reliable internet? Yes points to Obsidian.
- Do you capture mostly from the web, paper, and email? Yes points to Evernote.
- Do you want to pay for note software forever? If no, Obsidian’s free app plus optional Sync is the cheaper end state.
Two “Obsidian” answers are enough. Two “Evernote” answers mean the subscription buys you real time back, and the free plan is too tight to be a fair test of it. One of each is the case where running both for two weeks with the same notes is genuinely the fastest way to settle it.
FAQ
Is Obsidian free, or is there a paid tier? The personal app is free without limits and needs no sign-up. Sync and Publish are optional: Sync starts at $4 per user per month billed annually, Publish at $8 per site per month billed annually.
Does Evernote still have a free plan? Yes, and it is deliberately small: 50 notes, 1 notebook, 20 tags, 200 attachments, one synced device, and 1GB of storage. Starter lifts those to 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks, and 3 devices.
Which one works better without internet access? Obsidian, because the notes are plain text files on your own device. Evernote is hosted, so offline capability follows the plan, and the free tier syncs a single device.
Can I move my notes from Evernote to Obsidian? Partly. Evernote exports notes and notebooks as PDFs, and Obsidian’s community importer plugin handles converting exports into Markdown. Review attachments and formatting after the first pass.
Sources
- Obsidian: local Markdown files, offline use, open formats
- Obsidian pricing: Sync, Publish, discounts
- Obsidian help documentation
- Obsidian community plugins: Importer
- Evernote: compare plans and limits
- Evernote: features, search, tasks, and calendar
Last updated: September 23, 2026. Plan limits, prices, and export options are checked against the two companies’ own pages, not against a test account.