NotebookLM is one of the best tools for understanding your course material. For the exam, you need something on top that tests you and reminds you at the right time.
Since July 2026, NotebookLM has been called Gemini Notebook. Google renamed the tool but kept the idea: you upload slides, PDFs or videos, ask questions and get answers that point back to exactly those sources. For going over a lecture, few free tools do it better.
If you are still looking for a NotebookLM alternative, you usually have a specific reason. The exam is getting closer and understanding is no longer enough. You want to practise, recall what you know and close gaps before they show up in the exam room. That is where the tools in this comparison come in, each at a different point.
A note on transparency: acemate makes a study app itself and appears in this comparison. We describe every tool from its public documentation and app store listing as of October 2026, and we apply the same criteria to all of them.
What NotebookLM does well
NotebookLM works with what you give it. On the free plan, a notebook holds up to 50 sources: PDFs, Word and PowerPoint files, Google Docs and Slides, images, audio files, web pages and YouTube videos with captions. Every answer carries citations that take you straight to the passage in the source. If you want to know where something is in the lecture notes, that is exactly what you need.
On top of that come formats for a first pass through new material: Audio Overviews (two AI voices discussing your documents), short Video Overviews, mind maps, and flashcards and quizzes where you mark each card as known or missed. For personal Google accounts, Google says it does not use your content for training unless you send feedback.
That sets the bar for any alternative: answers from your own material that you can check against a source. A tool that cannot do this is a step backwards for studying from your notes.
Where NotebookLM falls short for exams
Learning research is fairly clear on two techniques. Testing yourself beats rereading: in an experiment by Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students recalled 61 per cent of a text after one week when they had tested themselves repeatedly, and 40 per cent when they had only reread it. And spreading your reviews out beats cramming, as an analysis of 317 experiments shows (Cepeda et al., 2006). The major review by Dunlosky et al. (2013) rates exactly these two techniques as highly effective, and summarising and rereading as much less effective.
Measured against that, NotebookLM has three gaps:
- No documented scheduled review. You can mark cards as known, but Google does not describe an algorithm that brings a card back just before you would forget it.
- No practice exams. Quizzes check single facts. A practice paper in the style of your real exam, with open questions and marking, is not part of NotebookLM.
- No overview of your weak spots. You cannot see which topics of the course you already know well and where you need more work.
How to recognise a good alternative
1. Answers with sources
The tool should answer from your material and show where the answer comes from, ideally with document and page. Without a source you can hardly spot mistakes, and source-grounded AI still makes them.
2. Recall, not just explanations
Flashcards, exercises, open questions with feedback. The closer the tasks are to your exam format, the more they help.
3. Scheduled review
A spaced repetition algorithm such as SM-2 or FSRS shows you a card again when you are about to forget it. In an open benchmark using review data from around 10,000 Anki users, FSRS predicted recall clearly better than SM-2 (srs-benchmark).
4. The right source formats
If your course is mostly recorded lectures, you need audio or video import. If you work from slides and lecture notes, PDF and PowerPoint are enough.
5. Privacy
Check whether the provider may use your uploads to train AI models and where your data is processed. This is also a copyright question: Munich University of Applied Sciences warns that uploading slides and past papers to AI tools can be a problem, especially when the tools use the material for training (HM, Compliance im Studium, in German).
NotebookLM alternatives at a glance
YouLearn is an AI tutor for your own material. It handles PDFs, slides, YouTube, web pages and recorded lectures and turns them into summaries, quizzes, personalised exams and podcasts. According to the provider, the tutor chat answers with references. How precise they are is not documented.
StudyFetch is an all-in-one platform with an AI tutor called "Sparky". It records lectures live and handles PDFs, PowerPoint, videos, photos of notes and YouTube. It adds flashcards, practice tests and a study plan with a cram mode. Whether answers point to pages and whether cards follow a review schedule is not described publicly.
Turbo AI (formerly TurboLearn) turns recordings, PDFs, Word files and YouTube videos into notes, flashcards, quizzes and podcasts. Its privacy policy says personal information may be used to train AI tools, and data is processed in the US.
Mindgrasp takes a similar approach and accepts a particularly wide range of formats, from PDF and PowerPoint to MP3, MP4 and live recordings, plus a browser extension for Canvas and Blackboard. It creates notes, summaries, flashcards and quizzes. The provider says it operates only in the United States.
Memo AI is strongest on flashcards: each card points to the page or timestamp in the source, a learn mode uses spaced repetition, and there are practice tests and an export to Anki. Sources include PDFs, slides, YouTube and web pages.
LearnBoost is a German app from Bonn and Munich. It offers summaries, flashcards with FSRS, a tutor chat with page numbers, podcasts, mind maps and practice exams with feedback. It handles PDF, Word, PowerPoint, text, images and handwriting. Hosting is with Strato in Germany, and the privacy policy does not name the AI providers behind it.
Lumivara is an Austrian study trainer with an AI coach that adapts to your gaps, flashcards with SM-2 and a chat about your documents. The homepage promises data in the EU, while the privacy policy lists US companies as AI providers.
| Tool | Answers with sources | Spaced repetition | Practice exams | Audio and video as sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NotebookLM | ✓Quote with jump to the passage | not documented | ✗quizzes only | ✓ |
| YouLearn | References, precision unclear | not documented | ✓ | ✓ |
| StudyFetch | not documented | not documented | ✓practice tests | ✓ |
| Turbo AI | not documented | not documented | ✗quizzes only | ✓ |
| Mindgrasp | not documented | not documented | ✗quizzes only | ✓ |
| Memo AI | ✓Page or timestamp | ✓ | ✓practice tests | ✓YouTube |
| LearnBoost | ✓Page numbers | ✓FSRS | ✓ | ✗ |
| Lumivara | not documented | ✓SM-2 | not documented | not documented |
| acemate | ✓Document and page | ✓FSRS | ✓also from past papers | ✗ |
As of October 2026, based on what the providers publish. "Not documented" means we found no information on it. The feature may still exist.
Which alternative suits you?
- You mostly learn from recorded lectures: StudyFetch, Turbo AI or Mindgrasp handle audio and video. Read the privacy terms of Turbo AI and Mindgrasp first.
- You mainly want flashcards that link to the source: Memo AI. We compare more options in the best flashcard app for university.
- You want scheduled review and practice exams in one place: LearnBoost or acemate.
- You want to understand the material first and the exam is still weeks away: stay with NotebookLM. It cites reliably, has a free plan and pairs well with a flashcard app.
Whether you may upload slides at all, and which AI your university allows in assessments, is covered in is AI allowed at university?. For a broader overview of all kinds of study AI, see the best AI study tools.
Where acemate fits
acemate is a study app for learning from your own course material. You upload slides, lecture notes and Word files, and the AI tutor answers from them, citing document and page. Answers that go beyond your material are labelled as general AI knowledge. From the same material you get exercises with AI feedback, flashcards with FSRS and practice exams. If you upload past papers, acemate writes model answers and creates new exams in the same style. The Knowledge Graph shows you which topics you already have under control.
What acemate cannot do: process YouTube videos, audio files or lecture recordings. If your course is mostly recordings, NotebookLM or one of the tools with a recording feature is the better choice. There is no dedicated mobile app, but the web app works in your phone's browser.
For a direct comparison of the two, read acemate vs NotebookLM.
