Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Raindrop.io VS Obsidian.md

Compare Raindrop.io VS Obsidian.md and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Raindrop.io logo Raindrop.io

All your articles, photos, video & content from web & apps in one place.

Obsidian.md logo Obsidian.md

A second brain, for you, forever. Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
  • Raindrop.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Obsidian.md Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-01

Raindrop.io

$ Details
freemium
Platforms
Browser Web Windows Android iOS Google Chrome Mac OSX Linux Firefox Safari REST API Cross Platform JavaScript iPhone Chrome OS Edge
Release Date
2013 October

Raindrop.io features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Raindrop.io features an intuitive and visually appealing user interface that makes it easy for users to organize and manage their bookmarks.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    The service is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and web browsers, allowing users to access their bookmarks from any device.
  • Rich Bookmark Management
    Raindrop.io supports organizing bookmarks into collections and tags, adding descriptions, and even saving partial pages or screenshots for better context.
  • Collaborative Features
    The platform allows for collaborative collections, enabling users to share and work on bookmarks together, which is useful for team projects.
  • Integration with Other Services
    Raindrop.io integrates with various other services and apps like Zapier, IFTTT, and Google Drive, enhancing its functionality and connectivity.
  • Cloud Syncing
    All bookmarks are synced across devices in real-time, ensuring that users have access to their updated bookmark library anytime, anywhere.

Possible disadvantages of Raindrop.io

  • Subscription Cost
    Advanced features are only available in the Pro version, which requires a subscription fee, potentially making it less attractive to budget-conscious users.
  • Occasional Sync Issues
    Some users have reported occasional problems with syncing bookmarks across different devices, which can create inconsistencies in the bookmark library.
  • Performance Lag
    There can sometimes be performance lag, especially when handling a large number of bookmarks or during peak usage times.
  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is generally user-friendly, new users may experience a slight learning curve in understanding how to effectively use all the features.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any cloud-based service, there are potential privacy concerns related to data storage and handling by the service provider.

Obsidian.md features and specs

  • Local-first
    Obsidian stores your notes locally on your device, giving you full control over your data and enhancing privacy.
  • Markdown Support
    Obsidian uses Markdown, making it easy to format text and compatible with many other text editors and tools.
  • Bidirectional Linking
    You can create bidirectional links between notes, which helps in building a knowledge graph and navigating related information more easily.
  • Customizability
    Obsidian is highly customizable with community plugins, themes, and various settings to fit different workflows.
  • Graph View
    Provides a visual graph view of your notes and their connections, aiding in understanding relationships and discovering insights.
  • Offline Access
    Since the notes are stored locally, you can access and edit them without an internet connection.

Possible disadvantages of Obsidian.md

  • Learning Curve
    Obsidian can be complex and overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features and customizable nature.
  • Sync Limitations
    While local-first is great for privacy, it requires additional steps or third-party solutions for syncing across devices.
  • No True Real-time Collaboration
    Obsidian lacks native real-time collaboration features, making it less suitable for collaborative work compared to cloud-based solutions.
  • Limited Mobile Features
    The mobile version of Obsidian, while functional, is not as robust as the desktop application, potentially hindering productivity on the go.
  • Dependence on Plugins
    Many advanced features require the use of third-party plugins, which could lead to compatibility issues and reliance on community support.
  • Performance on Large Vaults
    Performance might degrade with a very large number of notes or complex graphs, impacting usability.

Raindrop.io videos

Overview of Raindrop.io Bookmarking App

More videos:

  • Review - Raindrop.io Bookmark App Review
  • Review - Raindrop.io - A Bookmark Manager

Obsidian.md videos

OBSIDIAN: Getting Started, Facts & Pricing

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Raindrop.io and Obsidian.md)
Bookmark Manager
100 100%
0% 0
Note Taking
0 0%
100% 100
Bookmarks
100 100%
0% 0
Knowledge Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Raindrop.io and Obsidian.md

Raindrop.io Reviews

Top 10 browser-independent bookmark managers for efficient web surfing
All BlogsPublished in Top 10 browser-independent bookmark managers for efficient web surfingShare this postLinkedIn iconFacebook iconTwitter iconThe only bookmarking tool you'll ever needTry for freeTable of contents1. Can bookmarks be shared between different browsers?2. What does the browser-independent bookmark manager do?3. Is it safe to use a bookmarks manager?4. What...
Source: www.save.day
Best Read-It-Later Apps in 2024: Top Ways to Save Web Pages & Content
Raindrop is a bookmarking app with an extensive free plan. It’s available on mobile, but its modern, user-friendly interface is best experienced on desktop. With Raindrop, you get unlimited article bookmarks and devices without paying.
Top 10 Bookmark Managers for Chrome 2024
Raindrop.io is touted as the best bookmark manager in the market. The tool is pretty much your one-stop shop for keeping all your saved links in one place, and it's free! You can save and manage all your beloved books, songs, websites, web content, articles, and so on, all from one place. Raindrop.io is super easy to use.
Pinboard vs. Raindrop: Two bookmark apps enter…
Raindrop’s URLs, by contrast, are an absolute dumpster fire. Collections (which are the only “shareable” aggregation in Raindrop) are identified by a lengthy meaningless number-string, not collection name; I haven’t memorized my collections’ numbers and likely won’t. Worse, I can’t copy-and-paste URLs from the address bar because they’re different for the logged-in account...
Source: dsalo.info
11 Pocket Alternatives You Must Try Out!
The most common problem that all of us face when we bookmark things is not the bookmarking phase, but the retrieval face. Raindrop as a pocket alternative makes searching for bookmarks pretty easy.
Source: blog.elink.io

Obsidian.md Reviews

  1. The kind of software that may change your life

    Perhaps you know someone who swears by Obsidian, it may seem like a cult of overly devoted people for how passionate they are, but it's not without reason

    I've been using Obsidian for over 3 years, at a point in my life when I felt I had to handle too much information and I felt like grasping water not being able to remember everything I wanted, language learning, programming, accounting, university, daily tasks. A friend recommended it to me next to Notion (of which he is a passionate cultist priest) and I reluctantly picked it and fell in love almost immediately.

    Obsidian seems very simple, like a notepad with folder interface, similar to Sublime Text, but the ability to link files together in a Wiki style allows you to organize ideas in any way you want, one file may lead to a dozen or more ideas that are related

    If you want to do something specific, Obsidian has a plethora of community created plugins that expand the functionality, in my case, I use obsidian to organize my classes both as a teacher and as a student, using local databases, calendars, dictionaries, slides, vector graphic drawings, excel-like tables, Anki connection, podcasts, and more

    🏁 Competitors: Notion, Evernote
    👍 Pros:    Awesome community|Custom plugins|Local hosting|Beautiful themes|Highly customizable|Cloud storage|Becomes more useful over time|Markdown support
    👎 Cons:    Seems complicated/complex at first|Takes time to set up your personal workspace|Overwhelming for first time user
  2. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    My personal knowledge-base of choice

    I've been using Obsidian for more than a year. It's been great. I think it offer a great balance of control, flexibility and extensibility. What is more, you own your own data, that's been a must-have feature for me. I just can't imagine putting all my knowledge into something that I don't have control over.

    I think two of the most popular alternatives that people consider are Logseq and Roam Research. Although Logseq is a bit different, it's considered compatible with Obsidian. Supposedly, you can use them with a shared database (files. Both use simple text files for storage). I tried that once, a few months ago. It worked, yet it messed up a bit my Obsidian files ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

    🏁 Competitors: Logseq, Roam Research

The 6 best note-taking apps in 2024
One thing to note: Notion bills itself as an Evernote competitor for personal users. It can be—but it's too much for most people, and its offline functionality isn't the best. If you love the idea of Notion, go right ahead and try the free Personal Plan, but for me, it's really best as a team notes app or an AI-powered notes app. Something like Obsidian (which we'll look at...
Source: zapier.com
The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data
This app is the kind of thing that, if you’re into it, will have you exploring its various ins, outs, and add-ons for days and weeks on end. Obsidian uses the Markdown format for its notes (which means they can be used on a variety of other apps). Your notes and other media are kept locally in a Vault (in other words, a main folder). There are ways to sync between devices...
The 5 Best Open Source Miro Alternatives in 2024
However, it's important to note that Obsidian's whiteboard functionality is not as robust as dedicated collaboration tools. While it lacks real-time basic collaboration features, Obsidian compensates with its vibrant plugin ecosystem, empowering users to customize their experience.
Source: affine.pro
The best encrypted note taking apps
For a consumer coming from Evernote, Notion, OneNote, or a similar product, we would advise trying Obsidian along another product on this list as it has the largest learning curve. However, if you are an expert with markdown, experts, linking, and graph views, Obsidian could be an excellent choice. Like many other configuration options, Obsidian leaves end-to-end encryption...
Source: www.skiff.com
Supercharge Your Productivity: Three Recommended Tools for Thought
One of my AP Productivity: Cohort mentors has a powerful system pairing Obsidian with OmniFocus. In OmniFocus, he builds his project and task structures, and in Obsidian he develops and organizes the project support materials as well as other relevant information. Because it’s easy to link to an Obsidian note or an OmniFocus project, he can seamlessly navigate back and forth...
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Obsidian.md should be more popular than Raindrop.io. It has been mentiond 1486 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Raindrop.io mentions (188)

  • Linkwarden: FOSS self-hostable bookmarking with AI-tagging and page archival
    I personally use Raindrop.io [0]. I have used it for more than 3 years and it does it's job very well. [0] http://raindrop.io/. - Source: Hacker News / about 21 hours ago
  • Ask HN: How Do You Bookmark?
    I have been using https://raindrop.io/ for this and find it quite useful. Never end up reading everything I save but it keeps my browser less chaotic and adding bookmarks from the browser extension and on iOS is quite seemless. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Hoarder: Self-hostable bookmark-everything app
    You might be thinking of https://raindrop.io which is developed by a Kazakh developer? - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Omnivore Is Joining ElevenLabs
    I use Raindrop[0] for all bookmarks and have flirted with Omnivore and Wallabag over the years. But I always come back to just using Raindrop and "Unsorted" for my read-it-laters. I've got a feed into Reeder from here which works well too. At the end of the day a likely next step after reading something is to want to bookmark it so this workflow works well for me. [0] https://raindrop.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • The End Times have come for the Pinboard bookmarking service
    There are plenty of good alternatives nowadays: - https://raindrop.io/: Also a one-man show, but probably the best bookmarking tool out there. - https://omnivore.app: Open source and support for newsletters. For my use case though (I like to curate and share), I ended up building an app (https://fika.bar) to bundle bookmarking + RSS Reader + Blogging. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
View more

Obsidian.md mentions (1486)

  • Why I switched from obsidian: A real developer’s story and what I’m using now
    Obsidian Official Website Still an incredible tool for the right type of workflow. - Source: dev.to / 1 day ago
  • Show HN: An AI agent in Obsidian that can (sort of) write plugins
    This is a plugin for Obsidian [1] that can extend Obsidian with custom functionality. There's a demo video in the readme. Why? Obsidian is a note taking app with tons of extensions. Even so, there must be hyper-niche use cases that aren't being served by any existing extension. LLMs are decent at coding though, so maybe an LLM can write custom functionality on demand. That's the experiment, to see if you can... - Source: Hacker News / 8 days ago
  • Journey to GNOME Circle: Community, App Ideas, and Getting Started
    These are useful and beneficial for your reputation and branding. I use my email alias for GNOME-related work at AlirezaSh@gnome.org, have my blog at alirezash.gnome.org, and sync my Obsidian notes with Nextcloud on GNOME infrastructure. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my travel sponsorship as a speaker at events because I'm from Iran, and due to OFAC regulations which is so unfair. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?
    It's not marketed as a markdown-to-pdf tool, but I've found that Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) does an excellent job. Just create a new "vault", paste your markdown into a new note, and export to PDF. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Build personal blog easy with 11ty.js
    Limited Scope: Eleventy is primarily suited for blogs and simple static sites. It lacks advanced interactivity and business logic capabilities. ## Start with a Starter Projects — Eleventy When starting an 11ty project, there are many templates available to help you get started quickly. These templates provide pre-configured setups for various use cases, such as blogs, portfolios, and more. I chose the Official... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Raindrop.io and Obsidian.md, you can also consider the following products

Pocket - When you find something you want to view later, put it in Pocket.

Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

Pinboard - Pinboard is a personal archive for things you find online and don't want to forget.

Joplin - Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor.

Diigo - Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community

Logseq - Logseq is a local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base.