Kept vs Obsidian
Obsidian deserves the devotion it gets. Your notes are plain Markdown files on your own disk · private, portable, and readable in fifty years. The linking is elegant, the community has built thousands of plugins, the company takes no venture money and charges nothing for personal use. As a philosophy of software ownership, Obsidian isn't just good; it's the standard everything else should be held to.
| Kept | Notion | Sunsama/Akiflow | Atoms | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup required | None · useful in 60s | Build it yourself | Guided ritual, daily | Minimal |
| Files itself | Yes · one-line capture | No | Partial | n/a |
| Whole life (work + body + mind) | Yes | Work/docs | Work | Habits only |
| Identity engine | Yes · vow & votes | No | No | Yes |
| Mobile-first & calm | Yes | No | Desktop-first | Yes |
| Price | Free to start; fair annual | Free → $10–20/mo | ~$17–34/mo | ~$120/yr |
Competitor details as of June 2026; see their sites for current pricing.
What Obsidian gets genuinely right
Ownership, first and forever: local files, open formats, end-to-end encrypted sync if you want it, free for personal use · and since 2025, free for work too, with the commercial license made optional. That posture buys a trust no cloud workspace can match, and it's why people move their whole intellectual life there.
The depth is real too. Backlinks and the graph turn notes into a thinking tool; Bases (shipped 2025) turns them into databases without leaving Markdown; and the plugin ecosystem can build nearly anything · task systems, spaced repetition, calendars, dashboards. Even its AI posture is principled: nothing bolted in, your vault stays yours, agents come only if you invite them. For a permanent home for what you know, there is no better choice.
The garden needs gardening
The honest limit is the same as the strength: Obsidian gives you materials, not a system. Out of the box it doesn't do tasks, dates, or planning · that takes a plugin stack (Tasks, Dataview, a calendar bridge) that you choose, wire together, and maintain. For a certain kind of person that assembly is the joy. For everyone else it's a second hobby with your name on it, and vault-tending has a way of becoming the productive-feeling alternative to the actual work.
Day-running is simply not the product. Capture on the phone means opening the app and picking where the line goes. Nothing ranks today against your goals, nothing writes into the calendar other people see, nothing resurfaces the note when its moment arrives, and nothing tracks the promise you made to yourself in January. Your vault remembers everything and initiates nothing.
What Kept does instead
Kept is the other half of the equation: not the archive, the operator. Say one line and it's filed as the right thing with the right date; the day assembles itself from your goals and your real calendar; the note comes back when it matters; the kept promise gets counted. There is no plugin stack to assemble because the system is the product · and your pick always wins when you'd have filed differently.
We share more of Obsidian's values than the category usually does: your capture text stays yours, nothing trains on your private notes, and your data is exportable · we think ownership is the price of being trusted with a life. The difference is the job. Obsidian asks: where should this knowledge live? Kept asks: what should happen next, and did it?
Who should pick which
Keep Obsidian for the vault · honestly, don't move it. Research, writing, the linked long-term memory of what you've read and thought: that belongs in local Markdown you'll own forever, and no app that runs your day needs to also be your archive.
Add Kept when the day itself is the problem: when capture needs to be one line from anywhere, when today should rank itself against your goals and calendar, and when you want the promises · not just the notes · kept. Plenty of our favorite users run both: the garden in Obsidian, the day in Kept.
Obsidian pricing (free for personal use; commercial license optional since Feb 2025 at $50/user/yr; Sync from $4/mo billed annually; Publish $8/mo) verified July 2026. Obsidian ships no built-in AI; AI arrives via community plugins and open agent skills. See obsidian.md/pricing for current details.
Say it once. It’s filed.
One calm app, not six · free to start, iPhone first.