Open Notebook — Open Source Notebook LM Alternative

Open Notebook

Repo: github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook Stars: 31,023 ⭐ License: MIT Language: TypeScript Website: https://www.open-notebook.ai

An open source, privacy-focused alternative to Google’s Notebook LM — self-hosted, full-featured, with 18+ AI providers.

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Key Differentiators vs Google Notebook LM

Feature	Open Notebook	Google Notebook LM
Privacy	Self-hosted, your data	Google cloud only
AI Provider	18+ (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, LM Studio…)	Google models only
Podcast Speakers	1–4 with custom profiles	2 speakers only
Transformations	Custom and built-in	Limited options
API Access	Full REST API	No API

Supported Providers (18+)

OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, Google (GenAI), Vertex AI, Ollama, Perplexity, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Azure OpenAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Voyage, xAI, OpenRouter, DashScope (Qwen), MiniMax, OpenAI Compatible (LM Studio, any OpenAI endpoint)

Core Features

• 🔒 Privacy-First — no cloud dependency, data stays on your infra
• 🎯 Multi-Notebook — organize multiple research projects
• 📚 Universal Content — PDFs, videos, audio, web pages, Office docs
• 🎙️ Professional Podcasts — multi-speaker with Episode Profiles (1–4 speakers)
• 🔍 Intelligent Search — full-text + vector search across all content
• 💬 Context-Aware Chat — AI conversations grounded in your research
• 📝 AI-Assisted Notes — generate insights or write manually
• ⚡ Reasoning Models — DeepSeek-R1, Qwen3, etc.
• 🔧 Content Transformations — customizable actions to summarize/extract
• 🌐 REST API — full programmatic access
• 🔐 Password Protection — for public deployments
• 📎 Source Citations — answers cite source material
• 🌍 Multi-Language UI — English, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Bengali

Quick Deploy (Docker)

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  surrealdb:
    image: surrealdb/surrealdb:v2
    command: start --log info --user root --pass root rocksdb:/mydata/mydatabase.db
    user: root
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - ./surreal_data:/mydata
    restart: always
  open_notebook:
    image: lfnovo/open_notebook:v1-latest
    ports:
      - "8502:8502"
      - "5055:5055"
    environment:
      - OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENCRYPTION_KEY=change-me-to-a-secret-string
      - SURREAL_URL=ws://surrealdb:8000/rpc
      - SURREAL_USER=root
      - SURREAL_PASSWORD=***
      - SURREAL_NAMESPACE=open_notebook
      - SURREAL_DATABASE=open_notebook
    volumes:
      - ./notebook_data:/app/data
    depends_on:
      - surrealdb
    restart: always

# Start
docker compose up -d
# Open http://localhost:8502

Powered by SurrealDB as the backing store and Esperanto library for provider abstraction.

Links

• GitHub
• Discord
• Website
• Installation Guide
• API Docs (local)