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NotebookLM (Gemini Notebook) limits in 2026: sources, words per source, file size — and how to fit more in
NotebookLM, now Gemini Notebook — Google renamed it on July 16, 2026, same product, new name (announcement) — has limits on three axes: how many notebooks you can have, how many sources fit in one notebook, and how big one source can be. Then a layer of daily quotas on chat and generated outputs. The numbers below are Google’s, copied from the help centre on the date shown, with the page linked. They change; check the link before you plan around one.
The limits, per plan
The free tier is called “Gemini Notebook Standard”. The paid tiers come with the Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra subscriptions.
| Plan | Notebooks | Sources per notebook | Chat queries per day | Audio Overviews per day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard (free) | 100 | 50 | 50 | 3 |
| Plus | 200 | 100 | 200 | 6 |
| Pro | 500 | 300 | 500 | 20 |
| Ultra (20 TB plan) | 500 | 500 | 2,500 | 100 |
| Ultra (30 TB plan) | 500 | 600 | 5,000 | 200 |
The other outputs follow the same ladder. Video Overviews: 3 / 6 / 20 / 100 / 200 per day. Reports, Flashcards, Quizzes and Mind Maps: 10 / 20 / 100 / 500 / 1,000 per day each. Deep Research: 10 per month on Standard, then 3 / 20 / 75 / 200 per day. Daily quotas reset after 24 hours, monthly after 30 days.
Checked 2026-08-21 against Google’s Upgrade Gemini Notebook page and the FAQ. Work and school accounts get tiers by Workspace edition and the numbers differ from the consumer Ultra rows (for example 40 Audio Overviews per day on the “Expanded” add-on) — see Google’s Workspace page rather than this table. Gemini Notebook Enterprise is a separate product with its own caps: 500 notebooks, 300 sources per notebook, 500 MB or 500,000 words per source (docs).
Per source: 500,000 words or 200 MB
One source can hold up to 500,000 words, or up to 200 MB for an uploaded file. This cap is the same on every consumer plan — paying raises how many sources a notebook takes, not how large each one can be. Google states it on the sources page and again in the FAQ (“500,000 words per source or up to 200MB for local uploads”), both checked 2026-08-21. Two source types have their own smaller caps: Google Slides up to 100 slides, Google Sheets limited to 100k tokens.
So the free tier’s ceiling for text is 50 sources × 500,000 words — 25 million words per notebook, if every source is full. Almost nobody’s sources are full. A typical PDF or web page is a few thousand words; the cap that bites is the 50, not the 500,000.
What counts as a source
A source is one item in the Sources panel, whatever its size. Gemini Notebook accepts, per the same Google page: PDF, Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, Microsoft Word (docx), text (txt), Markdown (md), CSV, PowerPoint (pptx), ePub, images, audio files (MP3, WAV and others), web URLs, copy-pasted text, public YouTube URLs, and Gemini chats as context. Files from Google Drive re-sync every few minutes.
Three caveats that cost people sources. A YouTube video is imported as its caption text only, public videos with captions only, and one video is one source. A web URL imports the text of that one HTML page — no images, no embedded video, no nested pages, no paywalled pages. An audio file needs speech in it.
How to fit more in
Three honest options, and one thing that does not help.
Pack the corpus into fewer, fuller sources. The cap is per item, and most items are nowhere near 500,000 words. If your material is a dataset rather than a pile of files — a chat export, a forum dump, survey free-text, a bibliography — it can be packed. source-lm does this for a JSON export: it splits the records into Markdown files under a 400,000-word budget, measured on the rendered Markdown with headings and metadata included, which leaves a margin under the 500,000-word warning. A record is never split between two files. Preview shows the file list before anything uploads, flags any file over 500,000 words, and warns when a run would produce more than 50 files — the free plan’s source cap. In a real run, a three-year Telegram group chat became 4 sources (the walkthrough); 200 paper abstracts are a small fraction of one source’s budget (literature review).
Split by notebook. The free tier gives 100 notebooks. One per course, per season, per year, per client. You lose cross-notebook questions, but each notebook stays under 50 and the chat answers from the material that matters.
Pay Google. Plus doubles the source cap to 100, Pro goes to 300, Ultra to 500 or 600. Numbers above, with the link.
What does not help: bundling YouTube videos. A video is always one source — source-lm adds them from the watch, playlist and channel pages with one click, but it does not merge transcripts, and nothing does inside Gemini Notebook. For a long playlist the honest choices are the latest N videos, one notebook per course, or the paid tier. Details on the YouTube page.
FAQ
Is there a limit for NotebookLM?
Yes. On the free plan: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook, 500,000 words or 200 MB per source, 50 chat queries and 3 Audio Overviews per day. Paid plans raise the counts; the per-source size does not change.
Is NotebookLM free unlimited?
No. The free tier (“Gemini Notebook Standard”) is free but quota-limited — the table above. The quotas reset daily (or monthly for Deep Research), so “free” means free within a daily allowance, not unlimited.
Does NotebookLM have an upload limit?
Per file: 500,000 words or 200 MB, whichever you hit first. Per notebook: 50 uploads on the free plan, 100 on Plus, 300 on Pro, 500 or 600 on Ultra. There is no separate total-storage figure on Google’s pages.
How do I add more than 50 sources to NotebookLM?
Three ways. Combine material into fewer, larger sources — one source can hold 500,000 words, so a dataset packed into Markdown files fits in a handful of sources rather than hundreds. Spread the material over several notebooks. Or upgrade: Plus gives 100 per notebook, Pro 300, Ultra 500 or 600.
How many files can you add to NotebookLM?
50 per notebook on the free plan, 100 on Plus, 300 on Pro, 500 on Ultra 20 TB, 600 on Ultra 30 TB. Each file up to 500,000 words or 200 MB. One notebook’s theoretical text ceiling on the free plan is therefore 25 million words.
What are the limits of NotebookLM Pro and AI Plus?
Google AI Plus: 200 notebooks, 100 sources per notebook, 200 chats and 6 Audio Overviews per day. Google AI Pro: 500 notebooks, 300 sources per notebook, 500 chats and 20 Audio Overviews per day. Both keep the 500,000-word, 200 MB per-source cap. Checked 2026-08-21 on Google’s upgrade page.
What are the limitations of NotebookLM?
Beyond the quotas: YouTube sources are caption text only, public videos only, and videos younger than 72 hours may not import; web pages import text only and paywalled pages are not supported; audio without speech is rejected; Sheets are limited to 100k tokens and Slides to 100 slides; chat answers come only from your sources, which is the point, but it means nothing outside them. Google also states that consumer Gemini Notebook is not covered by its HIPAA Business Associate Agreement — a limit for medical material.
Limits of this article
- Numbers rot. Every figure here is Google’s, copied on 2026-08-21 from the linked page. Google has changed these caps before and will again; the link is the source, this table is a snapshot.
- The counts are Google’s. This post does not measure anything — it reads the help centre. If a quota in your account differs, your account is right.
- Our word count is not Google’s. source-lm counts whitespace-separated tokens in the rendered Markdown; Google counts with its own tokenizer. That is why the default budget is 400,000 and not 500,000, and why the 500,000 figure in Preview is a warning, not a guarantee.
- Consumer plans only. Workspace and Enterprise caps differ; links above.
Not affiliated with Google. NotebookLM and Gemini are Google trademarks; this is an independent extension that automates a signed-in session.
Get source-lm — the free tier covers 5 bulk uploads a calendar month; one dataset packed into sources is one.