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Starting today, the Obsidian Commercial license is optional. Anyone can use Obsidian for work, for free. If Obsidian benefits your organization, you can still purchase Commercial licenses to support development.
Nothing else is changing. No account required, no ads, no tracking, no strings attached. Your data remains fully in your control, stored locally in plain text Markdown files. All features are available to you for free without limits.
Why make this change? Simplicity. The Commercial license terms were confusing and added unnecessary complexity to our pricing. Furthermore, as the Obsidian Manifesto states: "we believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively". This change brings us closer to that principle.
People in over 10,000 organizations use Obsidian. Many work in high-security environments, like government, cybersecurity, healthcare, and finance. Some of the largest organizations in the world, including Amazon and Google, have thousands of employees using Obsidian every day. These teams rely on Obsidian to think more effectively and keep total ownership over private data.
Previously, people at companies with two or more employees were required to purchase a Commercial license to use Obsidian for work. Going forward, the Commercial license is no longer required, but remains an optional way for organizations to support Obsidian, similar to the Catalyst license for individuals.
Organizations that support Obsidian are now featured on the Obsidian Enterprise page. Your organization can be showcased by purchasing 25 licenses or more.
Along with Commercial and Catalyst support, our add-on services, Sync and Publish help Obsidian remain 100% user-supported. In the future, we hope to offer more services designed for teams. As always, these will be optional.