Why I Switched from Notion to Obsidian

Notion's Speed Was the Breaking Point

I used Notion for three years. 847 pages, 23 databases. It was fast at first, but as data piled up, it got progressively slower. Pages took 2-3 seconds to open, and search took over 5 seconds. When I wanted to "quickly jot something down," waiting for the app to load was maddening.

The offline issue was the real killer. I couldn't take notes on a plane, or in a cafe without Wi-Fi. That happened 3-4 times. (The ideas that slipped away felt like a genuine loss.)

How I Found Obsidian

I kept seeing developers on Twitter mention "Zettelkasten" and "Obsidian," so I downloaded it out of curiosity. First impression: "what is this, just a markdown editor?" Compared to Notion's polished UI, it looked rough around the edges.

But it was fast. Local file-based, so opening a page takes under 0.1 seconds. Even after migrating all 847 notes, search took 0.3 seconds. That speed gap was the deciding factor.

The Migration Was Painful

I hit Notion's markdown export and got 847 files in a ZIP. But the formatting was a mess. Notion's proprietary IDs were appended to filenames, database properties were all broken, and embedded image paths were mangled.

Wrote a Python script to clean up filenames and convert frontmatter -- spent an entire weekend on it. 623 out of 847 were handled automatically. The remaining 224 I checked one by one manually. (This is where I genuinely wanted to give up.)

The migration took four days total. Two weekday late nights plus two full weekend days.

Where Notion Is Still Better

Let me be honest -- Notion clearly wins in some areas. Database views are unmatched. Kanban board, gallery view, calendar view, all switchable with one click -- even with Obsidian plugins, you can't replicate that well.

Collaboration is another Notion landslide. For team wikis, nothing replaces Notion. Obsidian is fundamentally a personal tool.

And Notion requires zero setup. Install and go. Obsidian has you configuring plugins, themes, and shortcuts for the first three days. That's both a weakness and a strength.

Where Obsidian Wins

Local files mean they're mine forever. No worrying about what happens to my data if Notion shuts down. They're markdown, so any editor can open them.

Backlinks and the graph view are great. They visualize connections between notes, and after three months of use, I could see knowledge forming a web. That's something I never experienced with Notion's folder-based structure.

The plugin ecosystem is wild. Daily notes, kanban boards, mind maps, git sync -- all community plugins. I'm currently running 14 plugins. (Which might be too many.)

Verdict After Three Months

No plans to go back. Speed and offline support match my usage patterns. My style is "write fast, organize later," and Obsidian supports that well.

But the team wiki is still Notion. If I suggested using Obsidian at work, my coworkers would be baffled. Personal notes in Obsidian, team collaboration in Notion. This dual system is the current compromise. Not perfect, but realistic.