Ensō is an offline-first personal productivity suite: todo, agenda, calendar, reading list, projects, notes, email, and history in one app. Obsidian is a local-first notes app that stores your notes as plain Markdown files and is extended by community plugins. Both work fully offline. Obsidian gives you files and endless customization; Ensō gives you finished apps that sync out of the box.
| Ensō | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $8/month or $80/year after a 14-day free trial (no card). No free plan. | Free app. Optional Sync from $4/month billed yearly ($5 monthly); Publish $8/site/month billed yearly. Commercial license optional. |
| Platforms | Web, Windows, macOS, iPhone/iPad, Android. No Linux desktop app (Linux uses the web app). | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android. No web app. |
| Offline | Everything, on every device, including the web app: each device keeps a full local SQLite database. | Fully offline: your vault is a folder of local files. |
| Sync | Included in Premium; every 15 seconds while online, one merge engine on every platform. | Paid Sync add-on, or sync the folder yourself. |
| End-to-end encryption | Opt-in Vaults: lock chosen lists, calendars, projects, or notes folders end-to-end (the server holds only ciphertext). | Obsidian Sync is end-to-end encrypted by default. Local files are not encrypted. |
| Data format | A SQLite database per device; full export to a zip, Markdown export per note. | Plain Markdown files you own and can open with anything. |
| Notes | Page tree, block editor, page links, tags, typed databases with dashboards. | Markdown editor, links and backlinks, graph view, Bases database views. |
| Tasks, calendar, projects | Built in: Todo, Agenda, Calendar, Projects with a Gantt timeline, plus a reading list and email. | Not built in; available through community plugins. |
| Extensibility | None: what ships is what you get. | Thousands of community plugins and themes. |
| Collaboration | None. Ensō is a personal app: no shared workspaces, lists, or guests. | Shared vaults through Sync. |
Obsidian details are from its own website and help pages as of September 2026. Spotted something out of date? Email contact@raintree.dev and we'll fix it.
Where Obsidian is the better choice
- You want your notes as plain Markdown files, readable by any tool, forever.
- You like to customize: thousands of plugins and themes, graph view, Canvas.
- You mostly take notes, use Linux, or want the core app free.
Where Ensō is the better choice
- You want tasks, an agenda, a calendar, a reading list, and project plans that work together without assembling plugins.
- You use a browser: Ensō's web app works offline too, with nothing to install.
- You want sync included rather than set up yourself, and end-to-end encryption on chosen items.
Switching from Obsidian
Your Obsidian notes are already Markdown: select the files in Ensō Notes → Import .md. Ensō has no one-click importer for other apps yet. Notes accepts Markdown files (Import .md in the Notes sidebar), and tasks, events, and projects are entered by hand. Every account starts with a 14-day free trial, no card needed, so you can run both side by side first. See getting started and your data.