SiYuan vs Obsidian: Which to Self-Host?

Quick Verdict Obsidian is the better choice for most users — plain Markdown files, a massive plugin ecosystem, and a huge community make it the safer bet. SiYuan wins if you want a WYSIWYG block editor with features like block embedding, database views, and built-in S3/WebDAV sync without third-party plugins. Overview SiYuan is an open-source, local-first note-taking app with block-level editing, bidirectional links, graph view, and database-style content views. It uses a custom JSON storage format and can be self-hosted as a Docker container for web access. Developed by B3log, a Chinese open-source organization. Obsidian is a commercial (but free for personal use) Markdown-based knowledge management app. It stores notes as plain .md files, supports bidirectional links and a graph view, and has a massive plugin ecosystem. Obsidian itself isn't open-source, but self-hosted sync is possible via the community LiveSync plugin with CouchDB. Feature Comparison Feature SiYuan Obsidian Note fo