Obsidian Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize costs across Obsidian's paid services and third-party plugin API usage. Covers Obsidian Sync storage management ($4-$10/mo), Publish hosting optimization ($8/mo per site), vault size reduction strategies, plugin API cost control with caching and quotas, and self-hosted alternatives for zero-cost sync.

Prerequisites

• Understanding of your Obsidian subscription tier
• Terminal access to the vault directory
• Knowledge of which community plugins make external API calls

Cost Structure

Instructions

Step 1: Audit Vault Size and Storage Usage

set -euo pipefail
VAULT_PATH="${1:-$HOME/MyVault}"

echo "=== Vault Storage Audit ==="
echo "Total vault size: $(du -sh "$VAULT_PATH" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1)"
echo ".obsidian size: $(du -sh "$VAULT_PATH/.obsidian" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1)"
echo ""

# File counts by type
echo "=== Files by Type ==="
command find "$VAULT_PATH" -type f -not -path '*/.obsidian/*' -not -path '*/.trash/*' \
  | sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -15

echo ""
echo "=== Top 20 Largest Files ==="
command find "$VAULT_PATH" -type f -not -path '*/.obsidian/*' \
  -exec du -h {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head -20

echo ""
echo "=== Plugin Cache Sizes ==="
for dir in "$VAULT_PATH/.obsidian/plugins"/*/; do
  [ -f "$dir/data.json" ] || continue
  size=$(du -h "$dir/data.json" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1)
  echo "  $(basename "$dir")/data.json: $size"
done

Step 2: Reduce Sync Storage — Exclusion Patterns

Obsidian Sync respects

.obsidian/sync-exclude.json

{
  "patterns": [
    "*.pdf",
    "*.mp4",
    "*.mov",
    "*.zip",
    "*.tar.gz",
    "attachments/archives/**",
    "node_modules/**",
    ".git/**"
  ]
}

For manual file-level control:

# Find files over 5MB that consume sync bandwidth
command find "$VAULT_PATH" -type f -size +5M -not -path '*/.obsidian/*' \
  -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh

# Count sync-heavy file types
echo "PDF count: $(command find "$VAULT_PATH" -name '*.pdf' | wc -l)"
echo "Image count: $(command find "$VAULT_PATH" \( -name '*.png' -o -name '*.jpg' -o -name '*.jpeg' \) | wc -l)"
echo "Total attachments: $(du -sh "$VAULT_PATH/attachments" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1)"

Strategies to stay under the 1 GB Sync Standard tier:

• Move PDFs to a local folder outside the vault, link with

  file:///

  URIs
• Compress images before adding:

  pngquant --quality=65-80 *.png

  or ImageOptim
• Use external image hosting (Cloudinary free tier: 25 credits/mo, ~25K transforms)
• Exclude

  .obsidian/plugins/*/data.json

  — plugin caches regenerate on launch

Step 3: Optimize Plugin API Costs

Plugins that call external APIs (AI assistants, translation, image generation) can incur per-call costs. Implement caching in your plugin:

// src/services/api-cache.ts
import { Plugin } from 'obsidian';

interface CacheEntry<T> {
  result: T;
  timestamp: number;
}

export class APICache<T> {
  private cache = new Map<string, CacheEntry<T>>();
  private ttlMs: number;

  constructor(ttlMinutes: number = 60) {
    this.ttlMs = ttlMinutes * 60 * 1000;
  }

  get(key: string): T | null {
    const entry = this.cache.get(key);
    if (!entry) return null;
    if (Date.now() - entry.timestamp > this.ttlMs) {
      this.cache.delete(key);
      return null;
    }
    return entry.result;
  }

  set(key: string, result: T) {
    this.cache.set(key, { result, timestamp: Date.now() });
    // Prevent unbounded growth
    if (this.cache.size > 1000) {
      const oldest = this.cache.keys().next().value;
      if (oldest) this.cache.delete(oldest);
    }
  }

  /** Wrap an API call with cache-first logic */
  async getOrFetch(key: string, fetchFn: () => Promise<T>): Promise<T> {
    const cached = this.get(key);
    if (cached !== null) return cached;
    const result = await fetchFn();
    this.set(key, result);
    return result;
  }

  clear() { this.cache.clear(); }
  get size() { return this.cache.size; }
}

// Usage in plugin
const aiCache = new APICache<string>(24 * 60); // 24-hour TTL

async function getSummary(noteContent: string): Promise<string> {
  const hash = simpleHash(noteContent);
  return aiCache.getOrFetch(hash, async () => {
    // Only calls API if not cached
    const response = await requestUrl({ url: 'https://api.openai.com/...', ... });
    return response.json.choices[0].message.content;
  });
}

Step 4: Rate Limiting for External Calls

// Prevent runaway API costs with a quota counter
class APIQuota {
  private calls = 0;
  private resetTime = 0;
  private maxCallsPerHour: number;

  constructor(maxPerHour: number) {
    this.maxCallsPerHour = maxPerHour;
  }

  canCall(): boolean {
    const now = Date.now();
    if (now - this.resetTime > 3600000) {
      this.calls = 0;
      this.resetTime = now;
    }
    return this.calls < this.maxCallsPerHour;
  }

  recordCall() { this.calls++; }

  remaining(): number {
    return Math.max(0, this.maxCallsPerHour - this.calls);
  }
}

// Usage
const quota = new APIQuota(100); // max 100 API calls per hour

async function callExternalAPI() {
  if (!quota.canCall()) {
    new Notice('API quota exceeded. Try again later.');
    return;
  }
  quota.recordCall();
  // ... make API call
}

Step 5: Optimize Obsidian Publish Costs

Publish at $8/mo per site. Minimize what you publish to reduce bandwidth:

# In each note's frontmatter, control what gets published
---
publish: true          # Include this note on Publish site
permalink: custom-url  # Custom URL path
---

Cost reduction strategies:

• Use

  publish: true

  frontmatter selectively instead of publishing entire folders
• Compress images before embedding (target < 200KB per image)
• Use lazy-loading for heavy media:

  ![alt](image.png)

  with external hosting
• Monitor page count — each additional page adds build time and bandwidth
• Use Obsidian's built-in image compression in Publish settings

Step 6: Self-Hosted Sync Alternatives (Free)

# Decision matrix for $0/month sync
obsidian_git:
  cost: Free
  setup: Install Obsidian Git plugin, configure repo
  pros: Full version history, unlimited storage, branch per device
  cons: Manual setup, no conflict resolution UI, requires Git knowledge
  best_for: Developers, technical users

syncthing:
  cost: Free
  setup: Install on each device, share vault folder
  pros: Real-time sync, no cloud dependency, encrypted
  cons: Devices must be online simultaneously (or have relay), no web access
  best_for: Privacy-focused users, LAN-only setups

icloud_drive:
  cost: Free (with Apple devices)
  setup: Move vault to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/
  pros: Zero config on Apple ecosystem, transparent to Obsidian
  cons: .obsidian/ conflicts common, slow on large vaults, Apple-only
  best_for: Apple-only users with small vaults

remotely_save:
  cost: Free (with existing S3/WebDAV)
  setup: Install Remotely Save plugin, configure backend
  pros: Works with S3, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV
  cons: Plugin manages sync (no native integration), manual conflict handling
  best_for: Users with existing cloud storage

Step 7: Ongoing Cost Monitoring Script

#!/bin/bash
# vault-cost-report.sh <vault-path>
VAULT="${1:-$HOME/MyVault}"
echo "=== Monthly Cost Estimate ==="

# Vault size
SIZE_MB=$(du -sm "$VAULT" 2>/dev/null | cut -f1)
echo "Vault size: ${SIZE_MB} MB"

if [ "$SIZE_MB" -lt 1024 ]; then
  echo "Sync tier needed: Standard ($4/mo) — under 1 GB"
elif [ "$SIZE_MB" -lt 10240 ]; then
  echo "Sync tier needed: Plus ($8/mo) — under 10 GB"
else
  echo "WARNING: Vault exceeds 10 GB — Sync Plus limit"
fi

# Published pages
PUB_COUNT=$(grep -rl 'publish: true' "$VAULT"/*.md "$VAULT"/**/*.md 2>/dev/null | wc -l)
echo "Published pages: $PUB_COUNT"
[ "$PUB_COUNT" -gt 0 ] && echo "Publish cost: \$8/mo" || echo "Publish cost: \$0"

# Plugin API costs (estimate by checking for network-calling plugins)
echo ""
echo "=== Plugins with potential API costs ==="
for dir in "$VAULT/.obsidian/plugins"/*/; do
  manifest="$dir/manifest.json"
  [ -f "$manifest" ] || continue
  name=$(python3 -c "import json; print(json.load(open('$manifest')).get('name','?'))" 2>/dev/null)
  # Check if plugin JS makes fetch/requestUrl calls
  if grep -q 'requestUrl\|fetch(' "$dir/main.js" 2>/dev/null; then
    echo "  $name — makes network requests"
  fi
done

Output

• Vault storage audit with file type breakdown and largest files
• Sync exclusion patterns reducing bandwidth consumption
• API response cache with TTL and bounded size
• Rate limiter preventing runaway API costs
• Publish optimization with selective frontmatter and image compression
• Self-hosted sync comparison (Git, Syncthing, iCloud, Remotely Save)
• Monthly cost estimation script

Error Handling

.trash/

plugins/*/data.json

workspace.json

.gitignore

Examples

Quick Storage Savings

# Compress all PNG images in vault (requires pngquant)
command find "$VAULT_PATH" -name '*.png' -exec pngquant --quality=65-80 --skip-if-larger --ext .png --force {} \;

# Move large PDFs to external folder
mkdir -p ~/VaultArchive
command find "$VAULT_PATH" -name '*.pdf' -size +10M -exec mv {} ~/VaultArchive/ \;

Persistent API Cache Across Sessions

// Save cache to plugin data.json on unload, restore on load
async onload() {
  const data = await this.loadData();
  if (data?.apiCache) this.apiCache.restore(data.apiCache);
}

onunload() {
  this.saveData({ ...this.settings, apiCache: this.apiCache.serialize() });
}

Resources

• Obsidian Sync — official docs
• Obsidian Publish — official docs
• Obsidian Git Plugin
• Syncthing — open-source file sync
• Remotely Save
• Cloudinary Free Tier — image hosting

Next Steps

For performance optimization, see

obsidian-performance-tuning

obsidian-data-handling