The name changed, the tool did not
Google has renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook. Nothing was shut down and nothing was replaced. Notebooks you made before the rename are the same notebooks, the help pages moved under the Gemini Notebook name, and most people searching still type "NotebookLM", which is why both names appear on this page.
If a tutorial, a college handout or a YouTube video says NotebookLM, it is talking about Gemini Notebook. Where Google's own interface and help centre now say Gemini Notebook, that is the current name to use when you go looking for support pages.
Why a source-grounded notebook is a different thing from a chat
A normal Gemini chat draws on what the model learned plus, when you ask for it, the web. A notebook works the other way round. You add your sources first, and the answers come back from those sources with citations pointing at the passage each claim came from. Click a citation and you land on the line in the document.
That changes what the tool is useful for. You are not asking it what it knows about public administration. You are asking it what your 340 pages of lecture handouts, past papers and a syllabus PDF say about a topic, and being shown where. It is closer to a very fast reader who has only read what you gave them.
The trade is real: a notebook will not tell you things that are missing from your sources, and it should not. If your material is incomplete or wrong, so is the notebook. For questions that need the open web instead, Gemini Deep Research is the tool that browses and reports back with sources it found itself.
What you can get out of a notebook
Grounded chat
Ask a question across everything in the notebook at once and get an answer with citations back to the specific source, instead of searching six PDFs by hand.
Audio Overviews
Turn the notebook into a spoken discussion of the material. Useful for revising while commuting or while doing something else with your hands.
Video Overviews
A visual walkthrough generated from the same sources, for when a topic is easier to follow as a presentation than as text.
Written summaries and guides
Ask for a briefing, a timeline or a study guide built from the sources. Google adds and changes these output types, so check the live help page for the current list.
Sharing
Share a notebook with other people. On Google AI Pro you also get chat-only sharing, so a reader can ask questions without being able to change the sources.
Chat customisation
Pro adds control over how the notebook replies, including Guide and Analyst styles, a custom style of your own and the length of the output.
Standard limits versus Google AI Pro limits
Everyone can use Gemini Notebook without paying. What a subscription buys is headroom: more notebooks, far more sources in each one, and enough daily capacity that a heavy week does not stop you at lunchtime.
| Limit | Standard | With Google AI Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Notebooks | 100 | 500 |
| Sources per notebook | 50 | 300 |
| Chat queries per day | 50 | 500 |
| Audio Overviews per day | 3 | 20 |
| Video Overviews per day | 3 | 20 |
Google changed these limits starting 2 September 2026 and can change them again. Treat the table as correct at the time of writing and confirm the current numbers on Google's own limits page before you buy on the strength of a single number.
The number that matters most for real work is sources per notebook. Fifty sources is plenty for one module or one project. Three hundred is what a full semester, a whole department's material or a literature review looks like once you stop splitting it across notebooks to stay under the cap.
The rest of what Pro adds
- Higher access to Gemini models behind the notebook.
- Chat customisation: Guide and Analyst styles, a custom style, and control over output length.
- Advanced sharing, including notebooks other people can chat with but not edit.
- Notebook analytics.
- Watermark removal, which Google lists as unavailable in India, South Korea and Vietnam.
Can you use it in Nepal?
Yes. Gemini Notebook is on Google's supported-country list, which covers around 195 countries and territories, and Nepal is included. No VPN, no workaround. What is harder from Nepal is paying Google for the Pro tier, because Google bills in US dollars and needs a card enabled for international online payments. That is the gap, not availability.
Three ways it gets used here
A BBS student with a semester of PDFs
Course outlines, scanned notes, a textbook chapter and five years of past questions go into one notebook per subject. The useful move is not "summarise this". It is asking the notebook which topics appear in the past papers year after year, then asking it to explain those topics using only the lecturer's own notes, so the wording matches what the examiner expects. An Audio Overview of the weak topics turns the bus ride to campus into revision. The 300-source limit on Pro is what lets one notebook hold the whole subject rather than three notebooks holding pieces of it.
A teacher building from the curriculum
A teacher adds the syllabus, the prescribed text and the reference material they trust, then asks for a unit breakdown, comprehension questions or a simpler explanation of a concept for a weaker group. Because answers cite the source, it is quick to check that a generated question is actually on the syllabus and not something the model invented. Our guide for teachers goes through the wider lesson-prep workflow.
An NGO reading its own reports
Donor reports, field notes and last year's proposals in one notebook make the annual write-up much less painful. Ask what a district team reported about a particular indicator across three years and the citations show which report each figure came from, which is exactly what a reviewer will ask you for.
Where it goes wrong
- It only knows your sources. A confident answer built on a source that is out of date is still out of date. Check the publication date of what you add.
- Citations are a pointer, not a proof. Open the cited passage and read it. This takes seconds and catches the cases where a summary has flattened a nuance.
- Scanned and handwritten material varies. A clean digital PDF gives better results than a phone photo of a photocopy.
- Nepali output quality varies. Test it on your own material before you build a workflow around it.
- Do not upload other people's personal data. Student records, medical details and client information do not belong in a notebook you may later share.
- Generated summaries are a study aid. Submitting a notebook's output as your own writing is a matter for your institution's rules, and most treat it as misconduct. Read our student guide on that.
Getting the higher limits from Nepal
There is no separate NotebookLM or Gemini Notebook subscription to buy. The Pro limits come with a Google AI Pro plan, which Google sells directly at $19.99 a month in USD. If a card for international payments is the blocker, WebsNP sells Google AI Pro in rupees@if($aiPro['product']) from $1.06 a month, billed as one 18-month term@endif, activated on your own Google account. The price page has the full breakdown, and the researcher guide covers the heavier end of this workflow.
Before paying, spend a week on the free tier with your real documents. Fifty sources and 50 chat queries a day is a fair trial, and if you never come close to those limits the Pro tier is not what you need yet.
Frequently asked questions
Is NotebookLM the same as Gemini Notebook?
Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook. It is one product with two names in circulation, and your existing notebooks are unaffected. Search for Gemini Notebook when you need Google's current help pages.
Is Gemini Notebook available in Nepal?
Yes. Nepal is on Google's supported-country list, which covers about 195 countries and territories. You can use the standard tier without paying anything.
What do I get by paying for Google AI Pro?
Higher limits: 500 notebooks instead of 100, 300 sources per notebook instead of 50, 500 chat queries a day instead of 50, and 20 Audio and Video Overviews a day instead of 3. Pro also adds chat customisation, chat-only sharing, notebook analytics and watermark removal, which Google does not offer in India, South Korea or Vietnam.
Does it work in Nepali?
Google does not publish a language quality guarantee for notebook outputs. Nepali results vary, so test the tool on a document you already know well before you rely on it for a whole subject.
Can it answer questions my documents do not cover?
That is not what it is built for. A notebook answers from the sources you added. For questions that need the open web, use Gemini Deep Research instead, and verify what it cites.
Do the limits ever change?
Yes. Google changed them starting 2 September 2026. Check the live limits page before making a decision that depends on a specific number.
Sources and further reading
Product facts on this page were checked against Google's own documentation on the date shown above. Google changes plan contents, limits and country availability over time, so treat the official pages as the final word.