# Lune vs NotebookLM

NotebookLM, renamed Gemini Notebook in July 2026, is the strictest grounding product Google ships: it answers only from the sources in the notebook. Lune solves the half it leaves to you, which is finding those sources.

Competitor site: https://notebooklm.google.

## Choose NotebookLM if

- You have a fixed source set and want it interrogated without drift.
- Audio Overviews, shared notebooks or the code environment fit how you work.
- Your material is not published research: transcripts, internal docs, readings.

## Choose Lune if

- You need to find the papers before you can add them.
- You want quotes with locators, plus a citation graph to walk.
- You want grounding in your coding agent, not a separate notebook.

## From a question to a citation

NotebookLM: Add your own sources -> Ask the notebook -> Answer from your sources.
Lune: Search the literature -> Read the full text -> Quote with a locator.

A notebook answers from what you added. Lune goes and finds it first.

## Line by line

| Dimension | Lune | NotebookLM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Where grounding comes from | Full-text top-tier venues, plus documents you upload. | Only the sources you add to the notebook. |
| Discovery | Search, sweep, related papers, citation graph. | None. You bring every source. |
| Staying inside the evidence | Tools return quotes and locators; the agent writes. | Answers are held to your sources, with citations into them. |
| Where you use it | Any MCP client, plus a CLI and three miniapps. | The notebook app and Google's products around it. |
| Sharing and presentation | Share links for a saved session. | Shared notebooks, Audio Overviews, study formats. |
| Entry price | Free for 10 requests a day, then $4.99. | Free with a Google account, more on paid AI plans. |

## Grounding in what you found is half the problem

NotebookLM's discipline is why people trust it. It will not answer from the model's memory, only from the sources in front of it, and the citations back into your own material make checking quick.

That leaves the hardest step manual. Somebody decides which twenty papers go in the notebook, and that decision is where a literature review is won or lost.

## A notebook is a place. Your agent is already open

Going somewhere is fine for a study session and awkward mid-task, three paragraphs into a related-work section.

Lune has nowhere to go to. Checking a claim happens in the sentence you are writing, and verify_claims will tell you when it found no support at all.

## Using both is reasonable

Lune finds and verifies the published work. A notebook is a good place to sit with a fixed reading set, generate an Audio Overview, and share it with a reading group. A page claiming otherwise would waste your time.

## Pricing

- Lune Free: $0, 10 requests a day, every tool
- Lune Pro: $4.99, a month or $47.90 a year, 300 requests a day
- Lune Max: $9.99, a month or $95.90 a year, 600 requests a day
- Lune Credits: $0.99, 300 extra requests, no expiry
- NotebookLM Free: $0, with a Google account
- NotebookLM Google AI plans: Paid, higher notebook limits

Google changes notebook limits often, so check their pricing rather than this table.

## Questions

### Is Lune a NotebookLM alternative?

Not really. NotebookLM grounds answers in sources you supply; Lune supplies the sources from the published literature and verifies claims against them.

### Did NotebookLM change its name?

Yes. Google renamed it Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026. Same notebooks, same Audio Overviews, plus a code environment.

### Can I use them together?

Yes, and it is a sensible pairing. Find and check with Lune, read and share in a notebook.

## What we read

- [notebooklm.google](https://notebooklm.google)
- [Rename announcement](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-notebook/notebooklm-gemini-notebook/)