English | Español | Português | हिन्दी | 简体中文

SurfSense

NotebookLM is one of the best and most useful AI platforms out there, but once you start using it regularly you also feel its limitations leaving something to be desired more.

There are limits on the amount of sources you can add in a notebook.
There are limits on the number of notebooks you can have.
You cannot have sources that exceed 500,000 words and are more than 200MB.
You are vendor locked in to Google services (LLMs, usage models, etc.) with no option to configure them.
Limited external data sources and service integrations.
NotebookLM Agent is specifically optimised for just studying and researching, but you can do so much more with the source data.
Lack of multiplayer support.

…and more.

SurfSense is specifically made to solve these problems. SurfSense empowers you to:

Control Your Data Flow - Keep your data private and secure.
No Data Limits - Add an unlimited amount of sources and notebooks.
No Vendor Lock-in - Configure any LLM, image, TTS, and STT models to use.
25+ External Data Sources - Add your sources from Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Notion, and many other external services.
Real-Time Multiplayer Support - Work easily with your team members in a shared notebook.
AI File Sorting - Automatically organize your documents into a smart folder hierarchy using AI-powered categorization by source, date, and topic.
Desktop App - Get AI assistance in any application with Quick Assist, General Assist, Extreme Assist, and local folder sync.

…and more to come.

Video Agent Sample

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/012a7ffa-6f76-4f06-9dda-7632b470057a

Podcast Agent Sample

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a0a16566-6967-4374-ac51-9b3e07fbecd7

How to Use SurfSense

Cloud

Go to surfsense.com and login.

Connect your connectors and sync. Enable periodic syncing to keep connectors synced.

Connectors

Till connectors data index, upload Documents.

Upload Documents

Once everything is indexed, Ask Away (Use Cases):
- Desktop App — General Assist
- Desktop App — Quick Assist
- Desktop App — Extreme Assist
- Desktop App — Watch Local Folder
- Video Generation
- Basic search and citation
- Document Mention QNA
- Report Generations and Exports (PDF, DOCX, HTML, LaTeX, EPUB, ODT, Plain Text)
- Podcast Generations
- Image Generations
- And more coming soon.

Self Hosted

Run SurfSense on your own infrastructure for full data control and privacy.

Prerequisites: Docker Desktop must be installed and running.

For Linux/MacOS users:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MODSetter/SurfSense/main/docker/scripts/install.sh | bash

For Windows users:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MODSetter/SurfSense/main/docker/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

The install script sets up Watchtower automatically for daily auto-updates. To skip it, add the --no-watchtower flag.

For Docker Compose, manual installation, and other deployment options, see the docs.

Desktop App

SurfSense also ships a desktop app that brings AI assistance to every application on your computer. Download it from the latest release.

The desktop app includes these powerful features:

General Assist — Launch SurfSense instantly from any application with a global shortcut.
Quick Assist — Select text anywhere, then ask AI to explain, rewrite, or act on it.
Extreme Assist — Get inline writing suggestions powered by your knowledge base as you type in any app.
Watch Local Folder — Watch a local folder and automatically sync file changes to your knowledge base. Pro tip: Point it at your Obsidian vault to keep your notes searchable in SurfSense.

All features operate against your chosen search space, so your answers are always grounded in your own data.

How to Realtime Collaborate (Beta)

Go to Manage Members page and create an invite.
Teammate joins and that SearchSpace becomes shared.
Make chat shared.
Your team can now chat in realtime.
Add comment to tag teammates.

SurfSense vs Google NotebookLM

Feature	Google NotebookLM	SurfSense
Sources per Notebook	50 (Free) to 600 (Ultra, $249.99/mo)	Unlimited
Number of Notebooks	100 (Free) to 500 (paid tiers)	Unlimited
Source Size Limit	500,000 words / 200MB per source	No limit
Pricing	Free tier available; Pro $19.99 / m o, U l t r a$ 249.99/mo	Free and open source, self-host on your own infra
LLM Support	Google Gemini only	100+ LLMs via OpenAI spec & LiteLLM
Embedding Models	Google only	6,000+ embedding models, all major rerankers
Local / Private LLMs	Not available	Full support (vLLM, Ollama) - your data stays yours
Self Hostable	No	Yes - Docker one-liner or full Docker Compose
Open Source	No	Yes
External Connectors	Google Drive, YouTube, websites	27+ connectors - Search Engines, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Slack, Teams, Jira, Notion, GitHub, Discord & more
File Format Support	PDFs, Docs, Slides, Sheets, CSV, Word, EPUB, images, web URLs, YouTube	50+ formats - documents, images, videos via LlamaCloud, Unstructured, or Docling (local)
Search	Semantic search	Hybrid Search - Semantic + Full Text with Hierarchical Indices & Reciprocal Rank Fusion
Cited Answers	Yes	Yes - Perplexity-style cited responses
Agentic Architecture	No	Yes - powered by LangChain Deep Agents with planning, subagents, and file system access
Real-Time Multiplayer	Shared notebooks with Viewer/Editor roles (no real-time chat)	RBAC with Owner / Admin / Editor / Viewer roles, real-time chat & comment threads
Video Generation	Cinematic Video Overviews via Veo 3 (Ultra only)	Available (NotebookLM is better here, actively improving)
Presentation Generation	Better looking slides but not editable	Create editable, slide-based presentations
Podcast Generation	Audio Overviews with customizable hosts and languages	Available with multiple TTS providers (NotebookLM is better here, actively improving)
AI File Sorting	No	LLM-powered auto-categorization into source, date, category, and subcategory folders
Desktop App	No	Native app with General Assist, Quick Assist, Extreme Assist, and local folder sync
Browser Extension	No	Cross-browser extension to save any webpage, including auth-protected pages

Full list of External Sources

Search Engines (Tavily, LinkUp) · SearxNG · Google Drive · OneDrive · Dropbox · Slack · Microsoft Teams · Linear · Jira · ClickUp · Confluence · BookStack · Notion · Gmail · YouTube Videos · GitHub · Discord · Airtable · Google Calendar · Luma · Circleback · Elasticsearch · Obsidian, and more to come.