Notion's move to a new AI credit system drew complaints on its own subreddit, while Obsidian shipped a search rewrite and mobile updates and gained traction as a file-based memory for Claude users. The sources don't settle whether the two are rivals or can work together.

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Obsidian 1.15.1 is now available for early access! - Search is revamped with faster results, Relevance sort, and accent-Obsidian

Notion vs Obsidian: What the Community Says

Quick Verdict

Notion's AI credit squeeze and Obsidian's 1.15.1 search rewrite landed in the same week. Per Merlin, Notion moved existing customers onto a new AI credit system on November 2. A r/Notion thread asking for "No-AI alternatives" hit 94 points and 186 comments on October 31. On November 3, @obsdmd put Obsidian 1.15.1 into early access and drew 745 likes, with the same release announced on Bluesky via @obsidian.md, listing the revamped search, new Android widgets, and the mobile Web Viewer. Notion is a hosted workspace pitched as "the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together" and a speaker in Phoebe Yu's video says it passed 100 million users last quarter. Obsidian keeps notes as local markdown files. Its release repo has 23,190 stars, but the app itself is not open source, and the sources give no Obsidian user count. Reddit shows people moving in both directions (one thread recommends Obsidian, another is titled "I tried switching to Obsidian but went back to Notion"). The sources do not settle whether the two are rivals or partners. Sub-level upvote totals reflect each community's engagement, not market share.

Notion

Notion is rolling AI and agents into everything, and its own subreddit is arguing over the bill. The r/Notion thread "Notion AI: Once You've Moved Forward, It's Hard to Go Back" (16 points, 30 comments, November 6) says users built daily work around Notion AI and now feel the credit limits pull it back. The complaint tracks with how Notion's own help documentation frames the system: Standard credits cover work where Notion picks the model (Notion Agent on Auto, AI Meeting Notes starting December 1, 2026), Select credits cover named-model tasks, and Notion credits require owner approval for overage, Custom Agents, or high-consumption models, per the eligible features breakdown. Notion's job board shows 153 roles, including three Solutions Consultant postings (Mid Market MEA, Mid-Market Benelux, Enterprise Nordics) dated November 6. The hiring analysis reads these as a rising focus on AI.

• Strengths: Notion is pushing a shared-memory feature. Moritz | AI Systems (7,011 views, November 6) describes Notion's announcement that ChatGPT, Claude, Muse and other bots can save to the same memory and reuse the same skills. Notion also offers Custom Agents, database automations per Notion Help, and a connections directory. A tutorial on its Custom Agents and Pricing Changes is undated. Beginner content is active too: heyim.kairo is running a 30-second Notion setup series (episode 6 on November 9, 565 views).
• Weaknesses: The credit complaint above is one. The No-AI thread (94 points, 186 comments) is another. In it, u/AcisConsepavole (13 upvotes) points to Alkemion as a possible alternative. Undated G2 reviews list slow, laggy large workspaces among the Notion Pros and Cons. An October 14 reviewer with three years of use says Notion is not ideal for users who need best-in-class features for one specific workflow.

Obsidian

Obsidian is shipping fast on mobile and search while Claude users adopt it as a file-based memory. The 1.15.1 early-access post from @obsdmd (745 likes, 42 reposts), mirrored on Bluesky by @obsidian.md, lists a revamped search with Relevance sort and accent-insensitive matching, new Android home-screen widgets, and a Web Viewer on mobile. @theostowell (111 likes, November 7) posted "Obsidian's Newest Mobile Release Makes One of My Most Crucial Workflows Native."

• Strengths: In the r/ObsidianMD "what is the actual point?" thread (759 points, 404 comments), u/MarcieDeeHope (143 upvotes) answers that it is "fast, offline and uses plain markdown." Obsidian's AI-agent use is popular. The r/ClaudeAI "Claude + Obsidian" thread hit 304 points and 165 comments, where the poster claims to be 3x more productive than six months ago. Eric Michaud's "Build an Obsidian BACKEND Not a Second Brain!" has 393,277 views. The obsidian-releases repo sits at 23,190 stars. A plugins guide from November 5 names Dataview, Templater, Obsidian Tasks and Bases.
• Weaknesses: Setup effort is the recurring complaint. The r/Notion "went back to Notion" thread (62 points, 48 comments) cites lots of plugins, tweaking and syncing hurdles. A r/ObsidianMD thread on maintenance time drew 82 points and 133 comments. On Hacker News, dostick says opening a plugin-heavy vault on iOS means a long wait. Per u/swizz (20 upvotes) in the r/Notion alternatives thread, Obsidian's sync is a paid add-on and the app is not open source, a point echoed in Slite's 2026 comparison, which lists Obsidian Sync starting at $4/mo and Publish at $8/mo against Obsidian's otherwise free, commercial-use-included core app.

Head-to-Head

The Bottom Line

Choose Notion if you need a shared workspace for teams, databases, automations and built-in AI, and you can live with credit limits. A Japanese comparison published November 9 reaches the same split, recommending Notion for sharing with family or work and AI summarizing. The cost shows in r/Notion, where 94 points and 186 comments went to a thread looking for no-AI alternatives, and in Notion's own credit tiers, where even Standard-tier tasks like polishing an email or drafting support replies draw down a shared pool per Notion's credits guide.

Choose Obsidian if you want private notes as portable local files and don't mind tuning plugins and sorting out sync. u/MarcieDeeHope (143 upvotes) praises its speed, offline use and plain markdown. The same community's maintenance-time thread (133 comments) is a warning about over-engineering your vault.

The emerging stack

The gathered evidence does not establish a Notion-plus-Obsidian pairing as a settled pattern. The only direct signals are a beginner asking whether to use Notion, Obsidian or both (13 points, 35 comments) and a Show HN for Mnemify (3 points) that merges Confluence, Notion and Obsidian. What does recur is each tool serving as a memory layer for AI agents. Obsidian shows up in the r/ClaudeAI thread (304 points), in morenicksaraev's TikTok (16,194 views) about Claude filing notes into a vault, and in Eric Michaud's video (393,277 views). On the Notion side, Moritz | AI Systems covers its shared-memory announcement for ChatGPT, Claude, Muse and bots.