What NotebookLM costs, what Google does with company data, and what alternatives exist with Microsoft 365, all backed by Google sources.
NotebookLM is Google's research tool that lets you upload your own documents and ask questions about them. Since July 16, 2026 it has been called Gemini Notebook; existing notebooks and the notebooklm.google.com address keep working. The basic version is free with a Google account. For use in a company, though, the deciding factor is not the price but the account type: a private Gmail account is subject to different privacy rules than a Google Workspace account. All information in this article comes from Google's own help pages and pricing page, checked on September 27, 2026.
NotebookLM is free in its standard version. In a company it belongs in a Google Workspace account, because only there does Google not look at uploads and chats or use them to train models. If you work with Microsoft 365, you'll find the alternatives within your own tenant.
NotebookLM answers questions only from the sources you load into a notebook, and shows the quote from the original text for every statement. According to Google Help, it accepts sources including PDFs, websites, YouTube videos, audio files, Google Docs and Google Slides. From these it also creates summaries, mind maps, reports and podcast-style audio summaries.
Important for planning: every notebook is self-contained. Google states explicitly that NotebookLM cannot access several notebooks at the same time (Create a notebook). So a notebook is a topic folder, not a knowledge base for the whole company.
Google announced the renaming in its blog post from July 16, 2026. Because almost everyone still searches for NotebookLM, we stick with the old name in this article.
NotebookLM is free in its standard version; all you need is a Google account. According to Google's overview of the versions, the standard version allows 100 notebooks per person, 50 sources per notebook and 50 chats per day. There are two ways to get more:
Business Starter costs, according to the Workspace pricing page, 6.80 euros, and Business Standard 13.60 euros per user per month, each excluding tax and with a one-year term. Google sometimes advertises introductory discounts for new customers there, so plan with the standard price. There is no separate price just for NotebookLM within Workspace; it's included in the subscription.
How Google handles your data depends on the account you sign in with. According to Google's privacy notices for NotebookLM, the following applies:
There are two points you should know before using it. First, on managed accounts the administrator must first enable NotebookLM. Second, the data regions you set in Workspace do not apply to data that NotebookLM processes and caches. This is stated in the Workspace admin help. If you are contractually required to keep your data in the EU, discuss this point with your data protection officer before customer data goes into a notebook.
Our assessment: company documents belong in a Workspace account, not in an employee's private Gmail account. In practice, this is the most common mistake, because the free version is so easy to reach.
NotebookLM is enough when individual people or small teams research a well-defined topic and your company works with Google Workspace anyway. Typical cases: going through tender documents, summarizing an onboarding manual, comparing studies.
It is not enough when many employees are meant to use the same knowledge base and, depending on their role, may only see parts of it. You share a notebook with individual people as viewer or editor, with private accounts up to 50 people. There are no finer per-document permissions, no connection to line-of-business systems, and no actions like "create order". And anyone whose documents live in SharePoint would first have to copy them for NotebookLM.
For companies with Microsoft 365, there are three alternatives that stay within your own tenant and use existing permissions:
Many teams start with NotebookLM or Copilot Notebooks and notice after a few weeks that colleagues keep asking the same questions. A shared knowledge agent is then the next step. In our knowledge agent pilot we build an agent for one knowledge area, such as a manual, product data or policies, with test questions, a test log and handover. The pilot costs a fixed 5,000 euros net for five days; further build-out afterward costs 1,000 euros net per day. All prices net, plus travel costs and expenses for on-site appointments. No hidden hours.
We work out which platform fits your data in a free initial consultation, 30 minutes.
Yes, the standard version is free with a Google account, with 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook and 50 chats per day (as of September 27, 2026). Higher limits are available through Google's AI subscriptions or through Google Workspace, where NotebookLM is included from Business Starter onward.
There is no blanket answer; it depends on the account and how it's used. With a Workspace account, Google says it does not view uploads and chats or use them to train models. However, the Workspace data regions do not apply to NotebookLM data. The assessment for your specific case belongs with your data protection officer.
Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on July 16, 2026. According to Google it is the same standalone product, and existing notebooks are preserved.
For individual topics, Copilot Notebooks; for a SharePoint site, a SharePoint agent; for a shared knowledge base with many users, your own knowledge agent built with Copilot Studio or n8n.
Founder of NordFlux. Spent four years automating processes at enterprise scale at Dräger, and now brings that depth to the mid-market — pragmatic and with full data sovereignty.
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