NotebookLM Is Now Gemini Notebook: What Changed, What's the Same, and Is It Still Free?

Yes. Gemini Notebook is still free with a personal Google account. It is the same kind of product NotebookLM was: a notebook grounded in sources you add, with citations, Audio Overviews, and study artifacts. The name matches Google’s Gemini brand. The free tier did not disappear. Paid Google AI plans, Workspace, and Google Cloud raise the caps and, on some plans, add sharing and watermark controls.

Limits in the table were read from Google’s Gemini Notebook plan help page on October 24, 2026. Google AI Plus at $4.99/month and Pro at $19.99/month are the subscription prices we checked October 16, 2026. Google says the usage numbers can change. We are describing the published plan table, not a hands-on score.

What stayed the same

• You create a notebook and add sources. Answers are supposed to come from those sources, with citations you can open.
• Audio Overviews turn the sources into a spoken summary. Formats on the current help page include Deep Dive, Brief, Critique, and Debate. You can aim them with a prompt. Google says they can be inaccurate or glitch.
• Flashcards, quizzes, reports, mind maps, and video overviews are in the same product family as the chat.
• A personal Google account in a supported country can use it in the browser without a Google AI subscription. You need to be over the age of consent that applies where you live.
• It is not a web search engine. If you wanted cited search of the live web, that is Perplexity, covered in is Perplexity Pro worth it. Gemini chat is the general assistant. The notebook is the source-bound one.

What the plan table shows now

Google’s help page labels the columns Standard, Plus, Pro, Ultra (20 TB), and Ultra (30 TB).

	Standard	Plus	Pro	Ultra 20 TB	Ultra 30 TB
Notebooks per user	100	200	500	500	500
Sources per notebook	50	100	300	500	600
Chats	50/day	200/day	500/day	2,500/day	5,000/day
Audio Overviews	3/day	6/day	20/day	100/day	200/day
Video Overviews	3/day	6/day	20/day, plus 2 cinematic	100/day, plus 10 cinematic	200/day, plus 20 cinematic
Reports, flashcards, quizzes, mind maps	10/day each	20/day each	100/day each	500/day each	1,000/day each
Deep Research	10/month	3/day	20/day	75/day	200/day
Visible watermark control on generated images and video	No	No	Yes, with exceptions	Yes, with exceptions	Yes, with exceptions

Daily quotas reset after 24 hours. Monthly quotas reset after 30 days. Sharing a notebook does not change a collaborator’s source limit. An artifact the product generates automatically the first time you add sources is created once and does not use your quota.

A second Google help page describes a compute-style meter that refreshes on a five-hour window until a weekly limit, with Plus at about 2× Standard, Pro at about 4×, and Ultra at 5× or 20× Pro. That page and the feature-count table are both official, and they do not use the same units. If the product shows a usage bar and a daily “3 Audio Overviews” message, believe the meter in the account. The table is the published feature cap. The five-hour page is the published compute cap. Either one can be the one you hit first.

Figure (name-change diagram, not a product screenshot). Alt: NotebookLM on the left and Gemini Notebook on the right, with the same three blocks between them: your sources, cited answers, and Audio Overviews. A side arrow points to higher caps on Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra. The web-search chatbot, Gemini, is a separate box.

How to use the free caps for a course is how to use Gemini Notebook for studying. Whether Plus or Pro is a sensible bill next to other AI plans is which AI subscription is worth paying for.

What is actually different enough to notice

The name and the help center. Documentation now lives under Gemini Notebook. Old NotebookLM links and articles redirect or sit beside the new name. If a tutorial says NotebookLM and the buttons say Gemini Notebook, you are in the same product.

Plan names that match Google AI subscriptions. Standard is the free Gmail (or qualifying Workspace) experience. Plus maps to Google AI Plus. Pro maps to Google AI Pro or a qualifying Workspace or education license. Ultra maps to the Ultra plans, which the notebook page splits by storage (20 TB and 30 TB). Google’s subscriptions page lists Ultra at $99.99 and $199.99 a month. This article does not pin which dollar amount is the 20 TB plan and which is the 30 TB plan, because the notebook table uses the storage labels and the subscriptions page uses the prices. Read both before you assume the $99.99 tier includes 200 Audio Overviews a day. The 200-a-day audio line is the 30 TB column.

Watermarks. Outputs that use Veo, Omni, or Nano Banana include an invisible SynthID watermark. A visible watermark can be turned off by eligible Pro and Ultra users, except Google says a visible watermark is applied automatically in India, South Korea, and Vietnam.

Workspace and Cloud are separate upgrades, not coupons on the free plan. Qualifying Workspace editions can get expanded access, and education accounts have their own data rules. Gemini Notebook for enterprise, through Google Cloud, needs an admin to grant Gemini Notebook for Enterprise or a Gemini Enterprise edition. Google says those enterprise files stay in your GCP project, honor data regionalization, and are not reviewed by people or used to improve generative models. Consumer accounts are different: Google says data is not used to train Gemini Notebook unless you send feedback, and feedback can include the query, the upload, and the response. Workspace users get the stricter version even when they send a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Advanced sharing is listed for paid users. Custom chat and analytics are listed for everyone.

What did not change into a different product

• It did not become Gemini chat. You still bring the sources. Empty notebook, thin answer.
• It did not become unlimited because the name sounds like a flagship. Three Audio Overviews a day is the free audio cap in the table.
• It did not pick up Claude’s or ChatGPT’s coding-agent job. Comparing those assistants is ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude.
• A school or work policy that blocked NotebookLM still applies. The rename is not a new vendor review.

Who should move up, and who should stay

You	Stay on Standard	Pay
One course, a few notebooks, under 3 audio summaries a day	Yes
You want 6 audio summaries and more sources		Plus at $4.99
You are generating quizzes and reports most days		Pro at $19.99, which also bundles a large storage plan
You need VPC-SC, IAM, and a Cloud project boundary		The enterprise edition, through an admin
You wanted web research	Do not pay for Notebook to get that	Perplexity or Gemini chat

Students who only needed a study loop should follow the seven workflows in the study guide before they subscribe. Hitting 50 chats in a day is a sign the session is unfocused, not automatically a sign you need Ultra.

FAQ

Is NotebookLM gone?

The product is documented as Gemini Notebook, including on Google’s help center, which describes the plans, Audio Overviews, and Workspace behavior under that name. Features people used NotebookLM for (sources, citations, audio) are the features in that help center. Use the Gemini Notebook URL your account opens.

Is Gemini Notebook free?

Yes, on the Standard column, with a personal Google account in a supported country: 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, 50 chats a day, 3 Audio Overviews a day, and 10 a day for reports, flashcards, quizzes, and mind maps. Paid plans raise those numbers. Enterprise access is a Cloud or Workspace decision.

Does Google train on my notebooks?

On consumer accounts, Google says notebook data is not used to train the product unless you provide feedback, and feedback can be reviewed in context. On Workspace, and on the Cloud enterprise offering, Google’s help pages say content is not used to train models, with the Cloud page adding that humans do not review files, chats, and outputs. Read the terms for the account you used to sign in. A personal Gmail and a school account are not the same row.

Last verified

October 24, 2026, from Google’s Gemini Notebook plans help page, the usage-limit help page, and the Audio Overview help page. Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra dollar prices were checked October 16, 2026 on Google’s subscriptions page. Limits are labeled subject to change on the plan table.

Sources: Learn about Gemini Notebook’s plans, Manage usage limits, Audio Overviews, Gemini Notebook for Workspace, Google AI subscriptions.

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