An Obsidian alternative for Android, for when you just want to write
Obsidian is free without limits and genuinely excellent at what it does — a vault of linked notes you grow over years. Inkiostro is the other thing: an editor you open to write one document and close when it is finished. Same .md files, so you can point it at the same folder.
Obsidian on Android is free for personal use, with no sign-up and no limits, and that is not a trial — it is the product. Anyone telling you Obsidian is expensive is talking about Sync, which is $4 per month billed annually, or Publish at $8 per site per month; both are optional, and the app works completely without them. Commercial use is $50 per user per year. It would be silly to pretend Inkiostro undercuts a free app.
The difference is what the two are for. Obsidian is a knowledge base: links between notes, backlinks, the graph, a plugin ecosystem, a vault you tend. Writing a document inside it is possible, and a lot of people do, but the app's centre of gravity is the connections between notes rather than the document in front of you. Inkiostro has no links, no graph and no plugins, and it never will — it is an editor. Files, editor and rendered preview side by side on a tablet, and nothing else on screen.
Because both work on ordinary .md files, this is not an either-or. Point Inkiostro at your Obsidian vault folder and it opens the same notes, writes them back as the same Markdown, and leaves your vault alone — Obsidian's own files, its .obsidian folder and its plugins are untouched. Some people keep both: Obsidian for the vault, Inkiostro for the long piece they are actually drafting.
Inkiostro vs Obsidian, feature by feature
A ✓ means it ships today. Notes mark the differences worth knowing about.
| Feature | Inkiostro | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Pro $34.99 once (US) · 7-day trial | Free for personal use, no limits |
| Sync | No — Google Drive planned for a later version | Obsidian Sync, $4/user/month billed annually |
| Commercial use | Included | $50 per user per year |
| Documents as plain .md files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Opens an existing folder or vault | ✓ | ✓ |
| Three panes on a tablet by default | Files, editor and live preview | Configurable, with panes and plugins |
| Live preview styles | 11, built in | Themes and CSS snippets |
| Linked notes, backlinks, graph | — | ✓ |
| Plugin ecosystem | — | Hundreds, community-made |
| LaTeX math & Mermaid diagrams | Free | ✓ |
| PDF export | Free · a small credit line without Pro | ✓ |
| EPUB export | Pro | Community plugin |
| Self-contained HTML export | Pro · one file, fonts and images embedded | Community plugin |
| Version history | Pro · word-by-word diff, restore one block | With Sync, or a plugin |
| Setup before you can write | Choose a folder | Create a vault, then configure to taste |
| Data collected | None | None by default |
Obsidian — pricing and features checked on 1 September 2026 from Obsidian. own site. Both products change — verify before you buy.
Inkiostro Pro is $34.99 in the United States. Google Play converts that into each country's own price, with local taxes and rounding, so what you see on the store is the figure that counts.
Where Obsidian is the right choice, and it often is
- You are building a knowledge base rather than writing documents. Links, backlinks, tags and the graph are the reason Obsidian exists and Inkiostro has none of them.
- You want plugins. Hundreds of them, doing things no single developer would ever ship — spaced repetition, Kanban boards, dataview queries, Zotero integration.
- You want it free forever with no limits, for personal use. Obsidian is, and that is a straight advantage.
- You want the same vault on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS and Android. Obsidian is on all of them; Inkiostro is on Android and on Apple platforms, and the two do not sync.
- You already have a vault you like. Do not rebuild it — if anything, open it in Inkiostro when you want to draft something long, and leave it exactly where it is.
Where Inkiostro is the better tool
- It opens ready to write. There is no vault to create, no plugins to choose and no community theme to install before the app looks the way you want it. You pick a folder and start.
- The tablet layout is the default, not a configuration. Files, editor and the rendered document side by side the moment you open it on a big screen, with dividers you can drag.
- Export is built in, not a community plugin. PDF with full page setup, self-contained HTML and EPUB 3 ship with the app and are maintained with it.
- Version history that restores one block. Automatic snapshots with a word-by-word diff, and the ability to bring back a single paragraph without reverting the rest of the file — no subscription and no plugin.
- Commercial use costs nothing extra. Writing for work with Inkiostro is the same purchase as writing for yourself.
You do not have to leave your vault
An Obsidian vault is a folder of .md files, which is exactly what Inkiostro reads. Point it at the vault on first run and your notes are there — no import, no copy, no conversion. Wiki-style [[links]] stay as written, because Inkiostro treats them as the text they are rather than rewriting them. Obsidian's own .obsidian configuration folder is left alone, so the vault keeps working in Obsidian exactly as before.