Private beta — free Pro through the end of the year

One is a notebook for many sources.
One is a reader for one book.

These get compared because both answer questions from documents you supply. They are built for different jobs, and picking the wrong one wastes an afternoon. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook, so if you searched the old name, this is the same product.

When the book does not answer your question, it tells you so instead of inventing an answer.

What Gemini Notebook is good at

Written first, and written straight. If it is the right tool for what you are doing, use it — you will work that out in a minute either way, and I would rather you did it here.

  • It takes far more than books. Web pages, YouTube videos, audio and documents all go into the same notebook, which is the point of it.
  • It holds up to 600 sources in one notebook on the top tier, and 50 on the free one. That is a research workspace, not a reading app.
  • It generates artefacts a reader does not — Audio Overviews and Slides among them.
  • There is a genuine free tier, and it is backed by Google at Google scale.
  • If your question spans twenty documents rather than living inside one book, it is the better tool and you should use it.

What Chaptera is built for

You read the book here

It is a reader first: adjustable type, a real table of contents, four reading modes, highlights and notes that export to Notion, Obsidian, Markdown or JSON.

Citations open the book at the passage

An answer quotes what is on the page and links to where it sits, so checking it is one click rather than a search.

A scanned PDF becomes a book

Two-column layouts are detected and reflowed, scanned pages re-OCRed, chapters and a table of contents rebuilt.

Tools built for a long textPro

A character tracker and a plot timeline for narrative; a vocabulary builder with SM-2 review for anything dense.

Which one you want

Use Gemini Notebook if…

You are pulling a question across many sources at once — papers, web pages, a lecture recording, your own notes — and you do not need to sit and read any one of them end to end.

Use Chaptera if…

You have a book. You intend to read it, not just query it, and you want the answers to point back into the text so you can check them as you go.

What we checked, and when

Claims about someone else’s product go stale without warning — this page exists partly because ours did. Each line below names the page it was read from and the day it was last opened.

  • NotebookLM is now called Gemini Notebook; notebooklm.google redirects to notebook.google.

    notebook.google · checked 25 September 2026

  • A free tier remains, listed as "Gemini Notebook — for personal projects".

    notebook.google/plans · checked 25 September 2026

  • Paid access is bundled into Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra rather than sold as a standalone subscription, and those plans are available only in certain regions.

    notebook.google/plans · checked 25 September 2026

  • Sources per notebook: 50 on the free tier, 100 with AI Plus, 300 with AI Pro, 600 with AI Ultra.

    notebook.google/plans · checked 25 September 2026

  • It states that responses are "grounded in the information you provide".

    notebook.google · checked 25 September 2026

Where Chaptera is weak

  • Chaptera runs in a browser, on a phone or a laptop. There is no native app yet.
  • The character tracker and plot timeline are Pro features and are usage-limited. Reading, asking and cited answers are not.
  • Chaptera reads DRM-free EPUB and PDF files you upload. A book locked to a store cannot be opened by any third-party reader, this one included.
  • It is a private beta. Things break, and the deal is that you tell me when they do.

Questions people actually ask

Is NotebookLM the same thing as Gemini Notebook?
Yes. Google renamed it, and notebooklm.google now redirects to notebook.google. Verified 25 September 2026.
Is Gemini Notebook free?
There is a free tier. Beyond it, access comes bundled with Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra rather than as a standalone subscription, and those plans are region-limited. Verified on their plans page, 25 September 2026.
Which should I use for a textbook?
If you are going to read it, Chaptera — it is a reader, and citations open the book at the passage. If you only need to interrogate it alongside twenty other sources, Gemini Notebook holds far more sources at once.
How do I know this comparison is current?
Every claim above names the page it was read from and the date it was last opened. Claims about other products go stale without warning, so we log them in a claims register and re-check before any campaign. If you spot something out of date, tell me and I will fix it.

Free Pro through the end of the year

The first 50 invitations include free Pro through the end of the year. Invitations go out in small batches so I can actually talk to everyone. Tell me what you are trying to read and I will send one — all I ask is that you tell me what breaks.

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