NotebookLM Statistics 2026: Now Gemini Notebook, 30 Million Users

Last Updated: September 12, 2026

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on July 16, 2026, at which point the tool had reached more than 30 million users and over 600,000 organizations, according to the company's own announcement from Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs. The rename did not change the underlying product. Existing notebooks, sources, and shared links carried over automatically through redirects, and the tool remains a standalone research product rather than being folded into the main Gemini chatbot.

The product has changed names twice since its debut. It launched at Google I/O 2023 under the codename Project Tailwind, was renamed NotebookLM later that year, and became Gemini Notebook in July 2026. Google's own reasoning, echoed across coverage of the announcement, was that the "LM" in the original name stood for language model, jargon that meant little to the tens of millions of non-technical people who had adopted the tool by 2026.

Is NotebookLM still available under its old name? Not as a separate product, but nothing has been shut down. Gemini Notebook is NotebookLM with a new name and logo, not a replacement product that users need to migrate to. Anyone who searches for NotebookLM today will find Google's own materials pointing to Gemini Notebook, and most independent coverage of the tool still uses the old name in headlines specifically because that's what most people are still searching for months after the rename.

Growth in the run-up to the rename was steep and sustained rather than a single viral spike. Similarweb tracked 252.9 million visits to the tool in May 2026 alone, up 289.78% year over year and marking ten consecutive months of month-over-month growth. That kind of sustained, compounding traffic curve, rather than one breakout month followed by decline, is a meaningfully different growth pattern than most consumer AI tools show in their second and third years.

The rename arrived bundled with a genuinely new capability rather than as a cosmetic change alone. Every notebook now includes what Google describes as a secure cloud computer that can write and run code directly against a user's uploaded sources, enabling data analysis workflows that previously required exporting information to a separate tool. That feature rolled out first to Google AI Ultra subscribers, with availability for Google AI Pro web users following in subsequent weeks.

Code execution wasn't the only substantive feature added around the same period. Since November 2025, the tool has supported Deep Research, letting it build a cited source list from the open web automatically rather than requiring a user to manually upload every document first, removing what had been one of the more common points where new users got stuck. Output formats expanded well beyond the original text summaries and citations: the Studio panel now generates multilingual Audio Overviews, standard and short-form vertical Video Overviews, Cinematic Video Overviews, slide decks, infographics, flashcards, quizzes, and structured data tables from the same set of source materials.

A separate but related feature, Notebooks in Gemini, launched in April 2026 inside the main Gemini app itself, letting users organize chats and files in a dedicated workspace that syncs with the standalone Gemini Notebook product. The two are connected rather than identical, and Google's own documentation distinguishes between them explicitly to avoid the confusion a shared "notebook" name invites.

Enterprise adoption is where the 600,000-organization figure becomes more meaningful than raw individual sign-up counts, since an organization only shows up in that tally when someone with purchasing authority chose to deploy the tool to a team rather than an individual trying it out of curiosity. The bulk of that adoption runs through two channels: inclusion in Google Workspace Business Standard and above, where the tool now ships as a core included service rather than a paid add-on, and direct Google Cloud enterprise licensing priced at roughly $9 per seat per month for organizations that need centralized admin controls, source-retention policies, and audit logging that the free consumer tier does not offer.

The heaviest enterprise use cases cluster around exactly the kind of work its source-grounding design was built for. Legal teams use it to summarize discovery documents without the tool inventing case law that doesn't exist. Research and equity analysts build notebooks around a company's own S-1 filing, 10-K, and earnings call transcripts rather than relying on a general-purpose model's training data. Product teams turn internal specs and customer interview transcripts into shareable audio or video overviews for stakeholders who won't read the underlying documents directly. None of those workflows depend on open web search, they depend on a tool that will not fabricate a citation, which remains the tool's core structural advantage over general-purpose chat models even as the free consumer tier absorbs most of the headline user growth numbers.

What actually separates this tool from asking a general-purpose model like ChatGPT or Claude to summarize the same documents is the grounding guarantee. A general-purpose chat model can answer questions about an uploaded file, but it can also blend in information from its training data without clearly distinguishing what came from the document versus what it already knew. Gemini Notebook's entire design constrains answers strictly to the sources a user provides, and every claim in its output links back to a specific passage in a specific source, a structural choice that made it a reliable citation tool for professional and academic use well before the broader market took source-grounded AI seriously as a category.

Unlike most other tools covered in this series, there is no independent valuation or funding history to report here. Gemini Notebook is a feature built, funded, and distributed entirely inside Google rather than a venture-backed startup, so its growth numbers reflect product adoption within a much larger company rather than a standalone business's revenue or fundraising trajectory.

Consumer access to the underlying Gemini models that power the tool follows Google's standard subscription ladder:

Enterprise access runs separately through Google Workspace inclusion or direct Google Cloud licensing at roughly $9 per seat per month.

What Is Google NotebookLM?
The complete explainer on the tool's original features and use cases before its rename.

How to Use NotebookLM
A practical walkthrough of building and using notebooks for research and study.

What Is Google Gemini?
The complete guide to Google's broader Gemini model family and app ecosystem.

Gemini AI Statistics 2026
Usage, revenue, and market share data for Google's Gemini models overall.

How to Use AI for Research
Broader guidance on using AI tools for research workflows beyond Gemini Notebook specifically.

Is NotebookLM still called NotebookLM?
No, Google renamed it Gemini Notebook on July 16, 2026. It's the same product with the same notebooks and sources, just a new name, new logo, and one new feature: a built-in code execution capability. Nothing needs to be migrated, and existing shared links redirect automatically.

How many people use Gemini Notebook?
Google reported more than 30 million users and over 600,000 organizations at the time of the July 2026 rename. Separately, Similarweb tracked 252.9 million visits to the tool in May 2026 alone, up 289.78% year over year, marking ten consecutive months of growth.

How much does Gemini Notebook cost?
The core tool is free. Higher usage limits and features unlock through Google's standard consumer subscription tiers: AI Plus at $4.99 a month, AI Pro at $19.99 a month, and two AI Ultra tiers at $99.99 and $199.99 a month. Enterprise access runs through Google Workspace Business Standard and above, or direct Google Cloud licensing at roughly $9 per seat per month.

What is the difference between Gemini Notebook and Notebooks in Gemini?
They are related but not identical. Gemini Notebook is the renamed standalone NotebookLM product. Notebooks in Gemini, launched in April 2026, is a separate feature inside the main Gemini app that lets users organize chats and files in a similar workspace, syncing with the standalone product.

Why is Gemini Notebook considered more reliable than ChatGPT for research?
Because of its grounding design. Gemini Notebook constrains its answers strictly to the sources a user uploads or provides, and every claim links back to a specific passage in a specific document. General-purpose chat models can blend in outside training data without clearly separating it from the uploaded material, which makes source-grounded tools like this one more reliable for citation-dependent work like legal or financial research.

The rename to Gemini Notebook is less important than what it signals: a tool that started as an experimental research project has become significant enough, at 30 million users and 600,000 organizations, to warrant closer integration into Google's core AI branding rather than existing as a standalone side project. The underlying product, and the reason people adopted it in the first place, hasn't changed. What's changed is that Google now treats it as core infrastructure rather than an experiment, which is generally a sign a product is here to stay rather than heading for deprecation.