Obsidian vs Tana: pricing, features and which to choose

Obsidian is a desktop and mobile note-taking app made by Dynalist Inc., a small independent company founded by Shida Li and Erica Xu, and first released in 2020. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Notes live in a vault, which is a folder of plain Markdown files on your device, so they open in any text editor and outlast the app. Obsidian takes no venture capital and calls itself 100 percent user-supported. In February 2025 it made the commercial license optional, and the company says people at more than 10,000 organizations, including Amazon and Google, use it for work. Version 1.15 shipped in October 2026.

Writing happens in a Markdown editor with live preview. Typing double brackets links one note to another, and every note shows its backlinks, so ideas connect without a fixed folder hierarchy. The graph view draws those links as a network. Canvas gives an infinite board for arranging notes, images and web pages, and Bases, a core plugin added in 2025, turns notes with properties into sortable tables, cards or maps that work like a lightweight database. Daily notes, templates and tags cover journaling and task capture. The 1.15 mobile release added voice Quick Capture with live transcription on iOS 26, and PDF export on mobile.

Obsidian's flexibility is also its main drawback. A new vault is a blank editor, and building a useful system takes time and plugin choices. Real-time collaboration is limited compared with Notion, Microsoft Loop or Google Docs, and community plugins vary in quality and security. Notion suits teams that want shared databases and built-in AI. Logseq, which is open source, offers an outliner model with similar local files. Anytype offers local-first, encrypted notes with object-based structure. Pick Obsidian if you want notes that remain usable files in 20 years and are willing to add AI yourself; pick Notion for team wikis.

Tana Labs, Inc. presents Tana as an agentic meeting platform separate from Tana Outliner. Native video calls bring team members, AI agents, and shared context into one workspace, while decisions, tasks, drafted pull requests, customer journeys, and project plans enter a persistent context graph. The graph can propose merging recurring people, companies, decisions, or topics. Integrations, an API, an MCP server, export, and access controls are included. Spaces can limit content to everyone in a location, the owner, or selected people. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, AI transcripts and summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited hosted meetings, integrations, and full MCP. Business adds SAML SSO, audit logs, compliance options, and data controls.

Tana supports meetings in its native video environment or through a meeting agent for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. Its AI agents can use participant tools such as screen sharing, document editing, and canvas creation. During or after a discussion, Tana can create decisions, tasks, project updates, customer journeys, storyboards, proposals, and other artifacts. Calendar connections import events, while integrations support GitHub, Linear, Jira, Slack, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Claude, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and Lovable. External agents can read and write workspace content through MCP, with proposal review for changes. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, transcripts, summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited meetings, integrations, and full MCP for $20 early bird or $30 per user monthly.

Tana’s main limitation is its meeting-centered design. It is not an IDE, production-code host, room-system integration, or replacement for tools such as Lovable or Bolt, though it can pass context to coding tools. Teams must manage access settings, connected services, model-provider policies, proposals, and plan-dependent AI usage. The Free plan includes five hosted meetings monthly, one calendar connection, AI transcripts and summaries, editing, and 50 AI queries. Pro adds unlimited hosted meetings, integrations, full MCP, and a meeting agent for Zoom, Teams, and Google Meet. Business adds SAML SSO, audit logs, security controls, and data-residency options. Tana says it does not sell data, advertise with it, or train models on customer content without notice and an opt-out opportunity.