Open Notebook is an open-source, privacy-focused alternative to Google's NotebookLM. It enables local, multi-model AI usage with support for 16+ providers, multi-modal content organization (PDFs, videos, audio, web pages), professional podcast generation, intelligent search, and context-aware chats.
Open Notebook is a powerful, open-source tool designed as a privacy-centric alternative to Google's NotebookLM. Launched in late 2024, it empowers users to manage research and knowledge creation in a fully local environment, ensuring complete data sovereignty without reliance on cloud services. Built with modern technologies like Python, FastAPI, Next.js, React, SurrealDB, and LangChain, it offers a seamless three-column interface for handling sources, notes, and AI chats. With over 11,000 stars on GitHub, it has quickly gained traction in the AI community for its flexibility and extensibility.
Unlike proprietary tools, Open Notebook runs entirely on your hardware or self-hosted servers, keeping sensitive research data private. It supports optional password protection for deployments and provides fine-grained context control, allowing users to decide exactly what information is shared with AI models. This granular approach enhances both privacy and performance by limiting data exposure.
One of its standout features is compatibility with over 16 AI providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Google GenAI, Vertex AI, Ollama, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Azure OpenAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Voyage, xAI, OpenRouter, and OpenAI-compatible endpoints like LM Studio. This flexibility lets users choose cost-effective or local models, such as running Ollama for offline operations. The project leverages the Esperanto library for seamless abstraction across LLMs, embeddings, speech-to-text, and text-to-speech functionalities.
Open Notebook excels in organizing diverse content types, including PDFs, videos, audio files, web pages, and Office documents. Users can create multiple notebooks for different projects, with upcoming features for cross-notebook source reuse. Intelligent full-text and vector search enables quick retrieval across all materials, while AI-assisted notes generation helps synthesize insights automatically.
A highlight is the professional podcast creation tool, supporting 1-4 speakers with customizable profiles and full script control. This goes beyond NotebookLM's limited two-speaker format, allowing for more dynamic and personalized audio content. Integration with providers like ElevenLabs ensures high-quality text-to-speech output.
The chat interface powers AI conversations grounded in your uploaded content, with comprehensive citations linking responses to sources for research integrity. Multiple chat sessions can be managed within notebooks, and support for reasoning models like DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3 enables complex problem-solving.
Users can apply customizable transformations to content, such as summarization or insight extraction, powered by AI. A full REST API provides programmatic access for automation and integrations, making it ideal for developers building custom workflows.
Deployment is straightforward via Docker images from Docker Hub or GitHub Container Registry (e.g., lfnovo/open_notebook:v1-latest-single). Quick start options include local machine or remote server setups, with Docker Compose recommended for ease. Key ports are 8502 for the web UI and 5055 for the API. For upgrades, note v1.0 breaking changes like new tags and SurrealDB integration. Detailed guides cover reverse proxy setups, security, and troubleshooting.
| Feature | Open Notebook | Google NotebookLM |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy | Self-hosted, local data | Cloud-dependent |
| AI Providers | 16+ options | Google only |
| Podcasting | 1-4 speakers, custom | 2 speakers fixed |
| API Access | Full REST API | None |
| Customization | Open-source extensibility | Closed system |
| Cost | Usage-based or free local | Subscription |
This comparison underscores Open Notebook's advantages in flexibility, cost control, and no vendor lock-in.
The project fosters an active community via Discord for support and ideas, GitHub issues for feedback, and welcomes contributions in frontend development, testing, and documentation. Recent completions include Next.js frontend, multi-model support, and enhanced podcasts. Upcoming: live UI updates, async processing, and bookmark integrations. It's MIT-licensed, built on projects like Podcast Creator and Content Core.
Open Notebook democratizes AI-assisted research, making advanced tools accessible to all without compromising privacy or control.
