I’m using these 4 NotebookLM alternatives for studying in 2026, and they beat the OG in some ways

Published Sep 28, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Mahnoor Faisal is a tech journalist covering AI and productivity tools with bylines at XDA, SlashGear, MakeUseOf, Laptop Mag, and Android Police. She's been writing professionally since she was sixteen, and has since penned hundreds of articles. This includes in-depth coverage of AI tools like NotebookLM to breaking news across the AI space. Her passion for technology started when she received her first iPod Touch (4th generation) on her 8th birthday, and she's been deep in the tech world ever since. Currently pursuing a degree in computer science, Mahnoor brings both a journalist's eye and a technical foundation to her coverage of how AI is reshaping the way we work and learn. I'll always be an advocate for using AI to study. And before professors everywhere come after me, I don't mean using it to cheat or as an easy way out. That's something I'm completely against. If anything, I think using AI to simply hand you answers defeats the entire point of learning in the first place. What I mean is using AI to make studying better. NotebookLM has been one of my favorite tools for doing exactly that. While it is an excellent all-rounder, I've slowly realized that being good at everything doesn't necessarily mean it's the best at everything. Depending on what I'm actually trying to do, there are other tools I find myself reaching for instead. Here are a few that I've been using for studying in 2026, and the specific things I think they do better than NotebookLM... Open Notebook ruined NotebookLM’s podcasts for me And it’s open source too Audio Overviews are probably the NotebookLM feature I've used more than any other. I listen to podcasts constantly, so being able to turn lecture slides, readings, and research papers into something I can listen to instead of staring at another screen is basically my ideal way to study. The problem is that once you've generated enough of them, they start to sound very familiar. The hosts tend to fall into the same rhythms, react to each other in similar ways, and structure completely different topics in roughly the same fashion. That's ultimately what pushed me toward Open Notebook. Open Notebook is an open-source, self-hosted NotebookLM alternative, but the part I care about most is how much control it gives you over podcast generation. Instead of being stuck with the model NotebookLM chooses, I can decide which model writes the outline and script, which service generates the voices, how many speakers I want, and even give those speakers different personalities. That made a much bigger difference than I expected. When I previously used Claude Opus to write a podcast from an 80-page doctoral dissertation, the resulting episode was noticeably more detailed and far less predictable than the Audio Overviews I'd been generating with NotebookLM. I could also use a single expert host instead of the usual two-person back-and-forth, which suited the material much better. It's definitely not as convenient. Open Notebook requires a bit of setup, and depending on the models you use, generating an episode can also cost money. However, when I specifically want to turn study material into something worth listening to for 20 minutes, it's the tool I reach for now. TLDW is excellent for learning from YouTube videos I get the useful parts without losing the video YouTube has always been one of my favorite places to learn, but it comes with an obvious problem: the useful part of a video might be buried somewhere inside 40 minutes of introductions and examples I don't necessarily need. NotebookLM has been one of my favorite ways to get around that. I can drop a YouTube video into a notebook, ask questions about it, generate summaries, and essentially treat the transcript like any other source. I've written plenty about how useful that is, especially when I'm dealing with long lectures or tutorials. However, I don't actually want an AI to replace the video. I still want to watch the person explain the concept, but I just don't want to sit through every second to find the parts worth watching! This is where TLDW, short for Too Long Didn't Watch, comes in. Instead of reducing a long video to another wall of summarized text, TLDW surfaces the moments that are actually worth watching and takes you straight to them. That distinction sounds small, but I've found it makes a huge difference for educational videos. If I'm watching a one-hour lecture and only three sections are relevant to what I'm studying, I can jump directly between those sections while still getting the original explanation, examples, and visuals from the creator. That's something NotebookLM isn't really designed around. Its strength is extracting information from a YouTube video and letting me work with it elsewhere. TLDW is better when my goal is to keep learning from the video itself, just without wasting time on the parts I don't need. Claude's Interactive Visuals make difficult concepts finally click Apparently, I am a visual learner after all While I never really thought of myself as a visual learner, studying with AI has made me realize that I might've been very wrong about that. There have been plenty of times when I've stared at an explanation over and over again, only for the concept to finally click the second I saw it represented visually. NotebookLM has become really good at this too. Its Infographics can turn my sources into polished visual explainers, which I use surprisingly often. The catch is that NotebookLM is intentionally grounded in the sources I give it. That's usually one of its biggest strengths, but when I'm trying to learn something my lecture slides barely explain in the first place, it can become a limitation. Claude's Interactive Visuals don't have that same problem. I can ask Claude to explain a concept using its broader knowledge and build an interactive visualization around it, even if I haven't uploaded a single source. Better yet, I'm not limited to looking at a static infographic. If I'm studying linked lists, for example, I can ask Claude to build an interactive visualization where I add and remove nodes and watch the pointers change. NotebookLM's Infographics are great when my source material already contains everything I need to learn. But when the source material itself isn't doing the job, I'd much rather have Claude actually teach me the concept! Recall is better for knowledge that needs to connect NotebookLM keeps everything in separate bubbles One of NotebookLM's biggest strengths is also one of its biggest limitations. Every notebook is completely isolated from the others, which is great when I want clean context around a single course or topic. I actually take advantage of that a lot and create separate notebooks for different classes, and sometimes even individual topics within those classes. However, the second I want to connect something I learned in one notebook with something sitting in another, that structure starts to work against me. Recall handles knowledge very differently. Instead of treating everything I save as separate projects, it builds one interconnected knowledge base. I can clip articles, YouTube videos, and other material as I browse, and Recall automatically categorizes it, summarizes it, and connects it to related things I've already saved. Over time, it also builds an Obsidian-like knowledge graph showing how everything relates. The important difference is that I don't have to create those links manually. Recall identifies shared concepts across different sources for me, which makes it surprisingly good at resurfacing things I'd completely forgotten I'd saved. That's especially useful for studying because learning rarely stays neatly contained within one course. Something I read for work might suddenly connect to a concept I'm covering at university months later. With NotebookLM, I'd have to remember that connection myself and jump between notebooks to make it. Recall, on the other hand, is designed around making those connections automatically. Ultimately, while NotebookLM is an excellent tool for studying and learning, it isn't the only tool out there that nails features students look for!