head to head

Obsidian vs Joplin

Joplin is the open source alternative to Obsidian — local-first markdown notes with a plugin ecosystem. Here is the honest comparison.

Yes — Joplin is a viable free replacement for Obsidian. Joplin is open source under its own open-source terms, written in TypeScript, with 56,442 GitHub stars, 6,299 forks and 637 open issues; it was last pushed 12 hours ago. Obsidian costs from $4, while self-hosting Joplin carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 2 other open source Obsidian alternatives are tracked here, led by AppFlowy at 76,854 stars. Joplin ranks #2 of 3 tracked open source Obsidian alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: AppFlowy (76,854 stars), Logseq (44,984 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Joplin and 3 reasons to stay on Obsidian.

Joplin stars ★ 56K license Custom / other self-host yes Obsidian pricing Free for personal use; Sync $4-$8/user/month; Publish $8-$16/site/month

choose Joplin if

Your Obsidian bill is growing with seats or usage
You need your data in a format and server you control
Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort

full Joplin profile →

stick with Obsidian if

You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
You depend on a Obsidian integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated

Side by side

	Joplin (open source)	Obsidian
Price	Free (self-hosted)	Free for personal use; Sync $4-$8/user/month; Publish $8-$16/site/month
License	Custom / other	Proprietary
Source code	Public, auditable	Closed
Self-hosting	Yes — laurent22/joplin	Cloud only
Data ownership	Your server, your format	Vendor's cloud
Community	★ 56K · ⑂ 6.3K	—
Built with	TypeScript	—

Why people look for a Obsidian alternative

Obsidian is free, but the parts that make it a team tool are not: Sync and Publish are paid add-ons, and commercial use needs a licence. The bigger issue is that the core app is closed source, so the plugin ecosystem is the only extension path and it is maintained by third parties. Notes are plain markdown, which limits lock-in, but the mobile apps and sync layer are not.

About Joplin

Joplin is a free, open source, privacy focused note taking and to do application that keeps notes as Markdown on your own device and synchronises them, end to end encrypted, across Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

read the full Joplin overview →

Other open source alternatives to Obsidian

last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked

Frequently asked questions

Is Joplin a good replacement for Obsidian?

Joplin is an open source alternative to Obsidian (Local-first markdown notes with a plugin ecosystem). It is written in TypeScript and licensed under its own terms, with 56,442 GitHub stars.

Is Joplin free compared to Obsidian?

Yes. Joplin is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Obsidian is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.

How do I migrate from Obsidian to Joplin?

Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Joplin's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.