The Cloud vs Obsidian (2025): Creator Workspace vs Knowledge Vault

Obsidian has earned a devoted following as one of the best local-first markdown editors available. If you take notes seriously, you have almost certainly tried it. The Cloud takes a different approach entirely -- it is a creator-first workspace that brings publishing, tracking, AI, and a desktop-like interface together in one browser-based environment.

These two tools share a love for good writing experiences, but they are built on fundamentally different philosophies. One is a cloud-native workspace for creators who publish. The other is a local-first vault for thinkers who connect ideas.

This comparison walks through the real differences so you can decide which tool fits the way you work.

Quick Overview

The Cloud is an all-in-one creator workspace that runs in your browser. It combines notes, blog publishing, habit tracking, mood tracking, task management, AI agents, and a CLI in a macOS-like desktop interface. Everything lives in the cloud, accessible from any device with no installation required.

Obsidian is a local-first markdown knowledge base. Your notes are plain .md files stored on your device, linked together with wiki-style links and visualized through a graph view. It is free for personal use and extensible through a massive community plugin ecosystem with over 1,000 plugins available. Obsidian runs as a desktop app (built on Electron) with companion mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Feature Comparison

Where The Cloud Stands Out

1. Built-in Blog Publishing

The Cloud has native blog publishing with custom domain support. Write a post, hit publish, and it is live -- no extra tools, no static site generators, no deploy steps. Obsidian offers Publish as a paid add-on ($8/month per site), but it produces static pages with limited customization and no dynamic features like comments or analytics.

For creators who publish regularly -- bloggers, newsletter writers, indie hackers sharing build logs -- this difference is enormous. The Cloud removes an entire layer of friction between writing and reaching your audience.

2. Habit and Mood Tracking

Creators thrive on consistency, and The Cloud builds habit tracking and mood tracking directly into the workspace. Track your writing streaks, monitor your creative energy, and spot patterns over time -- all without leaving the tool where you do your actual work. See at a glance whether your most productive writing days correlate with specific habits or mood states.

Obsidian has no built-in tracking. You can approximate habit tracking with community plugins like Tracker or Dataview, but it requires manual setup, YAML frontmatter conventions, and ongoing maintenance.

3. All-in-One Workspace

The Cloud brings notes, publishing, tasks, tracking, AI agents, and a CLI together in a single browser-based environment with a macOS-like desktop interface. You can drag windows, multitask across features, and switch contexts without switching apps.

Obsidian is fundamentally a note editor. Everything else -- task management, publishing, collaboration -- requires plugins or external tools. That flexibility is powerful, but it means assembling and maintaining your own stack. When a plugin breaks after an Obsidian update or two plugins conflict with each other, you are the one debugging it.

For creators who want to focus on output rather than tooling, having everything integrated means fewer moving parts and less maintenance overhead.

4. Real-time Collaboration

The Cloud supports real-time collaboration out of the box. Share workspaces, co-edit documents, and work alongside teammates without any extra setup. Whether you are co-writing a blog post or managing tasks with a small team, collaboration is a first-class feature rather than an afterthought.

Obsidian does not support real-time collaboration. You can share vaults through file syncing services like iCloud or Dropbox, but simultaneous editing is not supported and can lead to sync conflicts. Obsidian is designed as a personal tool first, and its architecture reflects that choice.

Where Obsidian Stands Out

1. Local-first Ownership

Obsidian's defining feature is that your notes are plain markdown files on your device. No vendor lock-in, no server dependency, no subscription required to access your own data. If Obsidian disappeared tomorrow, your files would still be right there on your hard drive, readable by any text editor.

For people who care deeply about data sovereignty and long-term archival, this is non-negotiable. Your notes are yours in the most literal sense possible.

2. Plugin Ecosystem

With over 1,000 community plugins, Obsidian can be shaped into almost anything. Kanban boards, spaced repetition, calendar views, Vim keybindings, Zotero integration, advanced templating -- the ecosystem is enormous and actively maintained.

If you enjoy customizing your tools and building bespoke workflows, Obsidian's plugin system is unmatched. No other note-taking app comes close to this level of extensibility. The community is active, knowledgeable, and constantly shipping new plugins and improvements.

The trade-off is complexity. A heavily customized Obsidian vault can become fragile -- dependent on specific plugin versions, prone to conflicts after updates, and difficult to replicate on a new machine. But for power users who enjoy that level of control, this is a feature, not a bug.

3. Graph View and Backlinks

Obsidian's graph view visualizes the connections between your notes, revealing clusters, orphan pages, and unexpected relationships in your knowledge base. Combined with automatic backlinks, it turns your notes into a navigable web of ideas rather than a flat list of files.

This is especially valuable for researchers, writers building complex narratives, and anyone practicing networked thinking or Zettelkasten-style note-taking. Over time, the graph becomes a map of your mind -- and that map often surfaces connections you would never have found through folder-based organization alone.

4. Offline-first Performance

Obsidian runs entirely on your machine. It opens instantly, searches thousands of notes in milliseconds, and works perfectly without an internet connection. There is no loading spinner, no "connecting to server" delay, no degraded experience when you are offline.

If you work in environments with unreliable connectivity -- airplanes, rural areas, coffee shops with spotty Wi-Fi -- Obsidian is rock-solid. Your entire vault is always available, always fast, and never dependent on someone else's servers being up.

Pricing Comparison

Who Should Choose The Cloud?

Choose The Cloud if you:

• Publish blog content regularly and want native, frictionless publishing
• Want habit tracking, mood tracking, and task management alongside your notes
• Prefer a browser-based workspace accessible from any device without installing software
• Need real-time collaboration with teammates or co-creators
• Value an all-in-one environment over assembling and maintaining separate tools
• Want built-in AI agents and CLI access for power-user workflows
• Want flat pricing that does not scale with team size

Who Should Choose Obsidian?

Choose Obsidian if you:

• Want full local ownership of your markdown files with zero cloud dependency
• Enjoy customizing your setup through community plugins and CSS snippets
• Practice networked thinking and rely on graph view, backlinks, and wiki-style linking
• Primarily need a personal knowledge base rather than a publishing or collaboration tool
• Work offline frequently and need guaranteed performance without internet access
• Prefer a free or low-cost approach for personal use and do not need team features
• Value having your data in plain text files that work with any text editor

The Bottom Line

The Cloud and Obsidian solve different problems, and that is not a cop-out -- it is genuinely the most useful thing to understand before choosing.

Obsidian is the best tool for building a personal knowledge vault. Local files you fully own, deep linking between ideas, a graph that reveals the shape of your thinking, and infinite customization through a thriving plugin ecosystem. If your primary goal is to think better by writing, Obsidian is exceptional.

The Cloud is the best tool for creators who need to produce, publish, and stay consistent. Built-in blogging, habit and mood tracking, task management, real-time collaboration, AI agents, and a CLI -- all in one cohesive workspace that runs in your browser.

If your workflow centers on writing notes and connecting ideas in a private knowledge base, Obsidian is hard to beat. If your workflow centers on creating content, publishing it to the world, and managing the habits and tasks that keep you productive, The Cloud brings everything together so you do not have to.

Both tools respect their users. Both are well-built and actively maintained by teams that care about the craft of writing software. The right choice depends on whether you need a knowledge vault or a creator workspace -- and for some people, the honest answer might be both.

If you are ready to try The Cloud, it is free to get started. Import your notes, explore the workspace, and see if it fits the way you create.