Leaving Notion? Here's how Obsidian, Coda, Logseq, and Capacities stack up — local-first markdown for ownership, formula power for business, networked thought for research, or object-based for visual structure.
Obsidian if you want your notes as plain markdown files you own forever (free core, $4/mo Sync). Logseq if open-source + networked-thought is the deciding shape (free, AGPL-3.0). Coda if you need formulas and database power Notion doesn't quite match. Capacities if you want Notion-style visual structure with object-based modeling. Notion still wins for the broadest collaboration features and integrations if cloud-only is fine.
One row per dimension, the values side-by-side. The olive dot marks the clear winner for that dimension when there is one — most rows are a wash, and that’s the point.
The incumbent. Cloud-hosted database + docs + wiki. Best collaboration features and integrations; weakest data ownership. Free for individuals; $10/seat Plus for teams.
Local-first markdown note-taking. Your notes are plain .md files in folders you control. Free core, optional $4/mo Sync. Massive plugin ecosystem.
Docs that feel like apps. Formulas, automations, and integrations that go beyond Notion's database power. $10/Doc Maker/mo Pro, editors free.
Open-source privacy-first knowledge base. Bidirectional links, graph view, plugins. Free forever; $5/mo Sync optional. The Obsidian for outliner-shape thinking.
Object-based knowledge management. Notes are typed entities (book, person, project) with structured properties. Cloud-hosted; $9.99/mo Pro for AI + unlimited media.
Three receipts, three scales. The line items are the same; the prices move. Every number is from the public May 2026 pricing page — we round to the nearest dollar but don’t invent.
Common pitfalls visible in public docs and community discussion. None of these will stop you shipping; all of them will cost you an afternoon if you don’t know about them.
Notion exports to HTML or Markdown but loses database relations, formulas, embedded content, and synced blocks. If you migrate away, you keep the text but lose the structure. Plan migrations carefully — a complex Notion workspace doesn't round-trip out cleanly. For data-ownership concerns, this is the biggest gotcha.
Obsidian's core is free for personal use, but if your employer pays for it or you use it as part of revenue-generating work, you need a Commercial License at $50/user/year. This isn't enforced technically — it's an honor system — but it's the policy. For a 5-person team, this is $250/year ($21/mo) for Obsidian usage, plus Sync if you want it.
Coda's pricing model charges per Doc Maker (creator), with unlimited editors (viewers can edit if granted permission). This is great when a small team creates and a large team consumes — but if everyone needs to create documents from scratch, your bill scales with team size. Plan permission roles carefully before signing up.
Logseq is local-first by design. There's no Logseq Cloud workspace. To sync across devices you use either Logseq's optional Sync service ($5/mo, e2e encrypted), or roll your own with iCloud, Dropbox, Syncthing, or Git. For teams wanting one central source-of-truth workspace UI, Logseq isn't the right shape.
Capacities's strength — typed objects with structured relationships — is also its lock-in. The Notion-style 'just markdown' export doesn't preserve the object model. If you migrate away, you keep the content but lose the typed structure that Capacities was the reason to use. Migration friction is real.
If you're using Notion as a headless CMS to drive a public website, the API rate limits (3 requests/sec per integration) and occasional reliability issues mean you'll need aggressive caching. Notion goes down or changes API behavior occasionally — fine for internal team usage, risky for public-facing high-traffic sites.
Editorial framing only — we have not migrated either way ourselves. What follows is the pattern visible in public post-mortems, GitHub issue threads, and conference talks. Take it as observed-pattern, not lived experience.
The most common migration in this space, usually triggered by data-ownership concerns or Notion pricing. Pattern: export Notion as Markdown (Settings → Export → Markdown & CSV), unzip into a new Obsidian vault, install relevant plugins (Dataview to replace Notion databases, Excalidraw for diagrams, Tasks for task management).
The hard part is recreating database functionality — Obsidian's Dataview plugin handles most cases but requires learning a query language. Plan 1-2 weeks for a workspace with deep database usage. Daily journals and simple docs migrate in under an hour.
Less common but happens when teams realize Coda's formula language solves problems Notion's databases can't. Pattern: rebuild critical docs in Coda manually — there's no automated importer. Use the time to redesign workflows with Coda's formula primitives in mind, not just port Notion's structure.
Plan 2-4 weeks for a non-trivial workspace. Coda's Doc Maker pricing means you may end up paying similar costs as Notion at small scale; the migration is about the workflow shape, not cost savings.
Migration for users committed to open-source + local-first. Export Notion to Markdown, import into Logseq's graph folder. Logseq treats Markdown blocks as first-class outliner items, so the imported docs become outline-shaped (which may need restructuring).
Allow 1-2 weeks. The migration usually surfaces that your Notion docs were either: (a) actually outlines that translate well to Logseq, or (b) page-structured docs where Obsidian would be the better landing spot. Try Logseq for journal and research workflows; reconsider if your docs are page-shaped.