If you wanted to write, not build a knowledge base
Obsidian is free, powerful and enormous — a vault, a graph, a plugin ecosystem and a community of systems to learn. A lot of people install it to write a document and end up configuring a second brain instead. Inkiostro is the smaller tool that only does the writing part.
Obsidian is free for personal use and genuinely impressive, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. But it is a knowledge management system: backlinks, a graph view, a plugin ecosystem in the thousands, and a culture of methodologies around it. If you want that, take it — it costs nothing and nothing here competes with it.
The mismatch shows up when what you actually wanted was to write a document. A report, a thesis chapter, lecture notes, technical documentation — one file, written properly, exported as a good-looking PDF or an ebook. In Obsidian that means choosing plugins for LaTeX rendering, for diagrams, for a decent PDF export, and keeping them working. Inkiostro ships all of it and has no plugin surface at all.
The other practical difference is sync. Obsidian's own sync is $4 to $5 per user per month; the free route is iCloud Drive or a third-party service, which works but is yours to maintain. Inkiostro syncs over iCloud in the free tier with nothing to configure. And Obsidian requires a $50-per-user-per-year commercial licence if you use it at work — Inkiostro has no such distinction.
Inkiostro vs Obsidian, feature by feature
A ✓ means it ships today. Notes mark the differences worth knowing about.
| Feature | Inkiostro | Obsidian |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Pro $19.99 once | Free for personal use |
| Commercial use at work | Included | $50 / user / year licence |
| Sync across devices | iCloud, free, nothing to set up | Obsidian Sync $4–5 / month, or bring your own |
| Works out of the box | ✓ | Core app, then plugins |
| LaTeX math (KaTeX) | Free, built in | Built in |
| Mermaid diagrams | Free, built in | Built in |
| PDF export | Free · header, footer, page numbers, margins; formulas and diagrams stay selectable text | Basic export; plugins for more |
| EPUB export | Pro | Plugin |
| Self-contained HTML export | Pro · single file, styles and images embedded | Plugin |
| Version history with restore | Pro · 40 versions per file, line-by-line diff | Paid add-on or Git plugin |
| Plain .md files on disk | ✓ | ✓ |
| Backlinks & graph view | — | ✓ |
| Plugin ecosystem | — | ✓ |
| Windows / Linux / Android | — | ✓ |
Obsidian — pricing and features checked on 13 August 2026 from Obsidian. own site. Both products change — verify before you buy.
Where Obsidian is still the right choice
- You are building a knowledge base, not writing documents. Backlinks and the graph view have no equivalent here and are not meant to.
- You want to shape the tool with plugins. Obsidian has thousands; Inkiostro has none by design.
- You need Windows, Linux or Android.
- You have a large existing vault with established structure and conventions. Do not move it.
- Free for personal use is hard to beat, and Obsidian is not crippled in exchange.
Where Inkiostro is the better fit
- Nothing to assemble. LaTeX, Mermaid, the document outline, the command palette, PDF, EPUB and HTML export are in the app. No plugin list to research, install, update or replace when it is abandoned.
- Sync that costs nothing and takes no setup. iCloud across iPhone, iPad and Mac is in the free tier — no subscription, no third-party service, no conflict files to reconcile.
- Export as a first-class feature rather than an afterthought: PDF with header, footer, page numbers and margins, where equations, diagrams and highlighted code stay selectable text, and a real EPUB with a navigation table of contents.
- Version history in the app: 40 automatic versions per document with a line-by-line diff and single-paragraph restore, without a Git plugin or a paid add-on.
- No commercial licence to think about. Use it at work without a per-seat fee.
Your vault is already Markdown
Obsidian stores plain .md files in an ordinary folder, so there is nothing to export. With Pro's external folders you can point Inkiostro straight at a vault and edit the same files, side by side with Obsidian if you want. What does not carry over is Obsidian-specific syntax: [[wikilinks]] stay as literal text, and anything a plugin renders is a plain code block here.