Keep the joy of
linked notes.
Add the
power to finish things.
Obsidian is excellent for building a personal knowledge vault. Amplenote is better when your notes need to become priorities, calendar blocks, shared plans, and measurable progress — without assembling a plugin stack.
Two great tools. Two different jobs.
We respect Obsidian — many of us used it for years. The honest question isn't which is better, but which fits the way you actually want to work.
Local-first knowledge management
For tinkerers who love graph thinking, owning their files as plain Markdown, and customizing every detail of their environment.
- Files stored locally on your disk
- Powerful graph view and backlinks
- Deeply customizable through community plugins
- Strong personal-vault privacy story
Turning notes into action
For people who want their notes to drive what they actually do — priorities surfaced, blocks scheduled, work shipped, progress visible.
- Tasks as first-class objects, scored by importance
- Native calendar with drag-and-drop time blocking
- Real-time collaboration on shared notes and tags
- Mood tracking and completed-task analytics built in
Your knowledge graph is still here. It just does more.
Every note knows what it's connected to. Backlinks, transclusion, tag hierarchies, and a visual graph view — the things you love about Obsidian survive the move.
The difference: each node in your Amplenote graph also knows which tasks it owns, which collaborators touch it, and which decisions are still open.
What you'd need plugins for in Obsidian — built in here.
A side-by-side on the capabilities that decide where productive people land.
| Capability | Obsidian | Amplenote |
|---|---|---|
| Native tasks (not just checkbox markdown) | Markdown checkboxes | First-class objects |
| Task prioritization & scoring | Plugin required | Task Score, Eisenhower |
| Native calendar + time blocking | Plugin required | Drag & drop |
| Two-way Google / Outlook calendar sync | Not supported | Built in |
| Real-time collaboration | Shared vaults, no live editing | Shared notes & tags |
| Fine-grained permissions | Not supported | Per-note & per-tag |
| Publishing to the web | Paid add-on | Included |
| Mood & energy tracking | Plugin required | Native widget |
| Completed-task analytics | Plugin required | Victory Value built in |
| Plugin discovery (ratings & reviews) | Browse by name only | Curated marketplace |
| Full Markdown import / export | Native | Native |
Spend less time choosing plugins. Spend more time doing the work.
Obsidian's ecosystem is powerful for tinkerers — but assembling and trusting the right plugins for tasks, calendar, sync, and analytics is a side project of its own.
To match Amplenote in Obsidian, you'd install…
- Tasks plugin
- Day Planner
- Full Calendar
- Google Calendar sync
- Kanban
- Dataview + DataviewJS
- Periodic Notes
- Habit Tracker
- Charts
- …and updates for all of the above
In Amplenote, it's already there
- Task scoring with the Eisenhower matrix
- Drag-and-drop calendar time blocking
- Two-way Google & Outlook sync
- Mood & energy tracking
- Completed-task analytics & Victory Value
- Shared notes and shared tags for teams
Idea → Task → Calendar → Done.
Most note apps stop at capture. Amplenote keeps going — converting raw thought into prioritized work, then into time on your calendar, then into evidence you actually moved forward.
Capture without friction
Daily Jots give you a frictionless inbox for ideas. They flow into your notes graph automatically.
Surface what matters
Task Score uses the Eisenhower matrix to surface what's important and urgent — without manual reordering.
Schedule on the calendar
Drag tasks onto your calendar. They sync two-way with Google and Outlook so nothing falls through.
See your patterns
Completed Task Stats and mood-vs-productivity graphs show what your week actually looked like.
Notes that look back at you.
Track mood and energy alongside the work you ship. Watch your Victory Value rise. See which days actually felt good — and which ones just looked good on paper. No plugin to find. No dashboard to assemble. The patterns are already there in your data.
Distribution
Where your time actually went
Auto-grouped by tag. Hover any bubble to drill into subtags.
- todo 60%
- canonical 26%
- gitclear 8%
- amplenote 4%
- + 39 more
Monthly retrospective
March → April → May, side by side
Every month, Amplenote builds you a comparable view. Same shape, same tags, three months of momentum.
Trends
One week, dots and all
Each cell is a day; each dot is a completed task colored by tag.
42 tasks completed this week · 4 tags active
Shared notes that behave like living workspaces.
Obsidian Sync now offers shared vaults — but everyone needs an active subscription, fine-grained permissions aren't supported, and there's no live same-file editing. Amplenote is built for teams that want to think together in real time.
Shared notes & shared tags
Share a single note, or every note under a tag — collaborators contribute to a living, updating body of knowledge.
Assignable tasks
Hand off work inside the note where it was decided. Tasks land in the right person's queue, scored and ready to schedule.
Goals you reach together
Meeting minutes, research projects, collaborative roadmaps — Amplenote treats shared workspaces as the unit, not just shared files.
Stop building
a productivity stack.
Start doing
the work.
Obsidian's plugin community is genuinely impressive. But its own docs note that plugins run third-party code, don't auto-update for security reasons, and the team can't manually review every release. Discovery happens by name and description — not ratings or reviews.
We loved tinkering with our Obsidian setup. We loved it less after the fourth time a plugin broke at the worst possible moment.
One bundled plan. Or two add-ons that don't talk to each other.
Obsidian's core app is free — and that's genuinely great. But the features most knowledge workers actually need (sync across devices, publishing to the web) live in two separate paid add-ons. Amplenote bundles all of it, plus everything Obsidian doesn't sell at any price.
- Local Markdown files, unlimited notes
- Sync across devices (1 GB storage cap)
- Publish notes as a website
- Native tasks & Task Score
- Built-in calendar & time blocking
- Two-way Google / Outlook sync
- Mood & energy tracking
- Completed-task analytics
- Real-time shared editing
- Linked notes, backlinks, graph view
- Sync across unlimited devices
- Publish any note to the web
- Task Score with Eisenhower prioritization
- Native calendar with drag-and-drop blocks
- Two-way Google & Outlook sync
- Mood & energy tracking, Victory Value
- Vault Notes (client-side encryption)
- Shared notes, shared tags, assignable tasks
$60 less per year than the Obsidian Sync + Publish stack — with all the productivity features Obsidian doesn't sell at any price.
Comparison: Amplenote Unlimited annual ($120/yr) vs Obsidian Sync + Publish at monthly billing ($180/yr).Zero lock-in. In either direction.
Amplenote's Obsidian importer takes a zipped Markdown vault and brings over images, formatting, links between notes, tags, code snippets, and supported attachments.
- One-click import from Obsidian's native Markdown export
- Internal links preserved across the entire vault
- Tags, attachments, and code blocks come through clean
- Full Markdown export available any time — your data stays yours
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Evernote
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Obsidian
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Notion
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Todoist
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Google Keep
-
Markdown
Bring your existing notes with you
Drop in an Evernote, Roam, Obsidian, or Markdown export to import notes in seconds. Your trial starts the moment your file is ready.
Keep the linked thinking.
Add the
forward motion.
Try Amplenote free for 14 days. Bring your Obsidian vault. Keep what works, drop the plugin stack, and see how your week looks when your notes know how to follow through.
Free Forever plan available · No credit card required · Full Markdown export, always