Open Notebook

What is Open Notebook?

Open Notebook is an open-source, AI-powered note-taking and research platform for people who want control over their data. You collect sources in a notebook, including PDFs, EPUB, text and Markdown, Office files, YouTube videos, audio and video recordings, and web articles, then chat with an assistant, run transformations such as summaries and insights, and search with full-text and vector search through the Ask feature. A fine-grained context setting lets you share no context, summaries only, or full content with the model. It is model-agnostic: language, embedding, speech-to-text and text-to-speech models can come from providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, Mistral, Groq, xAI, ElevenLabs and OpenRouter, so you can run local models for free. A podcast generator turns notes into audio episodes. The project is released under the MIT License, and the site lists no paid plans, though you pay any model provider you connect for usage.

Use cases

• Summarize PDFs, videos and web articles
• Chat with a collection of research sources
• Search notes by meaning with Ask
• Generate podcasts from notes
• Catalogue a backlog of links to read later
• Run notes and research on local models with Ollama

Who it's for

• Researchers
• Students
• Independent thinkers
• Privacy-conscious professionals

Why use Open Notebook

• Keeps you in charge of what the AI sees, since you can share nothing, summaries or full text per chat.
• Avoids provider lock-in by letting you mix cloud and local models for chat, transformations and embeddings.
• Handles a wide range of sources, which helps clear a backlog of links, PDFs and videos.
• Can run at near-zero model cost when paired with local Ollama models.
• Turns notes into podcast audio for listening instead of reading.

Open Notebook features

• Supports PDF, EPUB, text, Markdown, Office files, YouTube, audio, video and web articles
• Chat assistant with multiple threads per notebook
• Context control: no context, summaries only or full content
• AI-assisted notes and transformations such as summaries and insights
• Full-text and vector search with the Ask feature
• Optional embeddings in 1000-word chunks
• Podcast generator with customizable voices and speakers
• Four model types: language, embedding, speech-to-text and text-to-speech
• Web scraping through HTTP, Firecrawl or Jina
• Document processing with Docling by default

Open Notebook integrations

• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Gemini
• Ollama
• Mistral
• Groq
• xAI
• ElevenLabs
• Firecrawl
• Jina
• Docling
• Vertex AI
• DeepSeek

How to get started with Open Notebook

1. Set up Open Notebook and add API keys for the providers you want in the environment settings.
2. Create models of each type on the Settings page and choose defaults for chat, transformations, embedding, speech and large context.
3. Create a notebook and add sources such as PDFs, links, YouTube videos or audio files, optionally enabling embeddings.
4. Chat with the assistant, run transformations or use Ask to search across your content.
5. Save insights as notes and generate a podcast episode from them.

Open Notebook limitations

• Full use needs at least four configured models, one of each type
• You pay model providers for usage, except local models such as Ollama
• Table handling in PDFs and image understanding are roadmap items
• Video support relies on converting video to audio before transcription

Open Notebook pricing

Open Notebook is open source, so you can use and self-host it for free.

Prices can change and may vary by country or exclude tax. Check the official pricing page.

Open Notebook alternatives

The main Open Notebook alternatives listed on Debuly are Notion AI, AnythingLLM, Recall, Chat with PDF by Copilot.us, ChatPDF and genei. The table compares pricing and platforms; order is A–Z.

1. 

   AnythingLLM

   Open-source AI app for chatting with your documents and running agents, on desktop, in Docker or as a hosted team workspace.

   Chat assistantsAutomation and agentsDeveloper platforms
   Open sourceVisit AnythingLLM (official site)
2. 

   Chat with PDF by Copilot.us

   AI PDF assistant that answers questions about one or several PDFs or Google Drive files and points to the source page.

   Research and searchProductivity
   Free trialVisit Chat with PDF by Copilot.us (official site)
3. 

   ChatPDF

   Upload a PDF, Word or PowerPoint file and ask questions in any language, with answers linked to the source page.

   Research and searchProductivityWriting
   FreemiumVisit ChatPDF (official site)
4. 

   genei

   AI research assistant that summarises PDFs and web pages, extracts keywords and answers questions across your documents.

   Research and searchProductivityWriting
   Free trialVisit genei (official site)
5. 

   Notion AI

   AI built into the Notion workspace: agents, enterprise search across connected apps, AI meeting notes and database autofill.

   ProductivityChat assistantsWriting
   Free trialVisit Notion AI (official site)
6. 

   Recall

   Personal AI knowledge base that summarizes videos, podcasts, PDFs and articles, links related ideas and lets you chat with your library.

   ProductivityResearch and searchChat assistants
   FreemiumVisit Recall (official site)

Open Notebook FAQ

Sources & verification

Facts on this page come from the official sources below, each with the date we read it. Written by Debuly; the vendor did not review this page.

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