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There are no "tiers" with Obsidian. The app is free without limits. You don't even need to sign up. You own your data locally. You can pay for the add-ons like Sync and Publish if you want, but there's also third-party alternatives to those.

At its core, it’s just a text editor. You don’t need any subscription. It’s Local-first, uses Markdown, and if you want to sync or publish, there’s plenty of other tools for that purpose that don’t require an account, like Syncthing or Github Pages.

It is different enough that it will lock me to a certain workflow.

Obsidian is great, because it is not like other apps. Using it daily will mean moving to another app will be some work.

What does it matter if the data is portable?

https://help.obsidian.md/import

Promises aren't ironclad anyhow.

Here’s a piece from their current CEO about data openness: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

I think that the data isn't really the problem, it is the workflow.