I moved my entire brain out of Notion. Here's what actually happened.

Notion's AI pricing change is what finally did it.

In late 2024, Notion bundled AI into the Business plan at $20/month — which meant the tool I was using for $10/month suddenly cost twice as much if I wanted AI features. I understood the logic. I just didn't want to pay it. So I did what I'd been threatening to do for two years: I moved to Obsidian.

That was eight months ago. This is the honest version.

Why I left Notion

The pricing change was the trigger, not the cause.

The actual cause was slower. Over two years, Notion's database pages got heavy. Loading my main project tracker — 400+ items, four linked databases — took 4–6 seconds on a good internet connection. On a plane or a café with weak Wi-Fi, it just waited. Notion is a cloud-first tool. When the cloud is slow, Notion is slow.

The second cause was the file situation. My notes, my clients, my ideas — all stored in Notion's proprietary format, on Notion's servers, accessible only through Notion's interface. What happens to my business knowledge if Notion goes down? They went down in February 2023 and February 2024 for full days each time. What happens if pricing doubles again?

The AI upsell was the third straw. Notion AI is genuinely useful — it summarizes pages, answers questions across your workspace, fills database properties. But it's packaged as a reason to pay $20/month per user for a tool I already owned. I don't like paying rent on my own ideas.

The first week of Obsidian

There is no smooth onboarding. If you've ever installed Obsidian and then immediately opened Google looking for "what do I do now," you've experienced it.

Obsidian is a blank app that displays Markdown files. That's it. Everything else — task management, backlinks, calendar, AI integration — comes from community plugins, of which there are 1,400+. Finding the right ones, configuring them, understanding how they interact, building a system that fits your workflow: that's the work. I spent the first week almost entirely on setup instead of using the tool.

What got me through it: I picked three plugins and stopped there. Obsidian Tasks for task management. Smart Connections for AI-powered search and connection-finding across notes. Templater for new note templates. I had a working system by day four.

What I miss from Notion

Databases. Genuine, filtered, linked databases that don't require plugin archaeology.

Notion's database view — table, board, calendar, gallery — is still the best implementation of personal relational data for non-developers. If you have a CRM, a content calendar, or a project tracker with complex filtering logic, Obsidian's solutions involve either heavy plugin dependency (Dataview, which is powerful but requires learning a query language) or accepting that Obsidian simply isn't built for this.

I miss the Notion Web Clipper too. Clipping an article into Obsidian involves more steps and more decisions.

What I'm not going back to

My notes are plain Markdown files in a folder on my laptop. Any text editor can open them. In twenty years, I can still read them. That's not a minor thing.

Loading speed: Obsidian opens instantly, even with 4,000+ notes. Individual notes open in milliseconds. This sounds like a small win until you've been waiting on Notion's loading spinner forty times a day.

The plugin-based AI setup — specifically Smart Connections — surfaces relationships in my notes that I'd never find through manual browsing. Notion AI is smarter about answering questions because it has more context about the tool. Obsidian's AI integration is more powerful because I can wire it to any model I want, with any system prompt I want. Two different philosophies.

Would I recommend it?

For solopreneurs doing solo knowledge work — thinking, writing, client history, business memory — yes. Do it. The setup week is real, but you pay it once.

Do not switch if you collaborate with a team on a shared workspace. Obsidian's collaboration story is "everyone puts their vault in the same iCloud folder and hopes for the best." It's not great.

Do not switch if you need real databases without learning a query language. Dataview is powerful. It's also one more thing to learn. Do not switch if you need web clipping to be frictionless.

Pricing reality

Obsidian's core app is free. Actually free — not crippled-free with an obvious paywall. All features, including the plugin ecosystem, included.

Obsidian Sync is $4/month (annual) or $5/month (monthly). End-to-end encrypted. That's the only thing I pay for. Total annual cost: $48. Compare: Notion Plus is $10/month. Notion Business with AI is $20/month. Obsidian Publish — for sharing notes publicly — is $8/month (annual). Optional.

Alternatives

Notion: for teams, shared databases, anyone who wants it working on day one. Logseq: for daily-note-first thinkers and open-source diehards. Capacities: for visual thinkers who want backlinks without Markdown configuration.

The honest verdict

Obsidian is the right tool for the work I actually do: thinking, writing, storing decisions, connecting ideas across clients and projects. It took a week to set up. I've thought about switching back zero times since.

If you're a solopreneur running on Notion and you feel the friction — slowness, dependency, pricing creep — the switch is worth making. If your work depends on team databases and zero setup time, stay where you are.

No affiliate link here. Obsidian doesn't have a partner program. That's either a red flag or a feature, depending on how you think about alignment.

What tool should I cover next? Drop it in the comments.