NotebookLM Alternative

Google’s Notebook LM is pretty great on the surface. Upload a PDF, get a summary. Throw in a YouTube link, get a podcast. But here’s the thing — your data lives on Google’s servers, you’re locked into Gemini, and you can’t even access it programmatically through an API. That’s where Open Notebook comes in. And it’s an open-source, self-hosted alternative that replicates Notebook LM’s core features and then some. Still, 24,600+ GitHub stars, 739 commits, 51 contributors, and a thriving community aren’t everything. I spent a full afternoon installing it, poking around, and stress-testing it against my own research docs. Here’s what I found. ...