First things first: NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook
If you came looking for NotebookLM and the name threw you, that is fair enough.
On 16 July 2026 Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook, part of its run of folding everything under the Gemini brand. It was announced on Google’s own blog and in the Workspace release notes.
And the important part, because it causes more alarm than it deserves: it is still the same standalone product. Same address, same team, and your existing notebooks and sources are untouched. Nothing to migrate.
This review uses both names, because half the internet still says NotebookLM, including the URL itself.
What it is, and why it is not a chatbot
This is the part most people miss, and it is exactly what makes it useful.
Gemini Notebook does not search the internet or answer from memory. You give it the sources - PDFs, notes, documents, transcripts, links - and it answers only from those, citing which source each claim came from.
That changes the kind of mistake it can make. A general chatbot will invent a fact with total confidence; here, if something is not in your material, it tells you it is not there. For studying or working with your own documentation, that difference is enormous.
The trade-off is obvious: outside your sources it is useless. This is not a replacement for ChatGPT or Claude, it is a different tool.
The free plan, which is the main argument
This is the best thing about the product, and it is worth seeing in numbers.
| Free plan | |
|---|---|
| Notebooks | 100 |
| Sources per notebook | 50 |
| Chats per day | 50 |
| Audio and video overviews | Included |
| Mind maps, flashcards, quizzes | Included |
| Deep Research | Included |
A hundred notebooks with fifty sources each is a lot for a free plan. For a whole degree’s worth of studying, hitting the ceiling is hard.
And it is not a hollowed-out free tier that holds back the interesting parts: Audio Overviews (two voices discussing your material, for listening on a commute), mind maps, flashcards and quizzes all come with the free plan.
The paid tiers: the change to understand
This is where you need to read carefully, because how you buy it changed.
You can no longer buy NotebookLM Plus on its own. The paid tiers now arrive inside a Google AI subscription, a Google Workspace plan or a Google Cloud Enterprise licence. You pay for Google’s bundle, and Notebook comes with higher limits.
| Tier | Comes with | Main limits |
|---|---|---|
| Free | - | 100 notebooks, 50 sources, 50 chats/day |
| Plus | Google AI Plus | 200 notebooks, 100 sources, 200 chats/day, 20 reports/day |
| Pro | Google AI Pro ($19.99/mo) | Up to 300 sources per notebook, 20 Deep Research reports/day |
| Ultra | Google AI Ultra (from $99.99/mo) | 500-600 sources, and the only tier with Cinematic Video Overviews built with Veo 3 |
On the Plus price: Google cut it from $7.99 to $4.99/month on 8 June 2026, and doubled the included storage to 400GB in the same move. That is the price in effect as of September 2026. Pro at $19.99 and Ultra from $99.99 stay the same.
What the rename brought with it
It was not only the label. Two concrete things shipped alongside it.
It can run code. Notebooks can now execute code in a secure cloud environment to do data analysis on your own sources. Upload a spreadsheet or a report full of figures and it stops merely reading them.
It plugs into the rest of Gemini. Notebooks are already available inside the Gemini app for organising conversations and collecting work, and Google says they are coming to AI Mode in Search.
Who it is worth it for
Students: this is probably the best free AI tool in existence for studying. Upload a course’s notes and you have summaries, flashcards, quizzes and an audio version to revise from while walking. The free plan is more than enough.
Anyone working with documentation: contracts, manuals, reports, regulations. Being able to ask and get the exact citation back is a different thing from asking a chatbot for a summary and hoping.
Anyone already paying for Google AI Pro: the higher limits are included, so there is no decision to make.
You do not need it if what you want is a general assistant for writing, coding or searching the web. Those exist elsewhere.
Verdict
This is one of the few tools where the recommendation is simple: start on the free plan and you will probably stay there. A hundred notebooks and fifty sources cover what most people actually do, with the good features included.
The rename broke nothing, and the pricing change is not a rise either - it is a reorganisation. The only thing you lost is the option to pay for Notebook alone; if you want higher limits now, you buy into Google’s bundle.
And here is what makes it worth having installed even if you use another chatbot daily: it is the only one that answers by telling you where it got that from.
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