Open Notebook vs WeKnora
Two of the top rag and knowledge, side by side: score, setup, license, activity and what each review found.
Open Notebook
Self-hosted NotebookLM alternative with podcasts and 20+ model providers
WeKnora
Enterprise knowledge base combining RAG Q&A, agents and generated wikis
| What we compare | Open Notebook | WeKnora |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 76, popular | 69, popular |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 85, healthy | 89, healthy |
| Easy to run | 50, easy | 50, easy |
| Agent-ready | 70, partly | 0, none |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 40.1k | 33.1k |
| License | MIT (permissive) | custom license (read the license) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | Sep 2026 |
| Language | Not stated | Not stated |
| Docker | Yes | Yes |
| GPU | Not needed | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Mentioned | Not stated |
Open Notebook
Open Notebook collects PDFs, audio, video, web pages and Office files into notebooks and offers cited chat, full-text and vector search, notes and multi-speaker podcast generation. It runs as two containers (SurrealDB plus a FastAPI/Next.js app) and talks to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, Ollama, LM Studio or any OpenAI-compatible server. A REST API and MCP integration expose the same features.
Who it is for: individual researchers who want a private NotebookLM
Strengths
- 20+ providers, including Ollama and LM Studio for fully local runs
- Podcasts with 1 to 4 speakers and custom episode profiles
- REST API on port 5055 and an MCP server for Claude Desktop or VS Code
- Two-service Docker Compose; keys stored encrypted with OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENCRYPTION_KEY
Weaknesses
- Single-user; multi-user support is only a future direction in VISION.md
- No password by default and ports 8502/5055 bind to all interfaces
- Anthropic and Groq offer no embeddings, so a second provider is needed
- UI in 14 languages but provider setup is manual per model type
- no GPU
- Docker + Compose
- Needs SurrealDB
- Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Groq, DeepSeek, xAI, OpenRouter, Cohere, Ollama, LM Studio, oMLX and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
- port 8502
- README: alternative to NotebookLM
WeKnora
WeKnora turns team documents into knowledge bases with three modes: cited RAG answers, an agent that runs multi-step tasks with skills in Docker, E2B or Cube sandboxes, and auto-generated wiki pages with a knowledge graph. It syncs from Feishu, Confluence, GitLab, Notion and RSS, answers in WeCom, Slack and Telegram, and exposes an MCP server. Deploy with Docker Compose, Helm or one Lite binary on SQLite.
Who it is for: teams needing a self-hosted enterprise knowledge assistant
Strengths
- 29 built-in model vendors including OpenAI, DeepSeek, Qwen, Gemini, LiteLLM and Ollama
- Lite single binary with SQLite and in-memory queue for low-resource hosts
- Workspace RBAC with four roles, per-resource ownership and audit log
- Per-workspace MCP endpoints with own token, scope and rate limit
Weaknesses
- Many integrations target the Chinese ecosystem (WeChat, Feishu, DingTalk, Yuque)
- Sandbox commands run as root since v0.8.2
- Maintainers advise against exposing it to the public internet
- Desktop app has no published installer; hardware requirements live in external docs
- no GPU
- Docker + Compose
- Needs Neo4j (optional profile), MinIO (optional profile), Langfuse (optional profile)
- Models: OpenAI, DeepSeek, Qwen, Zhipu, Hunyuan, Gemini, MiniMax, NVIDIA, LiteLLM, Ollama
- port 80