Best Obsidian Alternatives for Note-Taking

Obsidian is one of those super in-depth apps that helps you organise your thoughts, connect ideas and helps you to learn and personally develop. Lots of people enjoy using Obsidian as a second brain and PKM tool because you can't always remember everything.

There are other PKM tools and second brain applications you can use if you're feeling like moving away from Obsidian and trying something new too.

Best Obsidian Alternatives

So, let's dive into the best Obsidian alternatives for organising and managing thoughts, ideas, notes and more.

Before choosing an app like this, know that most of them will require some learning and getting used to, especially the way you link together notes and create bi-directional links. Sometimes this can be done with hashtags, keyboard shortcuts or other features inside the apps.

Obsidian Alternative #1 - Logseq

Logseq

Logseq is a networked thought notes app with graph, backlinks & more.

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Best For

Advanced PKM note-takers

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Type of Tool

Note Taking Apps

Logseq is a very in-depth second-brain, personal knowledge application.

It uses a block-based structure to organise your notes into blocks that can be nested inside other blocks. This creates your linked web of interconnected ideas.

Logseq uses a graph view that helps you visualise the connected blocks and ideas that link together, this helps users identify links in their knowledge to support ideas and spark inspiration.

You can also integrate other tools with Logseq to enhance the experience, it also uses Markdown support for writing detailed notes.

Obsidian Alternative #2 - Mem

Mem AI

Easily capture notes using templates, no folders and AI-crafted note-taking.

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Best For

AI Note Taking

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Type of Tool

AI Productivity ToolsNote Taking Apps

Mem is an AI note-taking tool that also allows you to take notes and organise them into a personal knowledge base.

You can turn notes into documents to share with others and to create more in-depth thought patterns. Mem also removes the need for folders too, another key difference.

Mem's main feature is its AI note-taking ability, and what makes this app a great Obsidian alternative. Mem AI uses natural language to process and analyse your notes over time, from here it can identify and pull up key information to generate summaries and insights.

The use of AI is great for helping users leverage their notes even further, creating more meaningful in-depth connections with ideas.

Obsidian Alternative #3 - Reflect Notes

Reflect Notes

Easy-to-use, well-designed networked thought tool growing in popularity.

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Best For

Pro Note-Takers

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Chrome Extension

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Type of Tool

Note Taking AppsPersonal Knowledge Management Apps

Reflect Notes is another great alternative to Obsidian for its AI note-taking and second-brain experiences.

Reflect Notes helps you keep all ideas, notes and thoughts connected together to help make sense of your ideas, spark inspiration and really create a meaningful second brain where you can store everything and anything you don't want to forget.

With Reflect you can take web clippings, integrate your calendar and share your writing with others. You can also build a network of the people you have spoken to, like your contacts, to create a database of individuals for work, and future projects.

Obsidian Alternative #4- Roam Research

Roam Research

Built for networked thought for connecting ideas, taking notes and thoughts.

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Best For

Advanced PKM Note-Takers

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Web

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Type of Tool

Note Taking Apps

Roam Research is an app that focuses on networked thoughts and ideas to create a database that can expand and inspire ideas.

The graph allows users to see the connections between their notes to help make more sense of ideas and to create a better understanding of topics. You can also use Roam's powerful search to quickly find and filter notes within the connections.

Like Logseq, Roam uses blocks of text that can be used to build in-depth ideas and linked to other blocks that are of the same subject, idea or thought.

Obsidian Alternative #5 - Craft

Craft

A stunning document creator with a twist, including pages and multiplayer mode.

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Best For

Beautiful Documents

Availability

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Type of Tool

Note Taking AppsPersonal Knowledge Management AppsFreelance Productivity Tools

Craft provides a more creative and visual experience as an Obsdisian alternative. Craft is simply a place to create documents to share with your team and others. It allows you to go more in-depth with your notes and create something meaningful.

You can take daily notes inside Craft which might inspire you to create cards and pages to summarise information more in-depth, to then share with your team or anyone who needs to read your information.

Craft uses page cards as a customisable element inside the tool for users to fulfil their creative needs whilst creating a workspace full of informative documents and pages for their own learning and study, or to share within teams.

You really have a ton of creative freedom with Craft, adding in any snippets of information you want. You can also just use Craft as a daily journal to log travels and events.

Which Obsidian Alternatives to Pick?

So, now you have seen five of the best alternatives to Obsidian, which one though?

• Logseq, Reflect Notes and Roam Research all provide a real in-depth linked note-taking experience that might that a little while to get the hang of. However, if you are looking to build up a second brain system over time, it's not a bad idea to begin learning as you go. Over time you'll create connected graphs of notes to look back on and spark ideas and learn new things.
• Mem provides you with an AI note-taking experience that may be easier to pick up right away, especially if you are looking for somewhere to write quick notes and summarise them to gather thoughts and ideas in one place.
• Finally, there's Craft, this is the most different in this list of Obsidian alternatives because it doesn't really have the linked database of notes thing, however, it's more a place to create in-depth documents of notes, cards and pages to share with others, or to keep a journal of thoughts and ideas for yourself.

If you're interested in learning more about what a second brain app is, you can check out our other articles and guides for second brain tools too.