Obsidian: notes as plain files you keep forever
Your notes stay as Markdown files in a folder on your device. No account, no lock-in, and 38 MB — the smallest app in this category by a wide margin.
Obsidian starts from one decision that shapes everything else: your notes are plain Markdown files sitting in a normal folder. Open them in any text editor, copy them to a USB stick, read them in twenty years.
Why that matters
Every other app on this list stores your writing in its own format on its own servers. If the company folds, changes pricing, or simply annoys you, getting your work out is an export job with unpredictable results.
Here there is nothing to export. The files already are the notes.
The trade
You set up sync yourself. iCloud, Dropbox, or Obsidian's paid service — the app does not solve this for you, and first-time setup is the most common complaint in reviews.
No collaboration. One person, one vault. Teams should look at Notion or Craft.
Fewest ratings in the category. 2,694 against Notion's 89,920, despite being the app most written about in developer circles. Popularity in tech forums does not equal popularity.
Worth noting
38 MB, against 566 MB for Notion. Fifteen times smaller for the same core job.