Capacities vs Obsidian
Capacities is a European alternative to Obsidian: same office & collaboration use case, headquartered in Germany and governed by EU GDPR, while Obsidian (Dynalist) is based in Canada.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Organize notes as connected objects with backlinks, daily notes, offline access, full-text search and flexible export.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- No
- Free tier
- Yes
Notes are plain Markdown files sitting in a folder you control, linked into a graph, and that local first design is what people are most reluctant to give up. The app is free for personal use with no sign-up, while device sync costs 4 dollars monthly on a yearly plan and Publish is 8 dollars per site. Dynalist Inc. is Canadian, and Ontario law governs the terms.
- Jurisdiction
- Canada
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Possible
Capacities vs Obsidian at a glance
| Capacities | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Germany | Canada |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | Canada |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Possible |
| Best for | Teams that need office & collaboration built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the Dynalist ecosystem |
Choose Capacities if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- You want to start free and scale up later
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with Obsidian if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the Dynalist ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
Why choose Capacities over Obsidian?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Obsidian is headquartered in Canada, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
Capacities removes that overhead. As a Germany-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.