Obsidian Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize costs related to Obsidian usage, including Sync subscription ($4/mo personal, $8/mo for 10GB), Publish hosting ($8/mo per site), and third-party plugin API costs. The main cost drivers are: Obsidian Sync storage (1-10GB depending on tier), Publish bandwidth, and external API calls from community plugins (AI assistants, translation services, image hosting).

Prerequisites

• Understanding of your Obsidian subscription tier (free, Catalyst, Sync, Publish)
• Access to vault storage metrics
• Knowledge of which community plugins make external API calls

Instructions

Step 1: Audit Vault Size and Storage Usage

# Check total vault size
du -sh /path/to/vault/

# Find largest files consuming sync bandwidth
find /path/to/vault/ -type f -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh | head -20

# Count files by type
find /path/to/vault/ -type f | sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10

Step 2: Reduce Sync Storage Costs

# .obsidian/sync-exclusions.md - Exclude from Obsidian Sync
# Large binary files that don't need cloud sync
*.pdf
*.mp4
*.zip
attachments/archives/**
node_modules/**
.git/**

# Generated content that can be recreated
.obsidian/plugins/*/data.json   # Plugin caches (regenerated on launch)
.trash/**                        # Deleted files in vault trash

Step 3: Optimize Plugin API Costs

// For plugins that call external APIs (AI assistants, translation, etc.)
// Implement caching to reduce API calls
class PluginCostOptimizer {
  // Cache AI responses to avoid re-querying for identical prompts
  private responseCache = new Map<string, { result: string; timestamp: number }>();
  private cacheTTL = 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000; // 24 hours  # 1000: 1 second in ms

  async getCachedOrFetch(prompt: string, apiFn: () => Promise<string>): Promise<string> {
    const cached = this.responseCache.get(prompt);
    if (cached && Date.now() - cached.timestamp < this.cacheTTL) return cached.result;
    const result = await apiFn();
    this.responseCache.set(prompt, { result, timestamp: Date.now() });
    return result;
  }
}

Step 4: Choose the Right Sync Tier

# Sync tier decision matrix
personal_4_per_month:
  storage: 1GB
  best_for: Text-only vaults, <5000 notes  # 5000: 5 seconds in ms
  tip: Exclude images from sync, use relative links to local folders

standard_8_per_month:
  storage: 10GB
  best_for: Vaults with images and PDFs
  tip: Compress images before adding to vault (tinypng or ImageOptim)

self_hosted_free:
  storage: Unlimited
  options: [Obsidian Git plugin, Syncthing, iCloud Drive]
  tradeoff: Manual setup, no version history UI, but $0/month

Step 5: Optimize Publish Costs

If using Obsidian Publish ($8/mo per site), minimize what you publish:

• Use publish: true frontmatter selectively instead of publishing entire folders
• Compress images before embedding (aim for <200KB per image)
• Use external image hosting (Cloudinary free tier) for heavy media

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Sync storage full	Large attachments	Exclude binary files from sync, compress images
Plugin API costs high	No caching in plugin	Implement response caching or switch to local models
Vault backup too large	Accumulated trash	Empty .trash folder, purge version history
Publish site slow	Large uncompressed images	Compress images, lazy-load media

Examples

Basic usage: Apply obsidian cost tuning to a standard project setup with default configuration options.

Advanced scenario: Customize obsidian cost tuning for production environments with multiple constraints and team-specific requirements.

Output

• Configuration files or code changes applied to the project
• Validation report confirming correct implementation
• Summary of changes made and their rationale

Resources

• Official API documentation
• Community best practices and patterns
• Related skills in this plugin pack