Top 4 NotebookLM Alternatives for Smarter Research & Podcast Creation in 2025

Would you like more effective ways to create summaries, podcasts, or interactive chats using your research? While NotebookLM is a powerful, all-in-one AI research tool for your files, webpages, and videos, it will not fulfil every requirement. In particular for AI-based summarisation, podcasting, or chatting about your research using a chat-based tool, there are great alternatives that offer specific features.

Here are four excellent NotebookLM alternatives. I have tried all that suited a specific research and content creation use case.

1.  Slider.ai – Best for Securing AI Chat with Upload PDF documents

If you want to engage with your research documents in a private and concentrated way, one tool you may want to take a look at is Slider.ai. It is a different kind of PDF chat tool because Slider will only answer questions based strictly on the documents you loaded. It does not use outside knowledge or even guessing from the web. 

Key Features:

Upload PDFs and chat about the content

Using no outside data or AI hallucinations 

It is great for tightly focused academic or corporate research

Use Case: 

Anyone who generally wants an AI-based Q&A tool that is strictly grounded in their own files, particularly with a keen emphasis on accuracy and data privacy.

2.  Nouswise – Full NotebookLM Replacement

Check out Nouswise if you're looking for an intuitive experience similar to NotebookLM. It allows you to upload documents, and then it generates a summary, provides answers, and even a podcast summary – all based on your sources.

Key features:

Summary, Q&A, and AI chat in one

Generate audio summaries (like a podcast)

Simple, clean interface

Answers are built only on your sources

Best suited for:

This service is best suited for users who desire a complete AI research assistant that exclusively utilises their provided sources instead of pulling information from the internet. 

3. GenFM by ElevenLabs – Best for Generating AI Podcasts

If you are looking for the podcast feature in NotebookLM, GenFM is for you. This mobile app (Android and iOS) allows you to convert your files, articles, or notes into professional-grade audio podcasts using sophisticated voice synthesis capabilities. 

Key features:

Convert written information into podcasts

Premium quality, natural voice audio

Good degree of voice customisation and overall audio clarity

Best suited for:

Creators, educators, or research practitioners interested in producing engaging AI-powered podcasts formed from their research materials or produced content. 

4. NoteGPT – Best for Summarising YouTube Videos and AI Chat

For those who work with long-form video content, NoteGPT is a powerful tool. NoteGPT sums up long YouTube videos using an AI chat, so you can ask questions about the summary based only on the original YouTube video. 

Key features:

Extracts and summarises YouTube video content

AI chat lets you interact with the summary

Responses based only on the original YouTube video

Best suited for:

Students, journalists, or content creators who want to quickly and accurately analyse long YouTube videos.

Final Thoughts

While NotebookLM is quite a strong all-in-one usable platform, these dedicated options can better serve some specific needs, such as AI podcast generation, document-based Q&A (secure and reliable), and video summarisation. If you're a researcher, content creator or student, each of these tools can help you be more productive – more quickly and more smartly.