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Relay offers flexible hosting options to meet a variety of security, compliance, and operational requirements. You can think of Relay as comprising three components: the Relay Server, the Control Plane, and storage. Each of those can be hosted on our infrastructure or yours. Note that self/on-premise hosting is a paid feature. See our pricing page for details.

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Why is hosting required to use Relay?

The beautiful thing about Obsidian is that your files are local first: the canonical source of truth is the .md file in your local storage. Relay keeps that commitment and meets the challenge of making those local files multiplayer. Relay accomplishes this with the help the open source CRDT Yjs. When you run Relay, the plugin watches your shared notes, converts your changes into commutative update operations, and relays those operations through hosted infrastructure to your collaborators, where they can be processed to recreate the changes on the other side. In principle this could be accomplished entirely through peer-to-peer communication without the use of any central intermediary. However, we have chosen not to architect Relay as peer-to-peer because in that case, collaboration is only possible between two peers who are online at the same time. An always-on server is like a ‘market-maker’ that allows you to relay your updates between collaborators even if you’re not online at the same time. For example, suppose Abigail is in the United States and John is in Europe:
  1. Abigail makes a change to a note while John is sleeping. Her machine sends those changes up to the hosted Relay Server.
  2. Abigail shuts down her computer and goes to bed.
  3. A few hours later, John wakes up in Amsterdam, opens his machine, and starts his day.
  4. Even though Abigail is now asleep, John’s machine downloads Abigail’s updates from the hosted Relay Server, bringing him up to date with the most recent work from Abigail.
To make this possible, somewhere in the world there has to be a machine that’s always online, ready to receive and transmit changes. That’s where hosting comes in, and that machine can be ours or yours.

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Relay architecture

With respect to hosting, Relay consists of three core components. Each of these components can be hosted in a variety of ways.
  1. The Relay Server is responsible for:
    • Realtime collaboration and file storage APIs
  2. The Control Plane is responsible for:
    • User authentication and SSO integration
    • User management and permissions
    • Server and folder metadata
  3. Storage is responsible for
    • Document content and version history storage
    • File attachments and media assets storage

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Hosting models offered

Each of the three Relay components can be hosted on our infrastructure (Relay Cloud) or yours. Note that self/on-premise hosting is a paid feature. See our pricing page for details.
Self-hosting beta (free)We are currently offering self-hosting of the storage and Relay Server components at no charge. Users who begin self-hosting during the beta period will continue to have free access to self-hosting features after the beta is over. See our relay-server-template on GitHub for deployment guides and configuration examples.
  1. Relay Cloud: Host on Relay’s infrastructure. The easiest and most cost-effective option.
    1. Multi-tenant: Standard cloud hosting model. Your data shares infrastructure with other Relay customers but remains isolated and secure.
    2. Dedicated: Your data runs on infrastructure exclusively allocated to your organization. You get single-tenant resources but we handle all the operations.
  2. Bring your own: Host Relay components on your own infrastructure — either on-premise, or via your own cloud provider.
Here’s what’s available at each pricing tier:
Relay Server
(document collaboration)		Control Plane
(login & permissions)		Storage
FreeRelay Cloud (multi-tenant)Relay Cloud (multi-tenant)Relay Cloud (markdown files only)
TeamRelay Cloud (multi-tenant)Relay Cloud (multi-tenant)Relay Cloud
ProRelay Cloud (dedicated) OR bring your ownRelay Cloud (multi-tenant)Relay Cloud OR bring your own S3 compatible storage
EnterpriseRelay Cloud (dedicated) OR bring your ownRelay Cloud (dedicated) OR bring your ownRelay Cloud OR bring your own S3 compatible storage

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Privacy considerations

We don’t look at your data and we don’t sell it. See our security page for details. However, if Relay has the technical capability to access your data, then we could be compelled to do so by court order or other lawful legal process (this has never happened). Self-hosting can provide technical guarantees — we can’t be compelled to turn over what we don’t have access to. What Relay staff can technically access depends on which components you host:
  • All components on Relay Cloud: Standard SaaS model - we could access your data if legally compelled, though we don’t under normal operations. See our security page for details.
  • Relay Server + storage on your infrastructure, Control Plane on Relay Cloud: We can only see metadata (server names, user emails, document IDs) but no document content.
  • All components on your infrastructure: We see nothing unless you grant specific access for support.

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Choosing the right option

Choose Free tier if:
  • 3 seats or fewer
  • Don’t need attachment storage
  • Personal or hobby use cases
  • Pairs and trios that only need markdown collaboration
Choose Team tier if:
  • Standard security requirements
  • Cost is primary concern
  • No specific compliance mandates
Choose Pro tier if:
  • Need more seats
  • Need dedicated infrastructure
  • Want to control document storage
  • Can accept shared control plane
Choose Enterprise tier if:
  • Need large number of seats
  • Government or defense or other regulated industry (healthcare, finance)
  • Need complete data sovereignty
  • Require full audit control
Need help deciding?Contact us to discuss your specific requirements. We can help you understand which hosting model best fits your security, compliance, and operational needs.
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