How does Open Notebook compare to Google NotebookLM?

Open Notebook is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to Google NotebookLM. The key differences are data sovereignty—your content never leaves your own infrastructure—and model flexibility. While NotebookLM is locked to Google's models, Open Notebook supports 16+ AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, and LM Studio. It also allows up to four podcast speakers versus NotebookLM's two, and exposes a full REST API for automation.

What AI providers and models does Open Notebook support?

Open Notebook supports over 16 AI providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic (Claude), Google Gemini, Ollama, LM Studio, Groq, and more. This includes full support for reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3. You can configure multiple providers simultaneously and select which model to use per task, enabling cost optimization and avoiding vendor lock-in.

What content types can I import into Open Notebook?

Open Notebook supports importing web links (URLs), PDFs, plain text files, PowerPoint presentations, and YouTube videos. Content is indexed and made available for AI-powered chat, summarization, and transformation workflows within your notebooks.

Does Open Notebook have a REST API for automation?

Yes. Open Notebook exposes a comprehensive REST API that gives programmatic access to notebooks, sources, notes, and transformations. This enables teams to automate ingestion pipelines, integrate with external tools, and build custom workflows on top of the platform—something Google NotebookLM does not offer.