Brethof AI Reviews

Open Notebook (self-hosted) review

Your own NotebookLM, two containers, no account

Not sponsoredModels & AI Infrastructure · Productivity & Notes

Tested on Linux · Free · Open source

Open Notebook is a free, MIT-licensed NotebookLM you host yourself. You chat with your PDFs, web pages and videos, with citations. We ran version 1.15.0 in Docker Compose on Linux with our Ollama.

The good

  • Two containers, no account. The official Docker Compose file runs just two containers, the app and its database. There is no sign-up, and the licence is MIT.
  • Ollama built in, no key. Ollama is built in for chat and embeddings. Give it an address, no key, press Test, and it lists the models.
  • Answers cite the source. With the PDF on full content, each answer cites it, and one click opens the PDF's text. It shows the whole document, nothing highlighted.

The not so good

  • Chat may read a summary. By default a new PDF gets an AI summary, and chat then sees only that. Our answer cited the summary until we switched the source to full content.
  • Setup takes manual steps. By default the app and its API are open to your whole network, with no password. You replace a public placeholder key it never warns about, set an embedding model, and on Linux, reaching Ollama takes extra setup.

Our verdict

Recommended with caveats

Two light containers, MIT, no account, Ollama for chat and embeddings, clickable citations. But by default chat reads an AI summary instead of your PDF, and the app and its API are open to your network with no password.

Reviewed: Open Notebook (self-hosted) 1.15.0 · facts checked 2026-10-22

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