Pachinko vs Obsidian.
Pachinko ships what Obsidian leaves to plugins: tasks, notes, calendar, feeds that bring in what you follow, and jobs you explain once. It works the day you install it.
No plugins to assemble. It comes trained.
Pachinko
|  Obsidian | |
|---|---|---|
| tasks + notes | ||
| Tasks, projects, and areas | ✓ | via plugins |
| Rich notes with images | ✓ | ✓ |
| Repeating tasks | ✓ | via plugins |
| Calendar events beside your tasks | ✓ | via plugins |
| Apple Reminders beside your tasks | ✓ | via plugins |
| Quick Note: a global shortcut to type a note from anywhere | ✓ | via plugins |
| Quick Capture: a global shortcut that saves the selected text or current page | ✓ | browser only |
| Browser extension | ✓ | ✓ |
| Share sheet on Mac and iPhone | ✓ | iOS only |
| views + organization | ||
| Card view with image previews | ✓ | ✓ |
| Status view | nine statuses, one-key filters | via plugins |
| Tags | ✕ | ✓ |
| Start dates | ✓ | via plugins |
| Deadlines | ✓ | via plugins |
| Upcoming view | ✓ | via plugins |
| Themes | 20 color schemes | community only |
| ai | ||
| AI chat over your notes and tasks | ✓ | via plugins |
| Functions: write an instruction once, run it forever | ✓ | via plugins |
| Feeds: scheduled imports saved as notes | ✓ | via plugins |
| Ready-made Powerups | 35 ready-made | ✕ |
| Semantic search | ✓ | via plugins |
| AI account | your Claude or ChatGPT account | via plugins |
| MCP server for outside AI tools | built into the app | via plugins |
| platforms + privacy | ||
| Platforms | macOS, iOS, iPadOS | macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android |
| Sync | iCloud | Sync add-on, from $4/mo |
| End-to-end encryption option | with Advanced Data Protection | in the Sync add-on |
| AppleScript | ✓ | ✕ |
| price | ||
| Price | free app · Pro AI $9/mo or $229 lifetime | free app · Sync from $4/mo · Publish from $8/mo |
| Free tier | full task manager and notetaking, free | no sync |
choosing pachinko over obsidian
In Obsidian you build the system yourself from plugins. Pachinko comes assembled: projects, statuses, cards that show your images, and your calendar next to your tasks.
Feeds fetch what you follow: any RSS feed, YouTube transcripts, news topics, SEC filings, PubMed and arXiv papers, government feeds, weather, FRED economic data, GitHub trends, Strava workouts, PDFs, your Twitter bookmarks, and even custom feeds you build. Each new item is a note, in the section you chose, on the schedule you set.
A Function is a job you explain once, in ordinary words. From then on Pachinko does it to every note that shows up - a new arXiv paper gets a note on what's new in it, a filing gets a note on what changed.
You can ask Pachinko questions about your own notes, and search works even when you can't remember the exact words you wrote. All of it runs on your own Claude or ChatGPT account.
The Obsidian column comes from their published pricing and documentation, compiled August 2026.