Notion vs Obsidian for Busy Professionals Who Need Real Work Done

I’ve lost days rebuilding forgotten workflows buried in Notion, and also locked myself out of synced vaults in Obsidian that technically never unsynced. If you’re juggling task capture, docs, and workflow design — while putting out fires in Slack and trying not to break your Zapier automations — you’ve probably asked this question already: should I rely on Notion or Obsidian?

Let’s actually get into it.

1. Differences in local vs cloud-first behavior during real workflow use

When someone says “Obsidian is local” and “Notion is cloud-based,” it’s not just a buzzword. It affects what happens when you’re on a slow coffee shop network or when your plane doesn’t offer Wi-Fi. I’ve tried opening Notion in those scenarios, and the best you can usually do is watch it flicker indefinitely. Even the pages you visited five minutes ago often vanish until reloaded.

On the other hand, Obsidian will start up just fine since it’s reading from your hard drive or whatever directory your vault happens to live in. The trouble starts if you’re using their Obsidian Sync service or something like GitHub automation to keep your notes synced across devices. Miss one commit, and you’ve got notes split between machines, and no way to know which one is more accurate.

A simple example: I jotted some notes about a client Zoom call during a layover using Obsidian on my tablet. Copied project metadata over manually into Notion later when I got back online. Except… turns out the vault hadn’t synced since I left the coworking space, and the mobile version had overwritten my updated desktop version the moment my iPad came online. Nearly lost embedded table structures and TODOs I had worked out during that session.

So yes, Obsidian gives you speed under bad networks. But sync is 100% your problem — and you better understand how it’s being handled.

2. Live collaboration response between team members

Notion wins here, but with caveats. If I leave comments on a shared Notion doc while someone else is editing it, it mostly works. Even though the comment placement isn’t always precise (especially near embedded databases), it’s close enough for most teams to get through async review. The issue is ghosting. I’ve had several doc comments simply disappear after someone copied an entire block and pasted it into a new page. Comment gone. No trace.

Obsidian? Not even close. There is no native concept of collaboration. I tested it by sharing a synced vault via Obsidian Sync with a colleague. We edited the same line from different machines. It didn’t alert either of us about the merge conflict until one of our devices lost connection, reconnected, and then inserted literal half-lines into the middle of headers. Fun.

So unless your team is deep into using Git hooks and pull request workflows for Markdown content, Obsidian just can’t support real-time collaboration. It’s a one-person tool or a very bespoke team setup.

To be clear: Notion has issues during collaboration too. Pages with large nested linked databases can lag hard in multi-user sessions — typing becomes visibly delayed (full seconds), which leads to accidental overwrites. But at least Notion _tries_ to be multi-user. Obsidian pretends nobody else exists.

3. Embedded content and reference stability over time

Notion’s ability to embed everything — PDFs, Figma files, Google Docs, full kanban-style boards inside one page — is excellent when it works. The problem is that some embeds silently expire. I once embedded a Google Sheet for client project tracking, and three weeks later the permissions on the original file changed. From that point forward it showed up as a blank white box **with no error message**. I stared at that box for a full minute during a meeting before realizing why data was missing

Obsidian embeds are way simpler. You can transclude a block using `![[note-name#Heading]]`, and it just shows the text. It never expires because there’s no permissions layer. But media? Forget it. Embedding a YouTube video involves pasting a URL and hoping your community plugin supports it. Embedding PDFs locally works, but managing them across mobile and desktop is painful unless you use a common storage provider (like Dropbox) across devices.

Also worth noting: Notion now treats database relations like reference links. They mostly work, unless you dupe a database — then you get ghost links that crash the page or show “doesn’t exist” in views. This happened in a recruiting board I set up, where each candidate profile had a relation to job position. After duplicating the workspace as a template, every link turned invalid, but only when accessing it as a guest.

Obsidian doesn’t try too hard here. It’s transparent and low-magic — if a file gets renamed or moved, the link breaks. There’s a plugin that auto-updates links on file rename, but it sometimes crashes in large vaults.

4. Actual real-world search results across large knowledge sets.

Notion search looks sleek but breaks under pressure. I had a workspace with over 400 pages and 9 databases. Searching for “Q3 pitch deck”? Sometimes it finds the old version from February but *not* the one shared last Thursday, unless I manually reindex from the sidebar. Worse: Notion search doesn’t show context. It’ll show the page name, but not where in the page the keyword exists — so if it’s buried deep in a toggled block, you’ll never notice.

Obsidian search is more primitive-looking, but fast. You write a regex-style query or use its built-in operators like `path:”/clients/” tag:#pitch`, and it’ll bring up results from inside the note body. You also see matches in context. That said, once your vault gets big — mine has around 1500 notes — performance drops off. You might notice lag when typing in the search box and partial results returning before stabilizing.

Here’s what my console looked like during a heavy search:
“`
[RenderWorker] Large vault detected, initial indexing took 7.3s
[SearchPlugin] Debounced search query: 158 results
[DashboardLoader] Skipped rendering 3 embeds due to memory limits
“`

I also ran into a weird bug using the “Search and Replace” community plugin — it would swap tags inconsistently across backlinks that had alias text. Ended up in a state where `#inbound-leads` got replaced in some notes but not others, and the backlinks started diverging.

Still, Obsidian’s search respects text format. No hidden layers. Notion can lose indexed content during sync issues, especially in duplicated templates.

5. Mobile interaction during errands or client visits

Let’s be honest: Notion mobile feels sluggish. The UI is built for tapping but not typing. Want to insert a database row while you’re walking between meetings? Good luck — the app reloads or logs out if it sat idle more than five minutes, and half the menus are hidden under a bottom drawer that opens too easily.

Obsidian on mobile has a completely different set of issues. Typing works fine, but navigation is *awful*. The sidebar toggle takes up nearly 15% of screen space. I’ve accidentally opened the command palette while trying to back out of a note. And syncing doesn’t happen automatically unless you trigger it or have background refresh configured — which iOS often disables if battery is low.

That said, for quick voice notes converted into Markdown, Obsidian mobile is unmatched — especially when combined with Shortcuts or Drafts integrations. You can save structured notes locally even without signal. I recorded a voice memo during a client site visit, transcribed it with Whisper via a local script, and dropped the results into an Obsidian vault via Shortcuts, all offline.

Notion does support offline writes — kind of. I once drafted some paragraph bullets while offline thinking it’d save into the page. Got back online and checked later: nothing. Turns out the mobile app *pretends* to store things locally but often loses unsent data if interrupted by app switching.

6. Extending the tool with plugins or third party integrations

This is where things get messy.

Notion doesn’t have first-class plugin support. You can build integrations via API or embed widgets from other apps (like Excalidraw), but nothing native runs inside the desktop or mobile app. Want to manipulate multiple databases at once? Tough luck — you’ll probably cobble something together with a scheduled Zap from https://zapier.com triggered off a new page creation event, which may fire… eventually.

I did set up a Notion automation to copy new entries from a support ticket database into a client dashboard with preset tags. Worked great for four days, then the Zap just stopped working. No error. API rate limit? Updated page structure? No idea.

Obsidian has a massive plugin ecosystem. Some are janky, many are amazing. I use “Tasks,” “Calendar,” “Templater,” and “Dataview” every day. But installing them isn’t for the faint-hearted. Updating core plugins can break things. The “Advanced URI” plugin once upgraded and stopped recognizing custom protocols, breaking my entire shortcut system I’d set up across macOS and mobile. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also: no sandboxing. One plugin can read everything in your vault. So if you’re handling sensitive info and install a sketchy-looking plugin, well…

7. Pricing and true long term ownership of your data

On the surface: Notion is free for individuals, and Obsidian is free too unless you need Sync or Publish. But dig into what you’re actually building.

Notion gives you multiple workspaces and pretty good permission controls. But stop paying for a team plan? You lose advanced features immediately. Also, pages are stored in a proprietary backend — you can export to HTML/Markdown/CSV, but many features (like relations or rollups) don’t convert well.

Obsidian? Your notes are text files. If the company disappears tomorrow, your data still works. Sync is an optional monthly fee, but you can self-host with git or Dropbox. That said, if you rely on a dozen community plugins and nobody maintains them, your fancy workflows will slowly rot. I once updated Obsidian core and lost link preview rendering for a week until the plugin maintainer patched it.

For legal and compliance reasons, I moved some client docs out of Obsidian because clients needed access logs and SSO. Notion enterprise met that need — even if it meant giving up version-controlled Markdown entries.

So in a very real way: Notion sells collaboration and guardrails. Obsidian sells long-term control, plus the right to break everything yourself. 🙂