The NotebookLM alternative built for teams

NotebookLM is a strong personal notebook. Scholarly is the shared workspace version: one source library the whole team works from, Owner/Admin/Member roles, adoption reporting, one bill, and a choice of models from eight AI labs.

Try Scholarly Free

Start with the documents your team already has. Self-serve from 1 to 29 seats.

Sign Up Free

Already have an account? Log in

Scholarly vs NotebookLM: Feature Comparison

An honest look at how the two platforms compare.

Shared source library the whole team builds on

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Owner, Admin, and Member roles

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Workspace activity and adoption reporting

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Billing

Scholarly
One bill, 1-29 seats self-serve
NotebookLM
Through Google Workspace

Cited answers grounded in your own sources

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Video overviews from your sources

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Slide decks and audio overviews

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Longest narrated video output

Scholarly
Up to about 45 minutes
NotebookLM
Short overviews

Graded practice exams with scoring

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Choice of AI model

Scholarly
Eight labs
NotebookLM
Google models

Open-weight model options

Scholarly
NotebookLM

Artifact types you can generate

Scholarly
Video, podcast, slides, documents, spreadsheets, infographics, mind maps, flashcards, quizzes, exams, research reports
NotebookLM
Video, audio, slides, quizzes, notes, reports

The short answer

What actually changes when a team of five or fifty needs the same notebook.

  • NotebookLM is per-person. Sources live in one individual's notebooks. Sharing a notebook is not the same as a library every seat can build on.
  • Scholarly gives the team one library. Upload a policy PDF, a recorded call, or an enablement deck once and every member creates from that same approved source.
  • Roles and reporting exist. Owner, Admin, and Member roles, workspace-wide model access controls, and activity reporting that shows who is actually creating.
  • Output length is different. NotebookLM video overviews are short. Scholarly generates narrated lectures that run to roughly 45 minutes, plus graded practice exams.
  • You are not tied to one lab. NotebookLM runs on Google's models. Scholarly runs models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral AI, Z.ai, Moonshot AI, and Meta, open weights included.

Pick NotebookLM if one person needs to understand a stack of documents. Pick Scholarly when a team needs to produce training, enablement, and research from a shared library, and someone has to administer and bill it.

Stated plainly: NotebookLM does have video overviews, slide generation, audio overviews, and quizzes. Those are not the differences. The differences are the shared library, the admin layer, output length, graded exams, and model choice.

Updated 4 September 2026. NotebookLM has been branded Gemini Notebook since July 2026; both names refer to the same product here.

Comparing tools for a whole team?

Scholarly Teams puts your team, class, lab, or company on one Premium or Laureate plan — the chosen access for every member, all built from your shared material.

Where NotebookLM Still Shines

NotebookLM is a great tool with real strengths worth acknowledging.

It is genuinely good at understanding a document set

For one person reading a pile of PDFs, NotebookLM's grounded answers and citations are excellent, and it is free to try inside a Google account.

Audio overviews set the bar

The two-host audio overview is the format most people compare everything else to, and Google keeps improving it. We are not claiming otherwise.

It is already where your files are

If your organization lives in Google Drive and nobody needs roles, reporting, or long-form output, staying inside Workspace is a reasonable answer.

Why Students Switch to Scholarly

One library, not fifteen notebooks

Sources uploaded to the team library are available to every seat. New members inherit the whole approved set on day one instead of re-uploading files that already exist.

An admin layer that actually exists

Owner, Admin, and Member roles, invites, seat management, and workspace-wide model access controls, so the model policy is set once rather than per person.

Reporting on whether anyone is using it

Activity over time and per-member usage, so the person who bought the seats can see adoption instead of guessing at renewal time.

Long-form training, not just overviews

Narrated video lectures running to roughly 45 minutes with chapters, captions, and a transcript, generated from the SOP or deck you uploaded.

Graded exams, not only quick quizzes

Practice exams with scoring, so onboarding and compliance material can be checked rather than just watched.

Eight labs instead of one

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral AI, Z.ai, Moonshot AI, and Meta in one workspace, including open-weight models, with EU-hosted options for teams that need them.

How Scholarly Works

Step 1: Add Your Content

Upload PDFs, paste notes, add images, or link YouTube videos. Any study material works.

Step 2: AI Builds Your Study Materials

Our AI reads your material and turns it into grounded answers, flashcards, quizzes, summaries, and more.

Step 3: Study Your Way

Review with spaced repetition, listen as a podcast, watch as a video lecture, or export to Anki or PDF.

Scholarly vs NotebookLM: A Closer Look

The practical difference shows up on the second week. In a personal notebook, every teammate who needs the same handbook uploads it again, names it something different, and gets a slightly different answer. In a shared library, the handbook is uploaded once, and every artifact anyone generates traces back to that copy.

The second difference is what you can hand to a new hire. A short overview is a good orientation. A 45-minute narrated module with chapters, a transcript, and a graded exam at the end is a training asset that a manager can assign and verify.

The third is who owns the decision. In Scholarly, an admin sets which model tiers the workspace can use and sees a usage report. That is a purchasing and governance question, and it is the part a personal notebook was never designed to answer.

Keep exploring

Related Pages

Scholarly for Teams

Shared library, roles, reporting, and one bill from 1 to 29 seats.

Scholarly vs NotebookLM

The individual comparison, feature by feature.

Open-source NotebookLM alternative

Open-weight models and EU hosting on your own sources.

AI training video generator

Turn an SOP into a narrated module with a graded exam.

AI sovereignty

Why running eight labs beats depending on one.

Employee training

How L and D teams use a shared source library.

Scholarly vs ChatGPT Business

Generic chat seats compared with source-grounded artifacts.

Video lectures

What the long-form narrated output actually looks like.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a team version of NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is available to Google Workspace organizations and notebooks can be shared with individual people, but it is designed around one person's notebooks. There is no shared team source library, no Owner/Admin/Member role model of its own, and no per-member adoption reporting. Scholarly Teams provides those three things on top of the same source-grounded idea.

What can NotebookLM do that Scholarly does not?

NotebookLM sits inside Google Workspace, so it reaches Drive content with no extra setup and costs nothing extra if your organization already pays for Workspace. Its audio overviews are excellent. If you need a personal research notebook and nothing administrative, it is a good answer and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Does NotebookLM have video and quizzes?

Yes. NotebookLM generates video overviews, slides, audio overviews, and quizzes from your sources. Anyone telling you it does not is out of date. The honest differences are shared team libraries, roles and reporting, central billing, narrated output that runs to roughly 45 minutes rather than a short overview, graded exams, and a choice of models from eight labs.

How much does Scholarly for Teams cost?

Premium for Teams is 35 US dollars per seat per month, or 336 US dollars per seat per year. Laureate for Teams is 110 US dollars per seat per month, or 1,056 US dollars per seat per year. Both are self-serve from 1 to 29 seats on one bill. Premium refreshes 10 AI creations per seat each week; Laureate refreshes 80.

Can we keep our sources in one place and let everyone create from them?

Yes. That is the core of the team workspace. Upload PDFs, decks, recordings, videos, and notes to the shared library once, and every member generates chat answers, research reports, videos, podcasts, decks, documents, quizzes, and exams from that same material with citations back to it.

Which AI models does Scholarly run?

Models from eight labs: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral AI, Z.ai, Moonshot AI, and Meta. That includes open-weight models from Mistral, Z.ai, and Moonshot AI, plus EU-hosted options. Team admins set model access for the whole workspace at once rather than trusting each member to pick.

Do we have to move off Google to use Scholarly?

No. Scholarly connects to Google Drive so you can pull the files you choose into a team library, and plenty of teams run both: NotebookLM for personal reading, Scholarly for the artifacts the team ships and the reporting the buyer needs.

Give your team one library instead of fifteen notebooks

Self-serve from 1 to 29 seats, one bill, and models from eight labs.

Trying your first source? Start Free. Working with new material each week? Premium includes 10 AI Creation Credits a week. Need more capacity? Compare Laureate.

Free

Try the workflow with your first source.

$0

/month

Free forever

No card required.

Get Started

  • 3 lifetime AI Chat messages

  • 1 free AI Creation Credit total

  • 2-minute podcasts and video lectures

  • 1 free file upload total (8MB)

  • 5 lifetime quiz questions

  • 1 completed practice exam total

  • 15 lifetime voice minutes

  • 32-page PDF to flashcards

  • 500 lifetime autocomplete words

Use it to generate flashcards, improve a deck, or create a podcast, video lecture, slides, infographic, mind map, study guide, worksheet, spreadsheet, story book, timeline, SOP, flowchart, lesson plan, or outline — or run Deep Research or turn a recording into AI Meeting Notes.

Premium

Most Popular

For ongoing learning and work with new material.

$12

/month

Billed yearly at $144 · save $216

Get Premium

  • Everything in Free, plus:

  • 10 AI Creation Credits per week

  • Unlimited AI chat & autocomplete

  • Podcasts up to 60 minutes, videos up to 45 minutes

  • Unlimited file uploads (up to 300MB)

  • Unlimited study sessions

  • Unlimited exams & quizzes

  • 1000-page PDF to flashcards

  • Combine up to 10 sources per creation

  • Export to Anki

  • Priority support

Laureate

For heavier workloads and larger source collections.

$99

/month

billed monthly · cancel anytime

Get Laureate

  • Everything in Premium, plus:

  • 80 AI Creation Credits per week

  • Podcasts up to 60 minutes, videos up to 45 minutes

  • Unlimited uploads up to 1 GB, plus 3,000-page PDFs

  • Combine up to 20 sources per creation

  • 12 hours of voice mode per day

  • Priority support and early access to new Frontier models

Pricing shown in USD by default. Local currency may be available in app or at checkout.

Compare plans

AI chat

Premium and Laureate include unlimited AI chat. GPT 5.6 Sol and Claude Opus 5 are reserved for credit-metered AI creations.

Free
3 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

AI Creation Credits

AI Creation Credits share one balance across every creation tool. Most models use 1 credit, Sonnet and Kimi use 2, and Frontier models Sol and Opus use 3.

Free
1 total
Premium
10/week
Laureate
80/week

Podcast length

Free episodes are fixed at 2 minutes. Paid plans can set a target length up to 60 minutes.

Free
2 minutes
Premium
Up to 60 minutes
Laureate
Up to 60 minutes

Video lecture length

Free lectures with a length control are fixed at 2 minutes. Paid plans can set a target up to 45 minutes. Short uses its own short video format.

Free
2 minutes
Premium
Up to 45 minutes
Laureate
Up to 45 minutes

File uploads

Free
1 total (8MB)
Premium
Unlimited (300MB)
Laureate
Unlimited (1 GB each)

PDF to flashcards

Free
32 pages
Premium
1000 pages
Laureate
3000 pages

Sources per creation

Free
Up to 1
Premium
Up to 10
Laureate
Up to 20

Practice questions

Free
5 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Practice exams

Free
1 total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Voice mode

Free
15 min total
Premium
2 hr/day
Laureate
12 hr/day

Autocomplete

Free
500 words total
Premium
Unlimited
Laureate
Unlimited

Export to Anki

Free
—
Premium
Included
Laureate
Included

Support

Free
Standard
Premium
Priority
Laureate
Priority

What customers say

Scholarly has enhanced the quality of notes and questions I administer to my tutees. Insightful, to the point.

TD Georgas

TD Georgas

Tutor

I have very good experience with Scholarly it summarize me scientific text in hovel academic level with citation. I use this for any therapeutic area . It is great and useful tool.

Diana

Diana

Scholarly user

Scholarly has been a valuable tool for my studies. The AI-generated flashcards and intuitive features make organizing and retaining information much easier.

Briana

Briana

Scholarly user

This app is great for studying for big test. Drop your PDF's in the system and it'll do the trick. You can organize it specifically for your needs.

Kelvin

Kelvin

Scholarly user

Your questions, answered

Is Scholarly free to use?

Yes! The free plan includes core study tools with lifetime allowances: 3 AI Chat messages, 500 autocomplete words, 5 quiz questions, 15 voice minutes, 1 practice exam, one free AI Creation Credit total, and 1 file upload. These allowances do not reset. Upgrade to Premium for 10 AI Creation Credits per week and unlimited uploads.

What uses my free AI Creation Credits?

AI Creation Credits are shared across flashcards, podcasts, videos, slides, AI Documents, Deep Research, and the Transcribe tool. The selected model determines the credit cost. Recording live audio and saving its transcript uses your file upload allowance instead; it does not use AI Creation Credits.

Can I cancel anytime?

Absolutely. There are no contracts or commitments. You can cancel your subscription at any time from your account settings, and you'll keep access until the end of your billing period.

What payment methods do you accept?

We accept all major credit and debit cards through Stripe. Pricing is displayed in USD by default, but local currency is available in the app.

Can I use Scholarly with a class or school?

Yes. For a school or organization-wide rollout, contact us at hello@scholarly.so and we'll help you find the right setup.

What happens when I hit a free plan limit?

You'll see a prompt to upgrade. Your existing work is never lost — limits only apply to new actions. Free-plan allowances are lifetime credits and do not reset. Premium includes 10 AI Creation Credits per week, podcasts up to 60 minutes, video lectures up to 45 minutes, unlimited uploads, chat, autocomplete, quizzes, and exams, plus more daily voice time.