Data Portability
Data Portability — Data portability is the property of an app's data being exportable in a structured, vendor-neutral format that lets the user move their accumulated data to a different app without significant loss. High data portability lowers the switching cost of leaving the app; low portability creates lock-in.
What is data portability?
Data portability is the degree to which an app’s user data can be exported in a format that is structured (machine-readable), vendor-neutral (not specific to the source app), and complete (covering the actually-valuable subset of the data, not just metadata). High-portability apps — Obsidian (markdown filesystem), Apple Health (HL7 FHIR + CSV exports), most podcast apps (OPML) — let the user leave without losing the underlying data. Low-portability apps — Roam (proprietary blocks), Notion (block-graph that doesn’t round-trip cleanly), most calorie-tracking apps (proprietary food taxonomies) — make leaving expensive.
The concept gained legal weight in the EU under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which mandates a “right to data portability” (Article 20). In practice the legal mandate has been spotty in enforcement, and consumer apps in 2026 vary widely in how genuinely portable their data is.
Why it matters for app selection
Data portability is one of the load-bearing axes in our decision trees because it determines the cost of being wrong. An app with high portability is a low-stakes commitment — if it doesn’t fit, you leave. An app with low portability is a high-stakes commitment — once you’ve accumulated a year of data inside it, switching costs you a substantial fraction of that data.
The implication for decision-making: weight portability higher when you’re uncertain about your fit with the app, and lower when you’re confident. A user who’s certain Obsidian is the right note app doesn’t pay much attention to portability (it’s high anyway); a user picking between Notion and Roam should weight portability heavily because both have low-portability data models.
Examples across categories
- High portability. Obsidian (markdown files), Apple Notes (Notes Export), Goodreads (CSV export), most podcast apps (OPML), Sleep Cycle (CSV). Switching is straightforward.
- Medium portability. Notion (markdown export, lossy on databases), most note apps with markdown export, MyFitnessPal (CSV food log).
- Low portability. Roam (proprietary blocks; markdown export is lossy), most photo-AI calorie apps (proprietary food classifications), most habit-tracking apps (sparse calendar data with custom category schemas).
- Mixed portability. Apple Health (high portability for the data it owns; low for app-specific extensions). Most fitness apps export workouts but not programming; switching apps preserves history but not future automation.
What we recommend
When evaluating an app, check the export options before committing 6+ months of data. Most apps have export documentation buried in their help docs; reading that documentation tells you whether your future-self will be free to leave or trapped to stay.