NotebookLM Pricing (Now Gemini Notebook): Plans and Limits

NotebookLM is called Gemini Notebook now: Google announced the rename on 16 July 2026, and for individual accounts its paid tiers sit inside Google’s AI plans (Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra) instead of a subscription of their own; teams can also buy a Gemini Notebook license on Google Cloud. The notebook tool itself costs nothing, and NotebookLM pricing only starts when you want more than the free caps of 100 notebooks and 50 sources per notebook.

Google’s plans help page says you upgrade “through Google AI Plans, Google Cloud, or a qualifying Google Workspace plan”, so for an individual account the price of a bigger notebook is the price of a Google AI plan (teams use the Cloud or Workspace routes in the team section further down). Figures as Google showed them logged out on 25 October 2026 (sources under the table).

Sources: dollars from Google’s US plan page, rupees from Google’s India plan page on an Indian connection, caps from the plans help page, usage multiples from Google’s usage limits page.

Read this table by the sources-per-notebook column and treat the usage column as a bonus. The source cap is a fixed number Google prints for every plan; the usage multiple scales a compute budget that Google does not publish in numbers, so you cannot work out in advance what “two times higher” buys you. Prices and caps change, and Google labels the caps “Subject to Change”.

Is NotebookLM Free?

Yes: Gemini Notebook is free to use in a browser with a Google account, and the plans help page makes it available “to all users above the age of consent” in supported countries and territories, a list that includes India. The free tier gets the caps in the first row above and the features Google lists for everyone.

What the free tier keeps and misses, and where NotebookLM free vs Plus differs, per the plans help page on 25 October 2026:

• Custom chat and analytics stay: “Custom chat and analytics are available to everyone.”
• Advanced sharing is “available to paid users” only.
• Watermark removal on generated images and videos is marked “No” for Free and for Plus.
• Earlier access to features is “Standard” on Free, against “Early” on Plus and “Priority” on Pro and Ultra.
• Some users get a report, flashcards, an infographic, a slide deck, an Audio Overview or a Video Overview made “automatically, when sources are first added to a notebook”, and Google says these are “generated once and do not contribute to limits”.

Free is enough for a notebook of up to 50 sources. If you are putting together a free research and writing kit, my list of free AI tools for marketing covers the free tiers of Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude that sit next to it.

NotebookLM Pricing by Plan: What Each Tier Adds

Each plan card on Google’s plan pages has a one-line Gemini Notebook entry, and the help page has a row per feature. Together, as read on 25 October 2026:

Two things on Google’s pages do not line up:

• 4x or 5x on AI Pro. The plan card promises “5x more Audio Overviews, notebooks, and more”, while the usage limits page puts AI Pro at “Four times higher than standard limits”. 500 notebooks is five times the free 100, which is one way both pages can be right, but Google does not reconcile the two.
• Ultra’s two storage plans. The help page splits Ultra into a 20 TB plan (500 sources per notebook) and a 30 TB plan (600). The US and India plan pages say Ultra storage starts “at 20 TB” and list two prices, without saying which price carries 30 TB.

If you searched for the NotebookLM Plus price: Google’s pages sold no standalone subscription under that name on 25 October 2026. The tier the help page calls “Gemini Notebook in Plus” comes with Google AI Plus (lead table).

Running code inside a notebook was also tied to the plan at launch. On 16 July 2026 Google’s rename post said every notebook was getting “a secure cloud computer”, available on launch day “for Google AI Ultra users and Workspace business customers with AI Ultra Access and AI Expanded Access”, and rolling out “to all Pro users on the web over the coming weeks”; the plans help page did not list the feature by plan on 25 October 2026.

What Is NotebookLM Called Now? The Rename and the Redirects

Gemini Notebook. Josh Woodward, VP for Google Labs, the Gemini app and AI Studio, announced it in “NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook” on 16 July 2026, calling it “the same standalone product, now doing more across the Google ecosystem”. The post says notebooks sync between the Gemini app and the standalone product, and that notebooks are coming to AI Mode in Search.

The old addresses still work. I requested each one with curl from India on 25 October 2026:

Bookmarks and old links keep working, and the help center now uses the Gemini Notebook name. Search for both names when you look for help, because third-party guides written before the rename use the old one. A Gem in the Gemini app can also take a notebook as a knowledge source; my guide to Gemini Gems covers what carries over now that Gems are turning into skills on personal accounts.

How Gemini Notebook Usage Limits Work Since 2 September 2026

Usage limits are a compute budget, not a count of chats or Audio Overviews. Yesul Shin, product manager for Gemini Notebook, announced flexible usage limits on 28 August 2026, and said the change would roll out to consumer accounts on web and mobile “starting on September 2”.

What Google says about the new model:

• What counts: the limit “will factor in prompt complexity, chat length, number of sources, and the features you use” (blog post). The help page adds “the models and features you use”.
• Refresh: limits “refresh every five hours rather than daily” (blog post), and “the quota refreshes every 5 hours until you reach your weekly limit” (help page).
• Where to see it: in Gemini Notebook, Settings, then Usage. The chat shows messages such as “You’re almost at your AI usage limit”, and the Studio panel shows a bar for “expected AI usage cost” before you generate.
• When you run out: on the web, “Generate later” queues an output; the help page says it “may take a couple hours” and sends a notification if you have them turned on.
• Plan multiples: the free tier (“Without a plan” on the usage page) gets “Standard limits”, AI Plus two times that, AI Pro four times, and AI Ultra “5x or 20x higher than AI Pro”.

A daily count of chats or Audio Overviews assumes each action costs the same, and Google’s model prices each one by its complexity and its sources, with a five-hour refresh and a weekly ceiling. None of the Google pages cited here gave a per-day count on 25 October 2026. The plans help page still says “If your plan is on daily quotas, these reset after 24 hours. Monthly quotas reset after 30 days.” The usage limits page, which describes the five-hour model, does not mention daily quotas, so I would go by that page.

Google’s US and India plan pages say AI credits can extend usage limits in the Gemini app. Neither of the two Gemini Notebook help pages above mentions credits, so do not count on them for notebooks.

NotebookLM Price in India

Google’s India plan page, fetched logged out from an Indian connection on 25 October 2026, lists every personal plan in rupees (“INR/month”), with the prices in the lead table and the same Gemini Notebook wording on each card as the US page. It also maps Ultra’s two prices to usage: ₹6,500 for 5x AI Pro usage and ₹19,500 for 20x.

The India page shows no tax line and no yearly price. For yearly prices and the storage-only Google One plans, my Jio Gemini Pro offer guide has the full rupee table, and it also covers Jio’s free 18 months of AI Pro, which carries AI Pro’s 300 sources per notebook. Eligible college students can get AI Plus free for a year from Google, and the Internshala and Google student routes compare the two ways to claim it.

One rule applies to India and not to the US. The plans help page says: “A visible watermark will be applied automatically if you reside in India, South Korea, or Vietnam.” It covers images and videos generated in Gemini Notebook. Elsewhere, AI Pro and Ultra subscribers get a “Visible watermarking” toggle; in India, a paid plan does not remove the mark. The same page says every output made in Gemini Notebook with Veo, Omni or Nano Banana also carries an invisible SynthID watermark.

If you are weighing AI Plus against ChatGPT’s plan at the same rupee price, ChatGPT Go vs Gemini compares the two plans row by row.

Team and Enterprise Prices

Teams buy Gemini Notebook from a different price list. The Gemini Enterprise prices are in US dollars on both the US and the India plan pages:

My arithmetic on the Cloud price: after the trial, the 15-license minimum comes to $135 a month. For 6 people or fewer, Business edition seats from $21 each cost less than that minimum (6 x $21 = $126); from 7 people up, the $135 Cloud minimum is cheaper even with empty licenses. The two are not like-for-like: a Business seat is a full Gemini Enterprise seat, and while Google’s plan page lists Gemini Notebook for enterprise in Business edition, the plans help page’s list of qualifying Cloud plans does not name Business.

Gemini Notebook Pricing by Reader Type

Built only from the caps above, read on 25 October 2026 (prices in the first table):

If you hit the five-hour limit often but your notebooks stay within 50 sources, AI Plus doubles the budget. That is the one case where the usage multiple, rather than the source cap, decides the plan.

NotebookLM Pricing Comes Down to Sources per Notebook

Whether you type NotebookLM pricing or notebook lm pricing, the answer is now a Google AI plan: the tool is free, and money buys a larger source cap, more notebooks and a bigger compute budget. Of those, only the source cap is a number you can check against your own work before paying, which is why I would start there. Count the sources in your largest notebook, find that number in the sources-per-notebook column, and buy the plan on that row.