Cupola vs Obsidian
Two Productivity products side by side.
| Cupola | Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes in your Mac's notch | Notes as plain Markdown files you own |
| Pricing | Free trial | Free plan |
| Categories | Productivity | Productivity, Writing |
| Tags | macOS, Privacy-first, Local-first, Scheduling, Notes | Notes, Markdown, Local-first |
| Score | 50%8 votes | 67%6 votes |
| Website | trycupola.com | obsidian.md |
| Founder | Not listed | Not listed |
| Listed | Oct 3, 2026 | Sep 10, 2025 |
Which should you pick?
- If price decides it, start with Obsidian: it is listed as free with paid plans, while Cupola is paid with a free trial.
- Voters lean towards Obsidian so far: 67% said launch from 6 votes, against 50% from 8 votes for Cupola.
- Only Cupola is tagged macOS, Privacy-first and Scheduling.
- Only Obsidian is tagged Markdown.
Positioning is from each listing, not an endorsement.
About Cupola
Cupola is a native Mac app that puts Apple Calendar, Reminders and Notes together in one place. Hover over the MacBook notch to open a panel with four tabs: your week's calendar, reminders you can tick off, your real Apple Notes with checklists, and a focus timer you set by dragging a dial. Click "View all" to open the full app, which has day, week, month and agenda views, reminder lists and tags, and a home screen showing today's events, reminders and recent notes. On Macs or displays without a notch, a small pill at the top of the screen opens the same panel.
You can type entries in plain language, like "dentist next tuesday 4pm", and Cupola works out the date and time and adds the item to Calendar or Reminders. It reads from and writes to Apple's own apps, so there's nothing to import and no account to create. Changes made in either place show up in the other, and on your iPhone through iCloud. Your calendars, notes and reminders are never uploaded. The app only goes online to check for updates, verify your license and send crash reports, which you can turn off.
Cupola isn't on the Mac App Store. You install it with a one-line Terminal command. It needs Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. There's a 7-day free trial with no card required, then a $20 one-time lifetime license with a 14-day refund window.
About Obsidian
Obsidian is a note-taking app that works on a folder of Markdown files on your own disk. Links between notes build a graph you can navigate and query.
Because the store is just files, your notes outlive the app and can be edited by anything else.