Notion vs. Obsidian: A 6-Month Record of Managing a Consulting Project

This past April, right before a client meeting, I found myself unable to load a Notion page. The café Wi-Fi was unstable, and by the time I tried switching to offline mode, the meeting was already approaching. That evening, back home, I decided to give a local-first tool a try and installed Obsidian. Six months later, I'm sharing a comparison based on using both tools side by side for actual consulting work.

Test Environment

During the comparison period, I was running three projects simultaneously: a market entry strategy for a Texas-based local F&B brand, a cost structure analysis for a mid-sized logistics company, and a go-to-market plan for a healthcare startup. Each project required four common types of work: client meeting notes, framework documentation (things like Porter's Five Forces and MECE categorization), data analysis summaries, and final strategy documents.

For the first three months, I kept all projects in Notion, then for the following three months I replicated the same workflow in Obsidian. It wasn't a perfect A/B test, but repeating the same kinds of tasks in both tools made the differences pretty clear.

Meeting Notes and Everyday Documentation

During the Notion period, I created meeting notes as database entries. Client-based filters, date sorting, tag categorization. The structure itself was clean. The problem was that the block-based editor kept getting in the way when I was typing quickly during meetings. My flow would break while reaching for slash commands, and I'd end up grabbing the mouse just to adjust indentation levels inside bullet points.

After switching to Obsidian, I simply opened a markdown file and started typing. In terms of raw typing speed during meetings, Obsidian was clearly faster. My hands almost never left the keyboard. The trade-off was that organizing those notes by project afterward required me to design my own folder structure and tagging system. Since Notion's databases handle that structure automatically, post-meeting organization time was shorter on the Notion side.

Framework Documents and Knowledge Connections

In consulting, you end up reusing the same frameworks across multiple projects. For example, I used MECE categorization on the logistics project and then again on the healthcare project a month later. In Notion, I created a single framework page and linked to it from each project page. It worked, but the relationships between frameworks and projects weren't visible at a glance.

Obsidian's graph view made these connections visually apparent. Seeing three project notes linked to a Porter's Five Forces note by connecting lines, I started noticing patterns: which frameworks I relied on heavily and which ones I never touched. That was genuinely useful. What surprised me most was how the realization "I'm over-relying on this framework" came to me visually, just from looking at the graph.

On the other hand, creating framework templates in Obsidian and duplicating them for new projects took considerably more effort than just pressing a template button in Notion. You can get something similar by installing the Templater community plugin, but it required time to set up.

Sharing Data Analysis Results

This is where the gap was largest. When sharing cost structure analysis results with the client on the logistics project, Notion was just a single page link. The other party could view it through the web publish feature even without a Notion account, and tables and charts displayed perfectly. The client's marketing manager even commented, "This looks really clean."

Obsidian is fundamentally a local tool. To share analysis results, I had to either export markdown as a PDF, use a paid service like Obsidian Publish, or just move everything to another tool like Google Docs. In terms of collaboration and sharing, Notion's advantage was overwhelming. This is really where the line falls between a tool for personal use and a tool for working with teams and clients.

So How Am I Using Them Now

After six months, I didn't end up picking one over the other. Client-facing materials, shared documents, and team collaboration spaces stay in Notion. Personal study notes, exploring connections between frameworks, and quick capture during meetings happen in Obsidian. There's the overhead of moving content between the two tools, but each one's strengths are distinct enough that it felt better than giving either one up.

These days, it feels pretty natural to jot down an idea that hits me while listening to live music on Austin's 6th Street straight into the Obsidian mobile app, then refine and move it to a Notion project page the next morning. The real question wasn't which tool to choose, but which tool to match to which task.

If you're wrestling with the same decision, I'd love to hear in the comments how you use each tool and for what purpose.