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22nd of 15 in RAG and knowledge

Open Notebook

Self-hosted NotebookLM alternative with podcasts and 20+ model providers

Website ↗ (opens in a new tab)Repository on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Stars
40k
License
MIT
Last commit
Oct 2026
Last release
Oct 2026

Overview

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

Its own README calls it an alternative to 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

What it needs

  • 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

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