3 Best Open Source Alternatives to NotebookLM

3 open source alternatives100% OSI-approved licensesUpdated June 2026

Looking to replace NotebookLM? These open source alternatives give you the same core workflow without the lock-in - free to use, often self-hostable, and auditable on GitHub. Compare licenses, languages and project activity, then switch on your own terms.

Khoj logo

1.Khoj

35.1kAGPL-3.0Python Self-host
Khoj screenshot

Khoj is a personal AI app that acts as your second brain. Chat with any local or online LLM, get answers from your own documents and the internet, and reach it from your browser, desktop, phone, Obsidian, Emacs, or WhatsApp.

  • Chat with local or online LLMs
  • Answer questions from docs and the web
  • Advanced semantic search across documents
  • Create agents with custom knowledge and tools

2.Open Notebook

30.8kMITTypeScript Self-host
Open Notebook screenshot

Open Notebook is a privacy-focused, open source alternative to Google's NotebookLM. It keeps your research under your control while letting you organize multiple notebooks and pick the AI models you want, instead of being locked to a single provider.

  • Multi-notebook organization for research projects
  • PDF, video, audio, web page, and Office doc support
  • Full-text and vector search across content
  • Chat with research context and AI-assisted notes
SurfSense logo

3.SurfSense

14.7kApache-2.0Python Self-host
SurfSense screenshot

SurfSense is an open source, privacy-focused NotebookLM alternative for teams. It builds shared AI notebooks without source or notebook limits, and is designed to reduce Google service lock-in by letting teams configure their own LLM, image, TTS, and STT models.

  • Unlimited sources and notebooks
  • Configurable LLM, image, TTS, and STT models
  • 25+ external data sources including Drive, Dropbox, Notion, and Slack
  • Hybrid semantic and keyword search with inline citations

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