Culma and Obsidian Sync
Obsidian is excellent, and a lot of Culma's design argues with it respectfully. Its plugin ecosystem is the largest in this category and we have nothing like it. If you work alone and want to extend your editor endlessly, Obsidian is probably the better tool. This page is about what happens when a second person is involved.
| Culma | Obsidian Sync | |
|---|---|---|
| Two people editing one note at the same time | Yes, and the edits converge rather than overwriting each other. | Not supported; edits appear after a sync. Source |
| You can see where the other person is typing | Live cursors, with the person's name. | No cursor is shown. Source |
| Who needs a subscription in a shared vault | Whoever pays for the license. The people they invite need nothing of their own. | Every collaborator needs their own Sync subscription. Source |
| How many people may share one vault | A seat count you choose, and the published bands go to 500 and beyond. | Capped at 20 collaborators. Source |
| Rights below the whole vault | Folder roles and groups, enforced by the pass that displays them. | Not supported yet: all collaborators get the owner's permissions, and only the owner can invite. Source |
| How long co-editing has been asked for | It is what the product was built around. | A top community request since at least 2023, listed as planned. Source |
| Your notes are files on your disk | Markdown and SVG in a folder you chose, with real subfolders. | The same, and it is one of the things they got right first. |
| Plugin ecosystem | None. There is no plugin API yet. | The largest in this category, by a wide margin. Source |
| How mature the phone apps are | They do what the desktop does and have fewer hours on them. | Years of polish ahead of ours. |
| Buy it outright and run the server yourself | A perpetual license from €79 per seat, and a node with no kill switch. | Sync is a subscription; there is no self-hosted Sync server. Source |
Checked against Obsidian's published help pages on 16 October 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it the same week.