# Craft vs Obsidian Published January 1, 2026 · Updated August 10, 2026 Craft and Obsidian are both Note apps on a Mac, so the pick depends on workflow. Choose Craft for beautiful, share-ready documents on Apple devices; choose Obsidian for a file-owned, extensible second brain. Many users keep Obsidian for. As of October 2026, both install with brew install --cask craft and brew install --cask obsidian. August 2026 preserves the split: Craft leads when the deliverable must be beautiful and shared now, native block elegance, instantaneous collaboration and share polish justify Plus at ~$8 per month. Obsidian leads when thinking is the deliverable, Markdown vaults on disk, graph navigation and an 1,800-plugin forge that reshape the tool to the mind, all at $0 core cost, reward the patient builder. Budget, platform and whether your notes must be presented or inhabited decide the winner more than any feature table. ## Head to head | Factor | Craft | Obsidian | | --- | --- | --- | | Price | Free | Free | | Open Source | No | No | | Replaces | Ulysses ($39.99/year) | Roam Research ($15/month) | | Best for | notes, documents, writing | notes, markdown, knowledge | | Install | brew install --cask craft | brew install --cask obsidian | | Category | Productivity | Productivity | ## Craft Native document editor Install: `brew install --cask craft` [Craft on Bundl](https://bundl.run/apps/craft) ## Obsidian Knowledge base that works on local Markdown files Install: `brew install --cask obsidian` [Obsidian on Bundl](https://bundl.run/apps/obsidian) ## Features - **Writing & Typography.** Craft wins the moment writing delight decides the purchase. - **Data Ownership & File Portability.** Obsidian wins outright for file ownership and future-proofing. - **Extensibility & Plugins.** Obsidian's plugin graph is an order of magnitude larger and more useful. - **Knowledge Graph & Linking.** Obsidian wins networked-thought depth. - **Sharing & Publishing Polish.** Craft wins when the share link is the product. - **Daily Notes & Journal Flow.** Obsidian's daily notes history and graph yield stronger long-term journaling. - **Team Collaboration.** Craft wins for multiplayer document polish; Obsidian wins for private systems. - **Pricing for Individuals.** Obsidian's free core keeps single-user TCO lower unless you live in Craft sharing. ## FAQ ### Is Craft worth $8 per month when Obsidian is free? For personal plain-text notes, Obsidian's free core is the better value. Craft Plus earns its $8 per month when one-click branded publishing, slide presentation, real-time co-edit and higher AI assistant quotas matter commercially, e.g., proposals and client docs you bill for. The Free Craft tier at about 1,500 blocks and 1GB is enough to evaluate but not to live in long-term if you publish often. ### Can Obsidian match Craft's beautiful shares? Obsidian Publish at $8 per site per month can host vault pages publicly, and community plugins help theming, but Craft's native share links remain more polished and brandable without CSS effort. If share-page aesthetics are client-facing, Craft wins; if archival ownership trumps polish, Obsidian wins. ### Which is better for Daily Notes journaling? Both support Daily Notes. Craft keeps them atop a document library with clean resurfacing, while Obsidian's Daily/Periodic Notes plus calendar and templating plugins make a graph of every day with backlinks and queries that compound over years. Heavy journalers and habit trackers usually prefer Obsidian's vault graph; teams prefer Craft's clean day-by-day doc surface. ### How do plugins compare? Obsidian's 1,800+ plugin marketplace redefines the app, tasks, Dataview, Canvas, Excalidraw and spaced repetition fundamentally change workflows. Craft X exists but is a younger, curated extension surface. Pick Obsidian when workflow shape-shifting is the requirement; pick Craft when a coherent, designed path beats infinite optionality. ### Do both run well on macOS Tahoe 26.x? Yes. Craft is Swift-native for Apple Silicon, notarised, fast with block rendering and accessible via direct download and Homebrew. Obsidian is also notarised and Apple Silicon-capable, tuned for large local vaults with excellent local search. Both support offline writing and soft focus; Craft needs connectivity for real-time collaboration, Obsidian needs it only for Sync or Publish. ### Should I keep both apps? Many Mac users do. Capture and think in Obsidian vaults on disk where files stay forever, then finish and share the artefact in Craft where presentation matters. Keep a one-way promotion flow, draft → peer review → Craft publish, so vault and docs stay distinct and search stays predictable. ## Sources - [Craft, Official site](https://www.craft.do/) - [Craft Pricing Plans](https://www.craft.do/pricing) - [Plans and Pricing, Craft Help Center](https://support.craft.do/en/account-and-subscription/subscription-plans/plans-and-pricing) - [Obsidian, Official site](https://obsidian.md/) - [Obsidian Pricing, Sync and Publish](https://obsidian.md/pricing) - [Obsidian Review 2026, Cloudwards](https://www.cloudwards.net/obsidian-review/) - [Craft Docs Review, TechRepublic](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/craft-review/) ## Related - [Craft vs Notion](https://bundl.run/compare/craft-vs-notion) - [Bear vs Craft](https://bundl.run/compare/bear-vs-craft) - [Logseq vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/logseq-vs-obsidian) - [Bear vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/bear-vs-obsidian) - [Joplin vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/joplin-vs-obsidian) - [Notion vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/notion-vs-obsidian) - [Anytype vs Obsidian](https://bundl.run/compare/anytype-vs-obsidian) - [Obsidian vs Apple Notes](https://bundl.run/compare/obsidian-vs-apple-notes) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://bundl.run/#organization", "name": "Bundl.run", "url": "https://bundl.run", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://bundl.run/og-image.png", "width": 1200, "height": 630 }, "description": "The Ninite for Mac. 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