Guide
How to sync a Markdown vault for free
Obsidian is free. Obsidian Sync is not — it is $4 per user per month billed annually, or $5 billed monthly. That is $48 or $60 a year for moving text files between two machines you already own. Here is what the free routes actually are, and where each one breaks.
What Obsidian charges, exactly
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Obsidian itself | Free | Free |
| Sync | $4 / user / month ($48 a year) | $5 / user / month ($60 a year) |
| Publish | $8 / site / month | $10 / site / month |
| Commercial licence | $50 / user / year, if you use it at a company of 2+ people | |
Worth saying plainly, because a lot of pages on this query get it wrong: the Obsidian app is free without limits and needs no sign-up. Only Sync and Publish are paid. If the thing stopping you is the app's price, there is nothing to stop.
The free routes, and where each breaks
1. iCloud Drive
Put the vault in iCloud Drive and both Macs and both iPhones see it. Free with the storage you already have, and the simplest thing that works.
Where it breaks: iCloud has no conflict resolution for this. Edit the same note on two devices while one is offline and you get two files, or one silently winning. There is no history to recover from, and files can sit un-downloaded until something asks for them, which an indexer will do at the worst moment.
2. A git repository
Version history, explicit conflicts, a remote you control, and free private repositories on GitHub. For a vault of text this is close to ideal — text is what git was built for.
Where it breaks: iOS. There is no usable libgit2 story on iPhone, so the community Obsidian Git plugin is a desktop arrangement with a gap where your phone should be. And a merge conflict in a note is resolved by reading conflict markers in your own prose.
3. Syncthing
Peer-to-peer, no cloud, nothing to pay, nothing to trust.
Where it breaks: both machines have to be awake at the same time, which a laptop in a bag is not. And the iOS story is the same gap again.
What Inkstone does instead
Inkstone is a native Markdown notes app for macOS 26 and iOS 26 that reads the same vault Obsidian does. Its sync goes to a GitHub repository you own, and it is not a plugin — it is how the app syncs:
- It works on iOS. Rather than fight libgit2 on a phone, it talks to the GitHub Contents API and keeps a local shadow index. The same sync runs on a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone.
- Conflicts are settled once, in the app, rather than left as two files for you to find later.
- You decide what travels. Per-file-type filters keep a
vault of screen recordings from becoming a repository of screen recordings,
and the vault's own
.gitignoreis respected. - It is free, on GitHub's own free tier for private repositories. There is no account with us, because there is no us to have an account with.
The sync guide is the step-by-step version, including how to point two devices at one repository without them fighting.
So is Obsidian Sync worth paying for?
Sometimes, and it is worth saying so. You are buying end-to-end encryption, version history you never have to think about, and someone to hold responsible when a sync goes wrong. If your notes are the kind where that matters, $48 a year is not a lot for it, and none of the free routes above will match it.
What the free routes are for is the much more common case: a vault of text, two devices you own, and no wish to add another subscription to the pile.
Prices read from obsidian.md/pricing on 25 August 2026 and quoted in USD; check there for the current figure. Obsidian is a trademark of Dynalist Inc.; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Inkstone requires macOS 26 or iOS 26 on Apple silicon.