When comparing Todoist vs Obsidian md, the Slant community recommends Obsidian md for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” Obsidian md is ranked 11th while Todoist is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose Obsidian md is:
Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports natural language input
Todoist supports phrases like "tomorrow," "next month," "in 3 weeks," or for recurring tasks, "every week" or "every 3 days."
Pro Minimalist UI that's designed for efficient use
Todoist's web and desktop interfaces have a 2-column layout. The right column has all tasks organized in nested lists with color codes and information such as what people are assigned to each task and which project the task is part of. The left column offers ways of accessing various groups of tasks – tasks that have to be completed within a certain timeframe, tasks that are a part of a certain project or have certain labels attached to them, etc. The left column also contains filters that allow even more advanced ways of finding a group of tasks.
The mobile interface follows a similar design philosophy, but gives each column a separate view.

Pro Multiple ways to organize tasks
Tasks can be structured in nested lists. They can be moved around by dragging and dropping them or via keyboard shortcuts. Tasks can be assigned labels, color codes, priorities, and can also be grouped into projects.
Pro Powerful search and filtering functionality
Todoist allows you to perform advanced queries to find tasks that are overdue, have a certain priority level or label, are within a certain project, are assigned to a certain person, or have a deadline set within a certain date range. It also allows combining different queries, removing certain results from the queries, and creating either/or statements.
These queries can be saved as filters for easy access. Filters can be color-coded.
Pro Allows sharing and collaborating on tasks
Anyone can be invited to collaborate on tasks and projects. Users can work alongside five people for free and 25 via the paid version. Collaboration includes the ability to assign tasks, comment on tasks, and receive instant updates.
Pro Monitors productivity and rewards it with karma
Todoist monitors how many tasks are completed and gives karma points as rewards for accomplishing them. It can also display charts showing productivity trends, which are great for finding areas that need improvement and increasing your overall productivity. This feature is a great motivator and an effective way of tracking productivity.
Pro Super quick syncing
You can shift between devices without having to worry about if tasks have been synced or not. Todoist sync will always be quicker than you.

Pro No ads in free version
The unpaid version contains no ads or popups encouraging you to upgrade. The only time you will be asked to upgrade is if you attempt to use a premium feature.
Pro Visual scheduling
By clicking on a task and then selecting “schedule,” a dialog box will pop up with shortcuts like "today," "tomorrow," or "postpone until tomorrow." A date can still be entered manually.
Pro Allows creating task templates
Tasks can be saved as templates by going to "task actions" and selecting "export as a template." The template will be saved locally. Saved templates can then be imported by going to "task actions" button and clicking "import from template." This allows you to use past task items as a starting point for creating new tasks.

Pro Great home screen and lock screen widgets
The native widget is fully functional and editable without needing to open the app. A premium feature allows you to add and edit the task list on your mobile device’s lock screen.
Pro Can be set to send a daily digest email
You can easily program a digest email that will send you an up-do-date summary of your tasks and deadlines.
Pro Browser extension for "add website as task"
Bookmark any webpage as a to-do item.
Pro Extensive integration with a wide range of external apps
Todoist offers integration with a wide range of external apps, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Zapier, Toggl Button, TaskClone, CloudMagic, IFTTT, Calendar Sync, Google Now, Dispatch, Mailplane, Airmail, Drafts, Workflow, PomoDone, 1Password, Powr of You, Mailbird, Yoke, Taco, Ginger Keyboard, Time Doctor, and Rindle.
Pro Supports text formatting
You can make tasks stand out by setting them in bold and spice up your project names with emojis. Todoist also allows editing of hyperlinked text in the task comments. Hypertext, bold text, italic text, and emojis are supported in task names, project names, and task comments. Emojis are also supported in label names.
Hypertext, bold text, italic text, and emojis are supported in task names, project names, and task comments. Emojis are also supported in label names.
Pro Infinite list depth
All subtasks are full featured tasks. This means that at a glance you can see subtasks, unlike other applications that require you to open the task.
Pro Business strategy doesn't hinge on being acquired
Doist publicly declared their opposition to exit strategies like acquisition that regularly leave users high and dry.
Pro Allows creating location-based reminders
Location-specific tasks can utilize the GPS in your mobile device to offer reminders when you are in the appropriate vicinity. For example, grocery lists that are linked to the location of your regular grocery store.
Pro Integration with any app supporting web-calendar link
Pro Cross-platform
Pro Quickly browse your list through smartwatch devices
The Todoist app supports Apple Watch and Android Wear for instant action and task viewing through smartwatches.
Pro Smart Schedule (Let AI schedule your tasks)
Todoist Smart Schedule adapts to your habits over time, analyzing your workload and determining how urgent a task is. By using both your past todos and future todos (as well as the data from millions of other users), it can sort your tasks in most important/ most urgent order, if you want.
Pro On mobile apps, swipe left/right performs fast reschedule/done
Swipe right to mark a task as done, swipe left brings up several rescheduling options (tomorrow, next week, specific date, etc.).
Pro Quickly assign a task to a project as you type with #
Typing # while entering a new task brings up the list of projects (and sub-projects) to assign the task to. Type in any letters of the project name to filter the list to a subset of projects that have those letters in them.
Pro Locally stored, not dependent on cloud
Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere.
Pro Markdown makes for flatter learning curve
Pro Lightweight and very customizable
Variety of settings, and community themes & plugins, available from built-in marketplace. Every community plugin is open-source which means you can learn from it and develop your own.
Pro Backlinking
This allows you to link notes back and forth really easily.
Pro Fast growing
It's becoming more powerful everyday, it seems like they add many functions within several days.

Pro Cross-platform: works on Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS
Pro Very easy to use and link notes, preserves the standard form of markdown
Linking notes is a game changing feature. Very easy to use and link notes. Their implementation of markdown doesn't deviate from the standard form of markdown and so the same files can be used by other markdown programs without any consequence.
While renaming note link still works.
Pro Multiple Vaults
A Vault in Obsidian is like a database. Internal links and files are not shared across Vaults. Each Vault is opened with a separate instance of Obsidian. Each Vault can have its unique app settings and plug-ins. Useful if you have distinct/unrelated projects or "data spaces" requiring different workflows and data relations.
Pro In-line tagging
Ability to tag-as-you-write and find each occurrence of a tag in the entire vault makes it very easy to organize and retrieve notes. Supports nested tags.
Pro Infinite panes, split panes, lock panes
In Obsidian, pane = window = note = page
Obsidian allows you to open as many notes as you can fit concurrently in your screen. You can split a pane horizontally/vertically. You can lock/link panes so they scroll in sync, useful for and edit & preview modes.
Pro Functionality extensions with a growing number of plugins
Also open for anyone to develop their own extensions/plugins.
Pro Daily Notes with template
Daily Notes plug-in, when clicked, generates a new note with the current date. Great for journaling and reduces friction in your writing habit.
You can create a custom template for your Daily Note.
Pro Helps visualize personal knowledge in ways nothing else allows
The Graph view is more than an aesthetic gizmo. It allows you to grasp and recognise clusters of information, follow branches and easily filter out what you don't want to see. The "animate" option shows how your notes and links have grown organically. With a bit of tweaking to the visuals and the proper theme, your graph might even start to look like a disturbingly "alive", eerie thing.
Pro Random note
A plugin that, when clicked, surfaces a random note from your vault.
Pro Support for tags
Pro Readable as it hides the [[ ]] around links when in Preview mode
This is a big difference, as having to read through long-form texts laden with [[links]] gives friction.
Pro Slides for giving presentations from within Obsidian
Easily turn your notes into simple yet sleek powerpoint-style presentations by enabling the Slides plugin and adding the --- separator.
Pro Markdown rather than outline/blocks
Pro Keyboard shortcuts, Vim key bindings
Hotkeys can be customized in settings.
Can switch on or off Vim key bindings in the editor settings.
Pro Great onboarding experience
The onboarding consists of well-written help documentation (saved as a vault) served in small chunks and organized systematically so that you become familiar with all its features as well as get hands-on experience in real time.
Pro Community of developers building themes and plug-ins
Due to the tool being very developer-friendly, there are tons of cool developments being made to it by 3rd party devs.
Pro Page previews on hover
When you hover on an internal [[link]], you get to preview the note without opening it on a new pane.
Page preview plugin must be enabled.
Pro Intuitive and easy to use with an excellent help system built-in
The app doesn't frustrate the user - the built-in help is excellent.
Pro Embedding attachments, such as PDF
Variety of file formats are directly embedded in the markdown preview, e.g. markdown, image, audio, video and PDF files.
Pro Exporting as PDF
Allows exporting your markdown files as PDFs rendered with all of your plugins.
Pro Calendar
Daily and Weekly notes with Calendar Plugin.
Pro Graph view
A pretty, alternative way to represent links between your notes.
Pro Multiple cursors
A feature unseen in other tools.
From the help doc, "This can be useful when modifying a lot of lines in the same way, for example putting - at the beginning of multiple lines to turn them into a list, or appending [[ to a series of links you’ve copied from elsewhere."
Pro Can copy search results and paste as lists and/or links in a new or existing note
Pro Advanced search
Supports extended searching by default. Community plugin called "Vantage" allows to make more advanced queries.
Pro Git integration
Version Control for your vault with Obsidian Git plugin.
Pro Aliases
Allows to refer to a note with multiple names.
Pro Big and helpful community
There's a Discord server and a forum. Join the community!
Pro Not locked to a provider
No lock-in to a certain company - just markdown files on disk.
Pro Mindmaps
Available as a plugin.
Pro Math
Uses MathJax.
Pro Templates
Allows to create templates with built-in plugin. There's also powerful community plugin called "Templater".
Pro Diagrams
Uses Mermaid.
Pro Linking to blocks
You can link to a block - e.g.: paragraph, blockquote, heading.
Pro Metadata
Add a custom metadata to a note with YAML front matter.
Pro Sketching
With Excalidraw.
Pro Academic citations
Supports Citations and provides inserting from Zotero.
Pro SQL-like queries
Advanced queries for the data-obsessed with Dataview Plugin.
Pro Workspaces
Saving and loading workspaces.
Pro Built-in Audio Recorder
Pro Folders and file level storage which is open to manage, does not lock navigation
With other options like notion, we can not see how the data is actually stored.
Pro HTML Support
Use HTML in a note.
Pro Incredible tool for PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) which allows anyone who has a computer and an internet connection to think better and create new insights
Pro Helps with planning and organization.
Variety of planning and organization plugins, such as Kanban boards or Day Planner.
Pro Supports importing from other tools
Supports importing from tools such as Notion, Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes, Bear, Zkn3, TiddlyWiki 5, and Roam Research. Refer to Obsidian Help for more info.
Pro Supports several languages
Translations are made by the community at GitHub repository.
Pro Discord rich presence
Update your Discord status to show your friends what are you working on with Discord Rich Presence plugin.
Pro Syntax highlighting for code blocks
Pro Snapshots, file recovery, trash folder
Pro Copy and paste images easily
When taking notes, you can just grab a print screen from your clipboard and paste into the notes without having to do any file management
Cons
Con Not much independence of customising the layout
This has been a consistent "con" with Todoist. You cannot decide what should be the size of the fonts. You cannot switch between one-column layout and 2-column layout. You cannot view completed tasks. It is a brilliant application of course, but the development team is stuck on its basic idea of the app and after that they just haven't been developing further.
Con Awkward data entry
Several aspects of data entry are far more awkward than they should be: Adding notes, moving subtasks within the outline, and scheduling repeating tasks are all handled better by other apps. Adding notes cannot be done while creating the task, but must be done after. Moving items within the outline hierarchy is very clumsy and the use of keyboard shortcuts (such as holding down 2 or 3) requires knowledge of your current level in the hierarchy (which is not always clear). Finally, there is a natural language syntax for repeating tasks but it is very finicky and there is no good feedback mechanism to tell you whether or not it’s working.
Con Does not listen to user suggestions
Todoist has been shown to be fairly unresponsive to requests from their user community. An example can be seen here.
Con No start dates, only due dates available

Con Annual subscription required for notifications and attachments
A yearly subscription costs $29.
Con No way to add additional info to a task
There is no metadata for the task itself, like a description. While a paid feature allows you to write comments and attach files, info could be lost in the conversation.

Con Heavy premium advertisement
There is a screaming red "Upgrade and get more done" badge fixed in the bottom of the view, and additional features free users cannot access.
Con Labels (@contexts, etc.) only available with premium subscription
Con Using "next" actions requires a messy workaround
Todoist was not designed for "next" actions. You can use a workaround by manually setting certain items as priority and then filtering them, but that process requires a lot more management than other tools.
Con Makes it too hard to see all tasks assigned to you across the app
There is no default or easy-to-access view to simply see all your tasks from all your different projects. You have to use the filter (to:me) which seems like too much effort for something that should really be a default view.
Con Lacks advanced task repeating options
For example: second Saturday of every 2 months.
Con No support for dependencies
Cannot hide tasks until prerequisite tasks are completed
Con Free version has limited functionality
Without a subscription you won’t have access to reminders, comments, or labels and filters. These are features that many users find essential, but aren't included without a subscription.
Con Cannot import data
Con Todoist Foundations is detrimental to the app
Completed tasks disappear and project/section structures are messed up.
Con Very basic compared to alternatives
Compared to some other options, this is not a feature-rich app. The free version is not much better than keeping a text file of your to-dos.
Con Can't mark all completed tasks uncompleted
It's possible to select multiple uncompleted tasks, but there's no way to select completed tasks.
Con Mac Mail not supported
Even in the Pro version, Mac Mail is not supported for sending tasks as email attachments. There are some workarounds to send mail, but those attachments will still be impossible to forward.
Con Missed daily reminders complete for the wrong day
Miss a daily reminder for yesterday? If you complete it today, it completes today's reminder, too and won't remind you again until tomorrow.
Con Inbox is limited to 200 tasks
Con Recurring tasks are hard to set because the app only supports "natural language"
Con Naming convention for labels is very limited
No spaces or special chars are allowed.
Con Import feature is bad at handling non-English characters
Con No decent filtering or complex searches
Con Latest iPhone app only available for iOS 8 and above
The latest iPhone app is only available for iOS 8 and above, which excludes users with iPhone 4 or older models. Older versions of the app that can be used with previous iOS versions can be found here.
Con Closed Source
Con Needs to be better at block level references, searches, tagging
For example, if you want a tag a block of text, for obsidian, its the whole page that will get tagged.
Con Proprietary software lock-in
Creates dependence on the application with the promise that the content is yours but that cannot be entirely true without the application being free and open source software. You will end up altering the way you create the content to take advantage of Obsidian features and your processes will evolve for its workflows. This replicates the lock-in pain that people experience moving their highly personal information from one proprietary platform to the next when that initial platform stops serving them well, goes out of business, or becomes a bad actor.
Con Does not export to MS Word
Can export only as a PDF file.
Con Requires .md files
Can't read .txt or other plaintext file formats. Can't read asciidoc files.
(Available with a plugin.)
Con No ability to add dates that link to a daily note, when that day/note may not yet exist
You can create a backlink which doesn't yet exist; it just doesn't auto-fill for you. (Available as a plugin)
Con Too many plugins
Con iOS version works only with icloud
Does not work with other cloud folders.
Con Needs to be polished
They still need time to fix some bugs.
Con V1.0 release is terrible
Don't download unless you can't find pre 1.0 version.
