Joplin vs Obsidian

Obsidian’s whole design rests on one decision: a vault is an ordinary folder of .md files. You can open it in any editor, back it up with anything, put it under Git, and walk away from Obsidian without exporting a thing. Attachments are ordinary files beside the notes.

Joplin keeps notes in its own database and writes them out as Markdown when you export or sync. The notes are still Markdown inside, and the export is clean, but you cannot point another app at Joplin’s folder and start editing. In exchange, Joplin handles notebooks, to-dos, tags, history and attachments for you, much as Evernote did.

Dash sits nearer Joplin here: notes live in the app’s storage on your Mac or iPhone, and leave as Markdown, PDF, DOCX or an encrypted backup whenever you export.

Joplin syncs through Joplin Cloud (Basic is €2.99 a month or €28.69 a year for 2 GB; Pro is €5.99 a month for 30 GB) or through storage you already have: Dropbox, OneDrive, Nextcloud, any WebDAV server, S3 or a folder on disk, at no cost beyond the storage. End-to-end encryption works with every one of them, but it is off by default: you enable it on one device, set a master password, and the other devices pick it up. Lose that password and the notes cannot be recovered.

Obsidian Sync costs $4 a month billed yearly ($5 monthly) for one vault, 1 GB and a month of version history; Sync Plus is $8 a month billed yearly for ten vaults, 10 GB and a year of history. It is end-to-end encrypted by default with AES-256-GCM, with an optional standard mode in which Obsidian manages the key. The free route Obsidian documents is iCloud Drive between a Mac and an iPhone; Syncthing and Git work for the technically inclined.

Neither app encrypts the notes on your own disk; that is left to FileVault or the phone’s own protection. Dash locks individual notes with AES-256-GCM on the device, and its optional sync ($4.99 a month or $47.99 a year, with a seven-day trial) encrypts every change with a key that never leaves your devices.

Obsidian is the better writing tool for most people. Its editor renders Markdown as you type, [[links]] autocomplete, every note shows its backlinks, and the graph, Canvas and Bases turn a pile of notes into something you can navigate. Thousands of community plugins add calendars, task boards, spaced repetition and more, which is both the attraction and the trap: it is easy to spend an evening configuring instead of writing.

Joplin gives you a Markdown editor with a preview and a rich-text editor for people who would rather not see Markdown at all. It links notes to one another, and its plugin directory (about 340 plugins) adds backlinks, a graph and much else, but the experience is plainer. Where Joplin is stronger is capture: the web clipper saves pages straight into a notebook, and the desktop app runs OCR on images so their text turns up in search.

Dash has [[links]] with backlinks, Markdown shortcuts as you type, callouts, toggles and nested lists, and no plugins. It is a deliberately smaller tool.

Both apps run on macOS and iOS as well as Windows, Linux and Android. Obsidian’s mobile app is the more polished of the two and can keep a vault in iCloud Drive, so a Mac and an iPhone can share notes without a subscription. Joplin’s mobile apps feel utilitarian next to native iPhone apps, but they have something Obsidian lacks: a biometric lock you can switch on. (Since iOS 18, iPhone can also require Face ID to open any app, Obsidian included.)

Neither app has a built-in lock on a Mac, and neither encrypts notes on the device. If your notes are sensitive and you use a Mac and an iPhone, that gap is the reason to look at Dash: lock any note with AES-256-GCM, lock the whole app with Touch ID or Face ID and an auto-lock timer, and keep a duress password that opens decoy notes.

• Joplin to Obsidian: export everything from Joplin as Markdown with front matter and open the folder as a vault. Obsidian’s Importer plugin covers Evernote, Notion, Apple Notes, Bear and others, but not Joplin, so the Markdown export is the route.
• Obsidian to Joplin: Joplin 3.7 and later import an Obsidian vault directly; older versions take it through File › Import › MD - Markdown (directory). Canvas files and plugin data do not come across.
• Either to Dash: Dash imports an Obsidian vault folder or zip directly, keeping [[wikilinks]], photos, callouts, front matter and tags, and imports Joplin’s Markdown export as a folder of Markdown files. A preview shows what will come across before anything is written, and the import can be undone.

Pick Obsidian or Joplin if you need Windows, Linux or Android, want plugins, or want your notes as files you manage yourself. Pick Dash if you write on a Mac and an iPhone and care most about privacy without setup: no account, nothing uploaded unless you turn on end-to-end encrypted sync, locks on notes and on the app, and a Mac app you buy once for $14.99. The iPhone app is free.