Acres is our first pick for someone who thinks primarily on a canvas and wants agents working there too. Notes, connections, mind maps, PDF highlights and AI sit in one workflow. Obsidian is our strongest alternative for a free, extensible Markdown knowledge base with a canvas alongside it.
Both apps keep local files. Both let an agent read your notes. Neither requires you to upload a vault just to write. The decision comes down to how you work, not a claim that one owns your files and the other doesn’t.
Acres Plus is also available for $9/month, including app access, Sync, and Publish with no upfront purchase. The $59 lifetime option covers local use.
What the $59 Acres license buys
Obsidian is free, including for work. Acres is $59 once at its early-adopter price. We can’t make a lower-price argument against zero.
The reason to pay for Acres is the amount of the visual workflow it handles directly. A new note card is already a Markdown file. Reuse it on another board, organize related cards in a section, turn an outline into a mind map or work with the assistant beside the board. Bundled MCP gives an external agent a defined way to create and arrange those objects.
Someone happy with Obsidian plus their preferred plugins may have little reason to change. Someone who wants the board and its AI tools ready in one app has a reason to try Acres.
Text cards and note files
Obsidian’s Canvas documentation makes a useful distinction. A file node points to a note in your vault. A text-only card keeps its text inside the .canvas document; you can convert it into a note file later. Text-only cards don’t participate in backlinks as note files do.
That is a valid design: a canvas can hold quick fragments alongside durable notes. It does ask you to decide which kind of text you’re making.
In Acres, a note card begins as a file. You can put the same card on several boards and edit the shared content in any placement. Stickies, captions and mind map nodes are still board annotations, so it would be misleading to call every piece of text on an Acres canvas a searchable note. The default card is the portable unit.
Obsidian has a clear advantage in board interoperability. Its .canvas format is an open standard. Acres boards are readable JSON using Acres’ own schema. Being readable is useful; it isn’t the same thing as universal compatibility.
Agent access has improved in Obsidian
Obsidian now has an official CLI for reading, writing and searching a running vault. It publishes agent skills for its formats. The community Local REST API plugin includes an MCP server, with tools for note edits and search. You don’t need Acres to let Claude Code or another assistant work with Markdown.
Acres’ advantage is the way these pieces are joined to the canvas. MCP ships with the app. An agent can create cards, connections and sections, then you can inspect its supported changes in activity history. The in-app assistant offers rewrite diffs and layout proposals for review; some new-object actions apply immediately. File merge handling is designed for an agent and a person working at the same time, though that doesn’t remove the need for backups.
Built-in AI takes your own provider key or uses local Ollama and LM Studio. API usage is billed separately by the provider; a local model uses your own hardware. Read Acres for agents and the local MCP workflow for setup and limitations.
We prefer this integrated arrangement for visual agent work. We don’t infer from it that Obsidian integrations are unsafe or lack recovery tools.
Where Obsidian remains ahead
Obsidian has years of development behind it. Its mobile apps, Linux support and extensive plugin ecosystem make it easier to fit unusual requirements. If a query, citation manager or publishing workflow depends on a plugin, check whether Acres can actually do that job before moving.
Acres is newer, desktop-only and has no plugin system. It also lacks real-time collaborative editing. Recent releases have improved search, imports, shortcuts and local AI, but a release list doesn’t erase the maturity gap.
For a text-first archive with occasional visual maps, Obsidian is an excellent choice. Our Acres-first recommendation is for the opposite routine: you open a board to think, and the notes grow out of that work. The infinite canvas guide places both alongside other options.
Trying your vault in Acres
Start with a backup, then use the Obsidian importer in the Acres launcher. It reads notes and .canvas boards into an Acres vault; use a separate destination so your original remains available.
Review import warnings and a few difficult notes. Plugin queries don’t turn into working Acres features, and embedded notes or links to a heading may behave differently. This is a snapshot: later edits in one app do not automatically update the other. Acres also does not export its boards back as JSON Canvas.
Use the 14-day trial for a project you would normally do in Canvas. Compare how quickly you can find a note, connect an idea and review an agent’s changes. Those are better reasons to choose than a longer feature checklist.