Is Obsidian Free in 2026? Yes, and Here Is What You Might Still Pay For

Yes. The Obsidian app is free for any purpose, personal or commercial, with no account, no feature limits and no trial clock. The only paid parts are optional: Sync from $4 per user a month billed yearly ($5 monthly), Publish at $8 per site a month yearly ($10 monthly), and two supporter licenses Obsidian says you do not need. Verified on obsidian.md in October 2026.

What Obsidian costs, item by item

Sources: Obsidian pricing, Obsidian Sync, Obsidian Publish and the license overview, all read 28 October 2026. Prices in US dollars before tax.

Most people searching this expect a catch, because most note apps lock sync, devices or storage behind a paid tier. Obsidian's catch is narrow: the app is complete, and what you might pay for is moving notes between devices and putting them on the web. Both have free workarounds, covered below.

Is Obsidian free for commercial use?

Yes. Obsidian's license overview, last updated February 20, 2025, says it "is free for all purposes, including personal, commercial, and non-profit use." Its list of free uses names personal use, commercial use, non-profit organizations, educational institutions and government agencies, and you can download and use the app without creating an account.

The pricing FAQ answers the work question directly: "You are not required to pay for a commercial license." It then encourages organizations that use Obsidian for work to buy one, to keep the company independent and 100% user-supported. So the $50 a year per user is a contribution with a perk (a listing as a featured organization), not a license fee you owe.

For a company rollout, that settles the compliance question without a purchase order. If your IT or legal team holds an older policy note saying otherwise, point them to the current license page and its February 2025 date.

Do I need Obsidian Sync?

Only if you want your notes on more than one device through Obsidian's own service. The app stores every note as a Markdown file in a local folder, called a vault, so a single laptop needs nothing else. You pay for Sync when you want the same vault on your phone and computer with no setup.

What Sync adds beyond moving files is worth naming. It encrypts your notes end to end with AES-256, so Obsidian cannot read them, keeps version history for every note, lets you choose which settings, plugins and file types sync to which device, and supports shared vaults for collaborating with a team. Obsidian's help center calls it the most straightforward and officially supported sync method.

How much is Obsidian Sync?

Sync comes in two tiers, both priced per user:

• Sync Standard costs $4 a month billed yearly, or $5 billed monthly. It covers 1 vault, 1 GB of storage and files up to 5 MB, with a month of version history.
• Sync Plus costs $8 a month billed yearly, or $10 billed monthly. It covers 10 vaults, 10 GB of storage and files up to 200 MB, with 12 months of version history, and storage can be raised to 100 GB.

The 1 GB cap on Standard is the limit to watch. Text notes are tiny, but a vault full of PDFs, screenshots and audio memos can outgrow it, and the 5 MB file cap blocks larger PDFs outright. If your vault holds research papers or recordings, budget for Plus, or exclude those file types from syncing.

How much is Obsidian Publish?

Publish costs $8 per site a month billed yearly, or $10 billed monthly. It turns a vault, or part of one, into a hosted website with hover previews, a graph view, backlinks, full-text search, a custom domain and theme, and hosting up to 4 GB per site. You can also password-protect the site or block search engines.

Publish suits a team wiki, documentation or a personal "digital garden" that people outside your devices need to read. For notes only you or your synced teammates read, it adds a cost without adding anything.

What does Obsidian cost over a year?

All totals are our arithmetic on the prices Obsidian printed on 28 October 2026.

Dupple data: for a five-person team, optional Commercial licenses add $250 a year to a $240 Sync bill, so more than half of a $490 total would be voluntary support rather than a service (our arithmetic, October 2026). Toolradar, our software directory, tracks 212 note-taking tools as of 27 October 2026, and 83% of them are free, freemium or open source (Toolradar note-taking ranking).

Yearly billing saves $12 a year per Sync Standard user against monthly, which is a 20% discount. For a freelancer trying Obsidian out, monthly billing plus Obsidian's 7-day no-questions refund on Sync is a low-risk way to start.

What is the Obsidian Catalyst license?

Catalyst is a one-time $25 payment for individuals who want to support Obsidian. It brings early access to beta versions, community badges and access to exclusive channels. It adds no feature to the regular app, and it is non-refundable, as are Commercial licenses and Obsidian Credit.

Buy it if you want insider builds or want to fund an independent app that does not take investor money. Skip it if you only want a working note app, because you already have one.

Is there an Obsidian student discount?

Yes. Students, faculty members and nonprofit employees get 40% off Sync and Publish. Obsidian says it offers no other discounts or promotions, so there is no seasonal sale or coupon code worth waiting for. On Sync Standard with yearly billing, the discount brings a year down to $28.80 by our arithmetic.

Can I sync Obsidian for free?

Yes, because a vault is just a folder. Obsidian's own sync guide lists methods community members use, each with trade-offs:

• iCloud Drive works between Macs, iPhones and iPads. Obsidian warns that iCloud Drive on Windows may lead to file duplication or corruption.
• OneDrive and Google Drive work on desktop, but neither is officially supported for vaults on iOS, and OneDrive is limited on Android.
• Syncthing syncs device to device without a cloud and works best when one device is always on; on Android, the official app is no longer maintained and a community fork continues.
• Git gives full version control but no automatic syncing: you push and pull changes yourself.

The guide's one firm rule: never sync the same vault through two services at once, such as Obsidian Sync and iCloud, because it risks conflicts or corruption. An all-Apple user can run Obsidian on every device for $0 with iCloud; a Windows and iPhone user is where paying for Sync starts to make sense.

How does Obsidian compare with other note apps?

On price, Obsidian is unusual: a full app at no cost and paid services only for sync and hosting. If you are weighing it against a shared workspace, our Obsidian vs Notion comparison covers the trade-offs, and Notion alternatives lists other options. For the wider field, see the best note-taking apps, the best free note-taking apps, the best AI note-taking apps and the best free AI note-taking apps. Teams building a company wiki should also look at knowledge management software and knowledge base software, and if you want a free AI research notebook rather than a note app, see whether NotebookLM is free. Obsidian also has a profile on Toolradar, and our sister newsletter Techpresso compares it head to head in Notion vs Obsidian.

How we checked

Prices, plan limits, discount and refund terms were read on Obsidian's pricing, Sync and Publish pages, its license overview and its sync help guide on 28 October 2026. Yearly totals are our arithmetic on printed prices, before tax. Free sync methods are described from Obsidian's own guide; we did not test them.

FAQ

Bottom line

Obsidian is free, including at work, and the free version is the whole app. The money question is only about sync and publishing: an all-Apple user can sync through iCloud for nothing, while anyone mixing Windows and a phone will likely find $48 a year for Sync Standard worth paying. Treat the Catalyst and Commercial licenses as tips for software you like, not costs you owe.

Cite this: Dupple, "Is Obsidian Free in 2026? Yes, and Here Is What You Might Still Pay For", November 2026.

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