Is NotebookLM Free? Free Limits and Paid Plans in 2026

Yes. NotebookLM is free with a Google Account, and Google now calls it Gemini Notebook. The free version is metered: starting September 2, 2026, Google announced a rollout to consumer accounts of a usage budget that refreshes every 5 hours up to a weekly limit, and the Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra plans raise that budget.

The new name began rolling out on July 16, 2026, and the explainer on the Gemini Notebook rebrand covers what changed beyond the name. This post uses NotebookLM where people still search with it and Google’s current labels wherever it quotes a Google page. Every figure below is dated, because Google changed how the free version is metered on September 2, 2026, and two of its help pages currently describe the limits in different forms.

Is NotebookLM free to use?

Yes, and Google says so directly. The Gemini Notebook Help article Upgrade Gemini Notebook lists a free column named Gemini Notebook Standard, and its sign-up cell reads: “Sign up free of charge by using your gmail account.” The same cell adds that you can sign up with a qualifying Workspace or Workspace for Education license. The paid columns are Gemini Notebook in Plus, in Pro, in Ultra (20 TB Plan) and in Ultra (30 TB Plan), and the page says you upgrade “through Google AI Plans, Google Cloud, or a qualifying Google Workspace plan”.

In that table, the Standard column lists allowances for chat, Audio and Video Overviews, reports, flashcards, quizzes, mind maps and Deep Research. The table also states: “Custom chat and analytics are available to everyone.” Advanced sharing is kept for paid users. On data, the page says: “Your data is protected, and is not used to train Gemini Notebook unless you provide feedback.”

We are not quoting any Google price in this post. The Google plan pages served to us on September 15, 2026 showed prices in Singapore dollars, so they are localized, and the price that applies to you is the one on the page where you live.

Who can use the free version?

The Learn about Gemini Notebook article says: “Gemini Notebook is available in browser to all users above the age of consent (or applicable in your country) in supported countries & territories.” It asks you to verify your age in your Google Account first, and it applies stricter content policies to users under 18, adding: “Certain features may only be available to users over 18.” The same article says Gemini Notebook supports 80+ languages and that the mobile app may have different availability.

School accounts have their own rules. “For Workspace for Education users, Gemini Notebook is available to users of all ages.” The article adds that on a school or work-managed account, “your organization’s admin needs to turn on access to Gemini Notebook.” If it will not open on a school login, that admin setting is the first thing to ask about. For Workspace and Workspace for Education users, the article says uploads, queries and the model’s responses “will not be reviewed by human reviewers, and will not be used to train AI models.”

Google gave a different age figure in 2025. On August 4, 2025, a Google post by Tin-Yun Ho, Group Product Manager, NotebookLM, said consumers aged 13 and over (or the minimum age in their country) could use NotebookLM. The current help article words the rule as the age of consent where you live, so go by the help article.

How do the free limits work since September 2, 2026?

Google is moving consumer accounts from daily resets to a compute budget. A Google post of August 28, 2026 by Yesul Shin, Product Manager, Gemini Notebook, announced the change. It says limits “refresh every five hours”, and adds that “your overall usage limit will factor in prompt complexity, chat length, number of sources, and the features you use.” It closes: “These updates are rolling out to consumer accounts on web and mobile starting on September 2.”

The help article Manage your Gemini Notebook usage limits states it this way: “Starting on September 2, 2026, Gemini Notebook will have compute-based usage limits that determine how much you can interact with features.” It continues: “If you’ve hit your usage limits, you can come back later as the quota refreshes every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit, or upgrade Gemini Notebook to get higher AI limits.” Because the limit is one overall budget, how far it goes depends on what you spend it on.

The article sets the plans side by side in relative terms:

What Google has not published, as of September 15, 2026, is the size of the standard budget or of the weekly limit. Neither of the two help articles gives a number for either, the August announcement gives none, and we found no official figure elsewhere. The usage limits article also warns: “Gemini Notebook limits may change.”

How do you check how much you have left?

1. Open Gemini Notebook.
2. At the top right, select Settings, then Usage.

Limits also show up where you work. At the bottom of a chat, a message gives your remaining usage and when the limit refreshes, for example: “Limit reached. All features are available after 3:00 PM.” In the Studio panel, a bar shows the expected AI usage cost of a generation, and the fuller the bar, the higher the cost. If you are out of budget, you can select an artifact in Studio and choose Generate later; the article says generating later “may take a couple hours”, and you are notified when it is done if notifications are on. Generate later is available on the web only for now.

What does the older per-day table say?

The Upgrade Gemini Notebook article, as we read it on September 15, 2026, opens with a notice: “Starting on September 2, 2026, there will be changes to your usage limits for Gemini Notebook.” Below that notice it still prints a table of fixed allowances headed “Usage Limits (Subject to Change)”. These are its figures for selected rows:

The same article adds: “Daily quotas are reset after 24 hours; monthly quotas are reset after 30 days.” Its watermark row carries a footnote: “A visible watermark will be applied automatically if you reside in India, South Korea, or Vietnam.”

Read together, the two help articles describe metering in different forms. The newer article and the August announcement describe a compute budget with 5-hour refreshes and a weekly limit, while this table counts per day and per month. No Google page we read says which rows of the table still apply after September 2, and that includes the notebook and source caps. Treat the table as the only set of numeric allowances we found on a Google page, labelled subject to change by Google itself, and use Settings, then Usage, to see what applies to your own account.

How big can one source be?

The Gemini Notebook Help FAQ sets a size ceiling per source: “The current limit is 500,000 words per source or up to 200MB for local uploads. There’s no page limit.” It lists a copy-protected original PDF among the reasons an import fails. A long textbook PDF can go in as one source, provided it stays under both numbers and carries no copy protection.

What do Plus, Pro and Ultra add?

Each paid tier raises the budget. Under the compute-based limits, AI Plus is two times standard, AI Pro four times, and AI Ultra 5x or 20x AI Pro depending on the subscription. In the older table the paid columns also raise the notebook and source counts, and they add earlier access to key features (Early on Plus, Priority on Pro and Ultra), advanced sharing, higher access to Gemini models on Pro and the highest on Ultra, and watermark removal on Pro and Ultra.

For students there is a separate route to Plus. The Gemini for Students page, in the version served to us on September 15, 2026, gives Google AI Plus free of charge for a year to qualifying students, with redemption open until December 31, 2026. Its eligibility answer reads: “The free of charge Google AI Plus student offer is available to eligible college students ages 18+.” It also states: “Valid form of payment required at sign-up.” Unless cancelled earlier, the plan charges automatically once the trial ends. That page is served by region and shows its renewal price in local currency, so read the price there before adding a card. For Gemini Notebook itself, the usage limits article puts AI Plus at two times the standard limits.

Is the free version enough for studying?

Under a compute budget whose size Google has not published, nobody outside Google can give that a number. The quickest way to find out is to run one normal study session on the free plan, with the sources, chats and Studio outputs you would really use, then open Settings, then Usage, and see how much of the budget it took. If a week of sessions like that fits, the free version covers you.

For a study routine built around it, the NotebookLM study workflow walks through one. If you are choosing between it and a flashcard app, the comparison of NotebookLM and Quizlet sets the two side by side.

Where GeniusPal fits

Gemini Notebook already makes flashcards and quizzes from your sources on the free plan, and its chat answers can cite the sources they draw on. If that covers what you need, stay with it. GeniusPal does one smaller job. It takes a single uploaded file (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, plain text, Markdown or CSV, 10 MB at most) and turns its contents into study questions. There is no chat window, no audio, and nothing in the way of summaries or mind maps. It also runs no OCR, so it cannot read a scanned page that lacks a text layer.

A free GeniusPal account can generate 2 study sets in total, each with 10 questions, and can sit each set in full twice. Free quizzes are all multiple choice. The paid plans add flashcards, written recall, written short-answer questions inside quizzes, and sets as long as 30 questions. Student costs $14.99 a month and includes 100 generations; Genius costs $59.99 a year, which GeniusPal displays as $5.00 a month, and is sold as unlimited under a fair-use ceiling.

GeniusPal is built around a running record of your misses. Each answer you give is recorded per question. A daily review, which no plan gates, draws as many as 20 questions across every set you own, putting the ones you last got wrong first, then ones you have never answered, then ones you have not yet mastered. A practical split is Gemini Notebook for reading across many sources, asking questions and generating overviews, and GeniusPal for turning one document into questions and coming back to what you missed. For other tools in this space, see the roundup of NotebookLM alternatives.