DEVONthink vs Obsidian: Which Second Brain Tool Is Best for Solopreneurs?

“The mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” — David Allen

Photo by Wulan Sari on Unsplash

When you’re running a business solo, your digital systems matter.

You don’t have a team. You don’t have time.

And you definitely don’t have the mental bandwidth to remember everything.

So you build a second brain.

And somewhere along the way, you hit the DEVONthink vs. Obsidian debate.

Both are brilliant. Both are flawed.

So which one’s right for you?

Let’s break it down.

DEVONthink is your digital filing cabinet

Let’s start with DEVONthink.

It’s not flashy. It’s not trendy. But if you deal with lots of external documents — invoices, contracts, receipts, statements, research papers — there’s nothing better.

DEVONthink is built for storing, sorting, and searching through other people’s stuff. That’s its entire job. And it does it exceptionally well:

• Drag and drop files, emails, or PDFs into it — no naming or tagging needed
• DEVONthink scans them and makes the content searchable using OCR