Given the heavy academic demands of college, students are often in search for tools that can best complement their personal objectives and learning preferences. If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place! Today, Viviana and I (Evelyn) will tell you everything you need to know about **Notion and Obsidian—two notetaking powerhouses—**and our personal opinions after trying them out.

Viviana will be reviewing Notion as an avid Obsidian user, and I’ll be sharing my thoughts on my initial experiences with Obsidian after using Notion for 5 years! (Note that there are many great notetaking apps aside from Notion or Obsidian out there, so we encourage you to explore more options as well.)

Notion vs. Obsidian (Credits: Santi Younger)

What is Notion?

Notion is a versatile note-taking tool that blends together your needs for project management, sharing/collaboration, and general note-taking capabilities. Students get **free access to Notion’s Plus plan** ($8/month), so make sure to try it out! Here’s a quick rundown of Notion’s pros and cons:

✅ Pros

• More user-friendly and intuitive than Obsidian with a lower learning curve
• Organizes notes based on a traditional hierarchical database structure that is similar to other note-taking tools; more familiar to users who migrated from other note taking apps
• Collaboration is easy—tag colleagues, leave comments, and assign tasks at the click of a button
• Integrated functions such as calendar, timeline, and database that don’t require extra plug-ins

⛔ Cons

• Content ownership—Notion stores your data on a cloud server whereas Obsidian stores notes locally on your device
• Can experience latency issues as your database system becomes more complex
• Both Notion and Obsidian have limited mobile app usabilities
• No specialized feature—many view Notion as a jack-of-all-trades tool

What is Obsidian?