NotebookLM is still here under a new name: Google renamed it Gemini Notebook in July 2026, and existing notebooks carried over. It answers questions and creates Audio Overviews, Video Overviews, slides, reports, flashcards and infographics from sources you upload, citing them as it goes. It is free with standard limits and up to 50 sources per notebook. Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month doubles the limits and allows 100 sources, Pro at $19.99 quadruples them with 300 sources, and Ultra gives five to twenty times Pro's limits with 600. Since September 2, 2026, limits are compute-based and refresh every five hours.
Reviewed by EdGrows·Updated Oct 2, 2026This analysis is based on documentation, public user reports, and vendor materials — not yet on our own hands-on testing. How we rate
If you came here looking for NotebookLM, it hasn't gone anywhere. Google renamed it Gemini Notebook in July 2026 and kept every existing notebook. The core idea is untouched: an AI that works only from the sources you give it and shows where each answer came from.
2026 changed more than the name. In order:
Through all of it, the product's appeal stayed the same. Answers are grounded in your documents and cited, which makes it far less likely to invent facts than a general chatbot answering from memory.
You add sources, such as PDFs, documents, websites, YouTube videos or audio, and Gemini Notebook answers questions about them with citations. Its studio turns the same material into other formats. There are Audio Overviews, the podcast-style discussions that made NotebookLM famous, and Video Overviews with narration and animation. Slide decks, reports, flashcards, quizzes and infographics are on the list too. Source Discovery and Deep Research find new material on the web and add it to a notebook. Consumer accounts can publish a notebook publicly, which some teams use as a self-serve help page built from their documentation.
The plans page on October 2, 2026. Google AI plans are only sold in some regions.
| Free | Google AI Plus | Google AI Pro | Google AI Ultra | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price a month, US | $0 | $4.99 | $19.99 | From $99.99 |
| Usage limits | Standard | 2x standard | 4x standard | 5x to 20x Pro |
| Sources per notebook | 50 | 100 | 300 | 600 |
| New features | Standard access | Early access | Priority access | Priority access |
Gemini Notebook isn't sold on its own. The paid tiers come with Google's AI plans, which also include storage, Gemini in Gmail and Docs on Pro and other extras covered in our Gemini review. For most people the free plan's 50 sources per notebook are plenty. The upgrade matters for researchers working through large literature sets and for anyone who generates audio or video overviews every day.
The September change replaced per-feature daily counts with a single compute-based allowance that refreshes every five hours. Long chats, many sources and heavier outputs such as Video Overviews or slide decks use more of it. The same plan can feel generous for quick questions and tight for a session of video generation. Overviews that appear automatically when you first add sources don't count against the limit. The practical advice is to batch heavy outputs and spread them across the day.
The September tools make the clearest case for how it's meant to be used:
Professionals use the same loop with contracts, research papers or product documentation in place of lectures.
Gemini Notebook is also part of Google Workspace for businesses and schools, and of Google Cloud for enterprises. In those versions, Google says organizations' data stays private and isn't used to train the product. Public sharing is limited to consumer accounts.
Gemini Notebook is a research desk, not a general assistant. For open-ended questions about the web, Perplexity or Gemini itself are better starting points. For long-form writing from your notes, Claude projects make the stronger drafting partner. Where it has no real rival is the free, cited, multi-format study kit. One set of sources becomes a podcast, a quiz, a slide deck and flashcards in minutes.
Yes. Gemini Notebook, as NotebookLM is now called, is free with standard limits for chat and for generating Audio Overviews, slides and other outputs, and up to 50 sources per notebook. Paid Google AI plans raise those limits and the source cap.
Google renamed it in July 2026. The company says it is the same product, existing notebooks stay accessible, and the new name reflects plans to bring notebooks into its other AI products as a shared workspace, while the standalone web and mobile apps continue.
Up to 50 per notebook on the free plan, 100 with Google AI Plus, 300 with Google AI Pro and 600 with Google AI Ultra. Sharing a notebook doesn't change the source limit for any collaborator.
Since September 2, 2026, limits are compute-based rather than a fixed number per feature, and they refresh every five hours instead of daily. How much you can do depends on prompt complexity, chat length, the number of sources and the features you use; Plus doubles the free allowance, Pro quadruples it and Ultra raises it five to twenty times above Pro.
The tool is free for everyone, and Google offers students its paid plans too: eligible US college students can get Google AI Pro free for a year, and students in more than 140 other markets can get Google AI Plus free for a year, both of which raise Gemini Notebook's limits.
Google says that for individual users, notebook data isn't used for training unless you send feedback, and that for organizations and schools the data stays private to them and isn't used to train Gemini Notebook.
Cited AI search plus the new Computer agent: free plan, Pro at $20 or $200 a year, Max at $200, Computer credits, and the free Comet browser.
An academic search engine that answers from peer-reviewed papers. Basic search is free, Pro starts at $12 a month billed yearly, and students get up to 40% off.
A free chat app and one of the cheapest frontier-class APIs: V4.1-Flash with vision and open weights, from $0.15 per million input tokens off-peak.