NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook, and it has been changing. If what you valued was answers grounded strictly in your own sources, that is the one thing Querent is built around. Here is the honest comparison, including the reasons you might want to stay.
On July 16, 2026, Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook, keeping it a standalone research tool while integrating it more deeply with the Gemini app, with cross-app syncing and notebooks coming to AI Mode in Search.
On August 28, 2026, Google announced new flexible, compute-specific usage limits, rolling out to consumer accounts from September 2. In place of a set number of feature generations per day, usage now depends on prompt complexity, chat length, number of sources, and the features used, with limits that refresh every five hours.
None of that is a scandal; products evolve toward their owners' priorities, and Google's priority is the Gemini ecosystem. If that direction works for you, keep using it with our blessing. This page is for the people for whom it doesn't.
Querent answers only from the documents you have uploaded, and every claim in every answer cites the exact stored passage it came from, so you can check it yourself. When your documents don't contain the answer, it says so instead of improvising. That is the entire design, not a mode.
The second difference is shape. Gemini Notebook is built around notebooks: assemble sources for a project, work inside it, start the next notebook. Querent is a standing library for everything you own, organized in folders that mirror how your files actually live, where the lease from 2023 and the policy renewal from last week answer the same question together. Documents arrive the way paperwork actually arrives: drag in whole folders, forward from your inbox to your private Querent address, clip pages from the web, photograph the paper copies.
The third is the business. Querent is built and run by an independent developer, and the $10/month subscription is the whole business, so you are the customer, full stop. Everything kept is encrypted at rest, nothing you upload is used to train AI models, and the full list of services that process your data, and what each receives, is public on our subprocessors page.
Including the rows we lose.
| Querent | Gemini Notebook (NotebookLM) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A standing, private library for all your paperwork | A research tool built around per-project notebooks, part of the Gemini ecosystem |
| Where answers come from | Only your uploaded documents, with the exact passage cited on every claim | Grounded in the sources you add to each notebook, with citations |
| Audio and video overviews, slide decks | Not what Querent does | Its signature features, and genuinely good |
| Usage limits | One flat plan; a simple daily cap counted in questions, published on the help page | Compute-based limits that vary with prompt complexity, chat length, sources and features, refreshing every five hours |
| Getting documents in | Folder drag-and-drop, Google Drive import, email-in, web clipper, photos of paper | Add sources to each notebook |
| Across-everything questions | Ask once, searches every document you own; plus exact-word search across the whole library, matches highlighted | Scoped to the open notebook |
| Who runs it | An independent developer; the subscription is the whole business | Google, integrated with your Google account |
| Price | $10/month flat, 7-day free trial, everything included | Free with limits; higher limits with Google AI plans |
Gemini Notebook details are from Google's published announcements and help pages linked on this page, as of August 31, 2026. Their plans change; check their site for current specifics.
We'd rather lose you here than disappoint you after a switch.
Google's privacy page for Gemini Notebook says your content will not be used to directly train its foundational AI models unless you choose to provide feedback, and we take Google at their word. Querent's promise is that nothing you upload is used to train AI models, by policy and by contract with our providers, with no feedback exception.
The difference worth weighing is not a gotcha, it is the shape of the two businesses and the paper trail. Querent publishes exactly which services process your data and what each receives on the subprocessors page, keeps everything encrypted at rest, and deleting a document, or your account, actually removes it. Whether your household's leases, policies, and finances should live inside your Google account is your call to make; we just think it should be a deliberate one. Our privacy policy and full comparison have the rest.
Free for 7 days. Upload a folder, ask it something you actually need to know, and check the citations yourself.
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