Obsidian, as a powerful note-taking software, is favored by knowledge workers. However, its official Sync service is quite expensive, with an annual fee starting at $48. For users with a limited budget, this can be a significant expense.
There is a more economical alternative: combining Cloudflare's R2 storage service with Obsidian's Remotely Save plugin. R2 is an S3-compatible object storage service, and its free tier is sufficient for personal use. R2 offers 10GB of storage space, along with 1 million Class A operations and 10 million Class B operations per month, with data egress completely free. This means that for most Obsidian users, syncing notes may not incur any costs at all.
Pricing#
Official Obsidian Pricing#
| Feature | Sync Standard | Sync Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4/month, billed annually | $8/month, billed annually |
| Number of Repositories | 1 | 10 |
| Total Storage Space | 1GB | 10GB |
| Maximum File Size | 5MB | 200MB |
| History | 1 month | 12 months |
| Number of Devices | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Shared Repositories | Supported | Supported |
Cloudflare Free Tier Pricing#
| Feature | Free |
|---|---|
| Total Storage Space | 10 GB / month |
| Class A Operations | 1 million / month |
| Class B Operations | 10 million / month |
For Obsidian users:
Class A Operations: File uploads and data modifications during the sync process
Class B Operations: Downloading and reading file content
Creating Cloudflare Related Services#
Prerequisites for Using Cloudflare#
- Have a Cloudflare account
- This account must be linked to a payment card (Visa, Master, AMEX tested within China are all acceptable; it's unclear about UnionPay debit cards, but you can try. If UnionPay debit cards do not work, you can link a domestic debit card through Cloudflare → link PayPal → link domestic debit card)
Applying for Cloudflare's R2#
- Open https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/r2/new
- The page will ask you to set a name for the bucket; I entered
obsidian-sync(remember this for later), you can enter your desired name - Keep the defaults for "Location" and "Default Storage Class"
- Click to create the bucket
Obtaining the Bucket Service Address#
- Open the details page of the bucket you just created, remember to replace the bucket name in the middle with the name you just set https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/r2/default/buckets/replace_with_your_bucket_name/settings
- On this page, find "Bucket Details" - "S3 API", and you will find a link in the format https://xxxxxxxxxxxxx.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/your_bucket_name
- Copy this link, then remove the last name part, i.e., https://xxxxxxxxxxxxx.r2.cloudflarestorage.com is the service address we need (remember this for later)
Creating a Cloudflare API Token#
- Open https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/r2/api-tokens/create
- This page will ask you to enter a name; you can choose any name that you can recognize
- For permissions, select "Administrator Read and Write," keep the rest unchanged
- Click to create the API token
- Copy the "Access Key ID" and "Secret Access Key" (remember this for later)
Using in Obsidian#
-
Download, install, and enable the Remotely Save plugin
-
Fill in as shown in the image, keeping defaults for anything not mentioned
-
Sync between PC and mobile: The mobile side needs to install and start the Remotely Save plugin first, the names of the Vaults must be exactly the same as on the PC. Paste the link generated on the PC into the phone and click confirm.
