DOCNUS vs NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook)

As of 14 October 2026.

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026. Many people still search for it by the old name, so we call it "NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook)" here. Both it and DOCNUS let you upload sources and get answers grounded in them, with citations. The difference is in what sits around those answers. NotebookLM is organised into notebooks, each a set of sources for one project or topic. DOCNUS is a single library for a team's documents, and the same library feeds a privacy assessment, a knowledge graph and a list of contract obligations. Every fact about NotebookLM below links to a Google page.

At a glance

Where NotebookLM is stronger

It takes many more kinds of source than DOCNUS: Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, Office files, web pages, YouTube videos, audio and images, as well as PDFs (Google). DOCNUS reads PDF, Word and plain text only.

Its free tier is generous. A free account can hold 100 notebooks with 50 sources each (limits), against 5 documents on the DOCNUS Free plan. If your organisation already pays for Google Workspace, it is included in your plan (Google), so there may be nothing extra to buy.

It is also built for learning and making sense of material, with features such as audio overviews. If you are researching a topic, preparing for a meeting from a handful of papers, or studying, a notebook per project is a good fit, and DOCNUS has no equivalent of those study features.

Where DOCNUS is different

DOCNUS is less about a single project and more about a team's whole document library.

• One library, not many notebooks. Every document your organisation uploads is searchable together. Search combines meaning-based and keyword search, reranks the results, and answers cite the file and page. See AI document search.
• A privacy assessment per document. On Professional and Enterprise, DOCNUS detects 50 categories of personal data, from names and email addresses to health data and criminal offence data, and gives a verdict under EU GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, a US state baseline, LGPD, PIPL and DPDP. Verdicts are decided by versioned rules in code, not by the AI, and cite the articles they rely on. Values are stored masked. It is an automated risk assessment, not legal advice, and you should review the results.
• A knowledge graph across the library. People, organisations, agreements, regulations and other entities are pulled out of every document. Each has a profile page listing the documents and passages that mention it, which helps with the search step of a subject access request.
• Obligations. Invoice due dates on every plan, and contract renewals, notice periods and termination terms on Professional and above, collected into one list with CSV export.

DOCNUS's honest limits

• Only PDF, Word and plain-text files, and no audio, video or web sources.
• Document and search caps on every plan.
• No Google Drive or Microsoft 365 integration. You upload files directly.
• No SSO or SAML beyond Google and Microsoft sign-in.
• Data is processed in the US by subprocessors, and we make no UK or EU residency claim.
• It is a young product with no certifications such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001.

When to choose which

Choose NotebookLM (now Gemini Notebook) if:

• you work project by project with a defined set of sources;
• your sources include web pages, videos, audio, images or Google files;
• you want audio overviews and study features;
• you already have Google Workspace, or you need a free tool with room for many sources.

Choose DOCNUS if:

• you need to search one growing library of contracts, policies or case files as a team;
• you need to know which documents contain personal data, of what kind, and which articles apply, for example under UK GDPR;
• you want contract obligations and the people and organisations in your files pulled out automatically;
• your documents are mainly PDF and Word, including scanned PDFs.

Using both

They work well side by side. NotebookLM suits short-lived research notebooks built from mixed sources. DOCNUS suits the long-lived document library you need to search, assess for personal data and keep track of. If you put the same documents into both, remember that each product has its own data processing terms. Check Google's statement on how your data is used and our privacy policy and security page against your own policies.

You can try DOCNUS on the Free plan before deciding.