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Yes, NotebookLM (now called Gemini Notebook) is free of charge with a Google account: 100 notebooks and 50 sources in each. What changed is the meter. Google no longer publishes daily counts for personal accounts. You get a usage budget that refills every 5 hours, up to a weekly limit, and paid Google AI plans multiply it.
Stay on the free plan if you study or research from a few dozen documents per project and can wait a few hours when the meter runs out.
Pay if one notebook needs more than 50 sources, or you make Audio and Video Overviews every day and keep hitting the limit before the week ends.
Skip it if you want answers that go beyond what you upload, because it is built to answer from your sources and a general chatbot does that job better.
prices checked 2026-10-05 · by dan scutaru
| plan | price | what matters |
|---|---|---|
| Standard (free) | $0 | 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, standard usage budget. Visible watermark on generated images and video. |
| Google AI Plus | $4.99/mo | 200 notebooks, 100 sources each, 2x the budget. Watermark stays. |
| Google AI Pro | $19.99/mo | 500 notebooks, 300 sources each, 4x the budget. Watermark can be switched off. |
| Google AI Ultra | $99.99 or $199.99/mo | 500 notebooks, 500 or 600 sources each by tier, 5x or 20x the Pro budget. |
Two limits are fixed: 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook. Everything else is a budget. Google's help page calls it compute-based: it counts the complexity of your prompt, the model, the feature and the length of the chat, and it refills every 5 hours until you reach a weekly limit.
Most ranking pages still print 50 chats and 3 Audio Overviews a day. Google now shows those numbers only for work and school accounts. On a personal account, open Settings, then Usage, to see what is left.
You cannot buy NotebookLM on its own. The higher tiers come inside the Google AI plans, the same ones that upgrade the Gemini app and add storage. "NotebookLM Plus" and "NotebookLM Pro" are what you get on Google AI Plus and Google AI Pro.
So the real question is whether you want the rest of the bundle. If you only need more sources, splitting a project across two notebooks costs nothing.
Yes, and it is the same product. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026 and says it remains standalone. The old address redirects to notebook.google and the free tier is still listed.
The rename came with code execution inside notebooks, announced for Ultra first and Pro after. Google has not listed it for free accounts.
Nothing on the standard plan. Higher limits come with a Google AI plan, from $4.99 a month. There is no separate NotebookLM price.
It is the tier you get with Google AI Pro at $19.99 a month, not something you can buy separately. It is the cheapest plan that lets you turn off the visible watermark.
In the US, yes. Eligible college students aged 18 and over can claim Google AI Pro free for one year, until 31 December 2026. It needs a payment method at sign-up and charges $19.99 a month afterwards unless you cancel.
Mostly. Google says your data is not used to train the product unless you give feedback. A thumbs up or down sends that chat, your uploads and the output to human reviewers, kept for up to three years. Work and school accounts are excluded.