Obsidian alternative: 7 living apps, compared honestly
Last checked: 3 November 2026
Most “Obsidian alternative” lists pad the count with abandoned apps. This one holds only seven tools with an active project behind them — checked on GitHub on 3 November 2026 — and says plainly who each one is for.
The 7 alternatives at a glance
Logseq
Best for daily outlines, journals and block references. Local Markdown files, native graph view, its own query system. The catch: Dataview queries and Canvas files don't convert.
Joplin
Best for local control plus a proper phone app, with no server to run. Encrypted sync via Joplin Cloud, WebDAV, Nextcloud or S3. The catch: no Dataview, and notes live in Joplin's database, not a plain folder.
SiYuan
Best for block-based notes and daily notes with self-hosting (Docker). Built-in sync plus S3 / WebDAV. The catch: notes become blocks in a database, not plain Markdown files.
AppFlowy
Best for shared team workspaces — the Notion-shaped answer that is still open source and self-hostable. The catch: wikilinks, graph view and your folder structure don't survive in Obsidian form.
AFFiNE
Best for visual, collaborative docs-plus-whiteboard work. The catch: the client is MIT-licensed but the server side is proprietary — it is open-core, not fully open source.
Zettlr
Best for long-form writing on desktop: plain Markdown files, citations, Pandoc export. The catch: no plugins, no Dataview, no real mobile app.
TriliumNext
Best for self-hosters who think in hierarchies and daily journals. The living community fork of Trilium. The catch: notes live in a database, and there is no plugin marketplace.
Alternatives you should NOT pick
Directories still recommend these as if they were live options. They are not:
- Dendron — de facto abandoned; last commit 2025-06-01 (checked 3 Nov 2026).
- Reor — GitHub repository archived (read-only) on 2026-03-07. An archived repo gets no fixes.
- Original Trilium — maintenance mode since 2024. Use the TriliumNext fork instead.
Before you switch to any alternative
Copy your whole vault, migrate the copy only, open 20 random notes in the new app and check links, images and attachments by eye. Keep the original untouched for at least a month. Full detail in the alive-or-dead table on the Exit Kit home page.