Obsidian vs Roam Research

Side-by-side comparison of Obsidian and Roam Research: pricing, features, API access, and community ratings.

AI comparison summary

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	Obsidian The free and flexible private note-taking app that sharpens your thinking Visit	Roam Research A note taking tool for networked thought — connect ideas like your brain does Visit
Category	Productivity	Productivity
Pricing	Freemium	Paid
Starting price		USD 15/mo
Free tier
Audience	All audiences	All audiences
API available
Open source
Self-hostable
Model provider
Founded	2020	2020
Headquarters		San Francisco, USA
Key strengths	·Local-first storage with full privacy — notes never leave your device unless you choose ·Bidirectional linking and graph view to visualize knowledge connections ·Thousands of community plugins and themes for deep customization ·Open file formats (plain-text Markdown) ensuring long-term data ownership	·Bi-directional linking between notes and ideas ·Graph-based knowledge visualization ·Daily notes workflow for building a personal knowledge base ·Block-level references and transclusion