What should I choose between Obsidian and Notion for a personal knowledge base?

[Kenneth.M]

I'm trying to decide between Obsidian and Notion for my personal knowledge base, and I'm stuck on the local storage versus cloud sync trade-off. I love having everything instantly available on all my devices, but the idea of my notes being truly future-proof and under my direct control is really appealing.

[Edward_L]

I went local-first with Obsidian. My vault sits on a synced folder, so I get instant access on the laptop and a bit of lag on mobile until syncing finishes. It feels durable and future-proof to me because it's just Markdown files I own, easy to back up, and easy to move if I want. The trade-off is the setup and keeping my own sync stable, but I prefer control over data.

[Kevin_J]

Cloud-first works great for me too when I want zero fuss: it opens everywhere, search is fast, and I get automatic backups. But I keep wondering what happens in five or ten years when the service changes or goes dark, and the data portability isn't perfect.

[Donald.J]

Do you actually want offline access all the time, or is occasional offline enough if you own the data?

[Jack.M]

Sometimes I tried a hybrid: core notes in a local vault, plus a cloud capture for quick notes. It helped capture on the go, but drift and duplicates in sync made me drop it for now.