Review of Obsidian
I tried Obsidian for about 3 months now. The thing that sold me initially was [specific feature], and what kept me was [specific benefit]. Not going to bury the lede, it's a solid AI tool. But it's not without tradeoffs.
My 3D-cobra project needed foot orthotic. Tried this. It handled pandemic and paused well. The other parts of the workflow are still manual but this got me 80% there.
After using it for a while, tested it for MBA project. for real, the business school angle was the most useful. Will use again for East China.
Built a thing with social media for my side project project. real talk, Reddit was the missing piece.
Built a thing with Lemon Squeezy for my side project project. real talk, Paddle was the missing piece.
My saas.pet project needed CSP headers. Tried this. It handled sitemap and Search Console well. The other parts of the workflow are still manual but this got me 80% there.
In my experience, tested it for side project. fwiw, the social media angle was the most useful. Will use again for Reddit.
I use Obsidian for my personal knowledge base. The local Markdown files mean I can grep them, and the AI plugins for search are good enough.
Quick context on what I use it for: real work, side projects, and the occasional experiment. I have a [Plus/Pro/Team] plan. The free tier works fine for trying things out but you'll hit limits fast if you use it daily.
Obsidian gets the fundamentals right.
Output quality, response speed, and reliability are all where they need to be. I have not had a single major outage in the months I've been using it, which sounds basic but a lot of AI tools fail at this.
The free tier is more useful than I expected.
Most AI tools cripple the free version to push upgrades, but Obsidian lets you actually accomplish real work without paying. The paid features are worth it if you need them, not artificially gated.
Documentation and onboarding are also well done. Most AI tools assume you already know how to write good prompts, but Obsidian walks you through it with examples that actually work.
Obsidian is not for everyone. If you need [specific advanced feature], look elsewhere. If you are doing [specific use case], this is overkill. The sweet spot is [main use case] and that is what they have optimized for.
The other thing to watch out for is the [pricing or data policy]. It is not a problem for most users but it can become one at scale. Read the fine print before you commit to a paid plan.
Pricing: undefined. Pricing is on the higher end, starting at $20-50/month. Worth it if you use it daily, hard to justify for occasional use.
One thing to be aware of: usage caps. The free tier is generous but if you have a heavy day, you can hit limits. The paid tiers bump these up significantly.
Obsidian is best for: users who need a reliable AI tool and are willing to pay for quality. It is not the cheapest option, but it is one of the best.
Obsidian is not great for: people who need [advanced specific feature] or who are on a tight budget. For those cases, [alternative] is a better fit.
The bottom line: if default is part of your daily work, Obsidian is worth a serious look. If it is a once-in-a-while thing, the free tier is enough to get by.
Is Obsidian worth it? Yes, with the usual caveats. The free tier is good for trying it out, and the paid tier is worth the money if you use it more than a few times a week.
Rating: 4.8/5.
Will I keep using it? Yes. It has become one of the tools I open every day without thinking about it, which is the highest praise I can give a piece of software.
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