Obsidian Publish Alternatives: 5 Ways to Share Your Notes

Obsidian Publish is a first-party service that turns your vault into a website for $8/month per site. It works well, but if you only want to share individual notes (not your whole vault), that price adds up for limited use. There are cheaper ways to get your markdown notes online, depending on how much setup you’re willing to do.

1. Quartz

Quartz is a free, open-source static site generator built specifically for Obsidian vaults. It understands [[wikilinks]], backlinks, graph view, and other Obsidian-specific features out of the box.

How it works: Clone the Quartz repo, point it at your vault (or a subfolder), configure which notes to publish, and deploy to GitHub Pages, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages.

git clone https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz.git
cd quartz
npx quartz create
# Follow prompts to link your vault
npx quartz build --serve

Cost: Free (software and hosting via GitHub Pages).

Setup effort: Medium. You need Node.js installed, a GitHub account, and about 30 minutes for initial configuration. Ongoing publishing is a git push.

Best for: Publishing your full vault or a large subset of it as a browsable website with graph view, backlinks, and search.

2. Digital Garden Plugins

The Obsidian community has built several plugins for selective note publishing. The most popular is the “Digital Garden” plugin, which publishes notes you tag with a specific frontmatter property.

How it works: Install the plugin from the Obsidian community store. Add dg-publish: true to the frontmatter of any note you want to publish. The plugin pushes those notes to a GitHub repo, which auto-deploys via a template site (Eleventy-based) on Vercel or Netlify.

---
dg-publish: true
dg-home: true
---
# My Published Note

This note will appear on your digital garden site.

Cost: Free (plugin, hosting on Vercel/Netlify free tier).

Setup effort: Medium. Initial setup involves connecting to GitHub and deploying the template. After that, publishing is toggling a frontmatter flag and clicking “publish” in Obsidian.

Best for: Selectively publishing notes from your vault with a “digital garden” aesthetic. Good if you want to control exactly which notes are public.

3. MDtoLink

MDtoLink publishes individual markdown files to shareable URLs with a single command. No static site, no repo setup, no build step.

How it works: Install the CLI, point it at a markdown file, and get a URL.

# Install
npm install -g mdtolink

# Publish a note
mdtolink my-note.md
# => https://mdtolink.com/d/abc123

The URL renders your markdown with clean typography and code highlighting. Update the note and republish to refresh the content.

Cost: Free tier for temporary links. Pro plan at $6/month for permanent links, custom slugs, and higher limits.

Setup effort: Low. Install the CLI and run one command. No GitHub repo, no deployment pipeline, no configuration files.

Best for: Sharing individual notes, drafts, or documents without building a whole site. Works with any .md file, not just Obsidian notes.

MDtoLink also has an Obsidian integration that lets you publish directly from the app.

4. GitHub Pages

GitHub renders markdown files natively. Combined with Jekyll (built into GitHub Pages) or a simple static site generator, you can publish notes for free.

How it works: Create a GitHub repository, add your markdown files, enable GitHub Pages in the repo settings. GitHub builds and hosts the site automatically.

# Create a repo and add notes
mkdir my-notes && cd my-notes
git init
echo "# My Notes" > index.md
git add . && git commit -m "Initial commit"
# Push to GitHub, enable Pages in Settings

For better styling, add a _config.yml with a Jekyll theme:

theme: minima
title: My Notes

Cost: Free.

Setup effort: Low to medium. Basic setup is quick, but customizing the theme and organizing navigation takes more work. Every update requires a commit and push.

Best for: Developers who already use GitHub and want a free, no-frills hosting option. Good for public notes and project documentation.

5. Self-Hosted Hugo or MkDocs

If you want full control over your publishing pipeline, run your own static site generator.

Hugo is a Go-based generator known for fast builds. It has dozens of themes suitable for notes and documentation. MkDocs (with the Material theme) is Python-based and popular for structured documentation.

How it works (Hugo example):

brew install hugo
hugo new site my-notes
cd my-notes
# Add a theme
git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke themes/ananke
echo 'theme = "ananke"' >> hugo.toml
# Add your notes to content/
cp ~/vault/my-note.md content/posts/
hugo server

Deploy to any static hosting: Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, Vercel, or your own server.

Cost: Free (software). Hosting varies: free on Netlify/Vercel/Cloudflare Pages free tiers, or the cost of your VPS.

Setup effort: High. You need to install the tool, choose and configure a theme, set up a deployment pipeline, and manage the build. Ongoing maintenance is non-trivial.

Best for: People who want complete customization and already have experience with static site generators. Good if you’re publishing notes as part of a personal website or blog.

Comparison Table

How to Choose

Want a full vault-as-website with graph view and backlinks? Obsidian Publish or Quartz is the right call. Obsidian Publish is easier to set up. Quartz is free and more customizable.

Want to selectively publish notes from your vault? The Digital Garden plugin gives you per-note control without leaving Obsidian.

Want to share a single note or document quickly? MDtoLink. No site to build, no repo to manage. One command, one URL.

Already on GitHub and comfortable with Git? GitHub Pages costs nothing and works without extra tools.

Want full control and don’t mind the setup? Hugo or MkDocs with your own hosting gives you the most flexibility.

For a deeper comparison with Obsidian Publish, see our MDtoLink vs. Obsidian Publish page. For details on the Obsidian integration, check out MDtoLink for Obsidian.