You can use git and it isn't too difficult or unfriendly. But I totally get it. I'm paying for sync and I do love Obsidian, but it feels a bit steep. I do want them to stick around though, so, I just pay for it.

I come from different perspective: I would love to pay $15 per month if it gives me sync with my private storage and work on ios.

Luckily for both of us there is a solution https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync

Works well on ios.

I just store my vault in an iCloud Drive folder and it syncs across all my MacOS / IOS devices. I find it pretty quick to sync live as well. No added cost assuming you have enough iCloud storage to cover your vault.

One more cool thing about setting up with iCloud (see other comment) is you can use Apple Shortcuts or other apps to do cool things to the markdown files directly.

Any other sync solution will do the job - it's just text files.

If you just want to support the project, they have the Catalyst once-off payment that gives you beta access and VIP status on their Discord.

I did some quick git scripts with cron on mac, and windows scheduler to automatically sync between locations. Unfortunately the only git sync plugins I found only worked with password based auth on android.

Aside from not being easily accessable by phone, this works and the .obsidian folder shares the environment + plugins ( minus one for open tab/window layout ).

If anyone has a solution to the lack of git android ssh auth problem I'm all ears though.

I was in a similar spot. After too much hand wringing I decided to sign up for monthly ($10/month) sync and give it a solid two months. These are important tools that I’m happy to pay for, but they do take some time to evaluate. I figured $20 was a reasonable amount to commit to.

FWIW I ended up going all in on Obsidian and paying yearly, but that outcome was far from a forgone conclusion, even a month in. I went through a full cycle of honeymoon phase, then discovering warts, and then workarounds, etc. It does take time.

It's just a folder of plaintext files, you can do whatever you want with it, including pointing your Dropbox-like service to it.

I also pay for sync because I genuinely love the product (though I pay $5/month early bird pricing), but thanks to their file-first philosophy, I'm not locked in.

I've been using syncthing to sync between my desktop, laptop, server, and phone for over a year and it works well.

I use iCloud instead and it works great.