Obsidian alternatives for Mac
Obsidian — Knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files — is installed 19,786 times a month through Homebrew. These are hand-picked alternatives that occupy the same slot, ordered by how comparable their user base is.
Run
brew install --cask obsidian to install Obsidian itself.- Logseq55.3× smaller user base
- Joplin42.7× smaller user base
- Notion3.9× smaller user base
- Typora20.7× smaller user base
- Anytype113.7× smaller user base
- Zotero11.8× smaller user base
- Craft186.7× smaller user base
- bear24.5× smaller user base
Full comparison
| Obsidian | Logseq | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | GUI app | GUI app |
| Category | Productivity | Productivity |
| Open source | Not declared | Yes |
| Licence | Not declared | Not declared |
| Apple silicon | Universal | Universal |
| Latest version | 1.14.5 | 2.0.2 |
| Dependencies | 0 | 0 |
| Installs (30 days) | 19,786 | 358 |
| Install command | brew install --cask obsidian | brew install --cask logseq |
How we picked these
The list comes from a hand-maintained set of same-purpose apps, not from keyword matching. Alternatives are removed automatically when Homebrew no longer carries them. Ordering reflects 30-day install volume, not paid placement. Data updated 2026-10-26.