How is XESO different from NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is a stateless notebook — upload files, ask questions, then lose everything when you close the tab. XESO is a persistent library: every note, link, and PDF you save stays searchable and citeable across sessions.

Does XESO support audio and video like NotebookLM?

Yes. XESO transcribes audio and video through the share-sheet on iOS and Android and stores the result as a searchable, citeable note in your library.

What does XESO cost compared to NotebookLM?

XESO is free for up to 25 notes. Pro starts at $19 per month with a 14-day free trial. NotebookLM is free but limited to session-scoped notebooks without persistent memory.

Comparison

XESO vs NotebookLM

Both tools answer questions from sources. One forgets the moment you close the tab; the other keeps everything you save and lets you ask across it months later.

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Free for 25 notes · 14-day Pro trial · monthly launch pricing

Product peek

Ask across a persistent library.

The cited-answer surface stays tied to what you saved, so a source opens back into your own library instead of a throwaway upload set.

At-a-glance scorecard

Relative fit for long-horizon knowledge work

XESO

NotebookLM

Persistent library across sessions — capture, blank notes, and bulk import from your machine
Scoped chat over whole library, segment, or note
Citations link into your own saved notes and workflow

criteria verified 2026-06 — public docs + hands-on runs

Where NotebookLM wins

NotebookLM is a polished, free-tier-friendly way to load 5–10 documents and chat with them. If your use case is “one batch of files, one afternoon” — NotebookLM is great.

Where XESO wins

Ask across everything you’ve saved — months later — and each answer cites the note it used.

How XESO grounds answers — the citation floor

XESO answers only from passages it can cite. When a question’s retrieval falls below the citation floor, it says so — “I don’t have enough in your library to answer that” — instead of guessing. Every answer it does give links back to the exact saved note behind each claim.

Persistent library. Everything you save stays searchable, scopable, and citeable — not a throwaway notebook.
Citations back to your notes (not the original PDF). So when you click a source, you land in your saved summary, not a page of raw text.
Scope-aware chat. Ask across the whole library, a segment (“interviews Q3”), or a single note — with one toggle.
Capture anywhere. Share-sheet on iOS/Android, paste URLs, drop PDFs, transcribe audio — all land in the same filing system.
14-day Pro trial, no lock-in. Export notes as Markdown or JSON any time.

XESO

Three notes in your library cite persistent memory directly: the literature review saved on 2026-03-10, the interview notes from March 22, and a paper saved last week.

Literature review — persistent memory

Stateless Q&A tools fail researchers who need answers across more than a single session upload.

NotebookLM

NotebookLM would search within the documents uploaded to the current notebook. It would not access notes from previous sessions or other notebooks without re-uploading them.

NotebookLM notebooks are session-scoped; cross-session retrieval requires manual re-upload.

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