Best for
Best for researchers, analysts and students who need reliable answers from a fixed set of documents rather than from the open web.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Chatbots & Assistants Comparison
Gemini Notebook vs. Jan
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for developers and privacy-minded teams who want a desktop assistant whose default model runs locally, with cloud providers optional.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Gemini Notebook | Jan |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free; higher limits on paid Google AI plans Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra each raise the notebook, source, chat and Audio Overview limits. | Free and open source The desktop app is free under the Apache 2.0 licence and local models cost nothing beyond the hardware they run on. Cloud models are billed by whichever provider you connect, against your own API key. |
| Free trial | Free tier | Free and open source; local models run with no API key |
| Commercial use | Yes | Not stated |
| Output | Cited answers, Audio and Video Overviews, Mind Maps, Infographics and reports from your own sources | A desktop AI assistant answering from local or cloud models |
| Hosting | Not stated | Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux; Tokamak is self-hosted for teams, and cloud models run on the provider you connect |
| Ecosystem | Google; syncs with the Gemini app, with organisation access through Google Workspace, Workspace for Education and Google Cloud | Desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, with Jan Agent as a separate command-line agent and Tokamak as a self-hosted router carrying policy controls and audit trails for organisations. MCP servers attach under Settings, and documented integrations cover Claude Code and OpenClaw |
| Live web search and sources | Fast Research finds sources on the web or in your Google Drive; answers cite the sources in the notebook | Yes, built in and on by default: web_search and web_fetch are advertised to any model that supports tool use, with a keyless Exa endpoint as the default provider, so no API key and no MCP server are needed. Only tool-capable models see the tools |
| Files and long documents | Yes, the core of the product: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, MD, CSV, Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, URLs, ePub, images, audio and YouTube, up to 500,000 words or 200MB per source | Yes, files attach to a single message, or go into a Project where they are chunked and indexed for retrieval across every conversation in it. PDF, Markdown, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and code files are supported, and processing happens on the machine |
| Images, voice and video | Audio Overviews, Video Overviews and Infographics generated from your sources | Images and audio attach to a chat when the active model can take them: the image option appears only with a vision-capable model such as Jan-v2-VL, and audio accepts WAV and MP3 |
| Coding help | Yes, a secure cloud computer writes and runs code for analysis grounded in your sources | Jan-Code-4B is available in the Hub for local coding, and Jan Agent runs coding tasks in a terminal with subagents, skills and memory, asking for confirmation before each write and shell command. It is a preview shipped on a nightly channel |
| Model choice | None. Google names no model and documents no picker, describing the product only as running on Gemini's advanced reasoning and interaction capabilities | Yes, and both kinds mix in the same app: local models through llama.cpp and MLX from the Hub, or cloud models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, Mistral AI, OpenRouter and Hugging Face, plus any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint |
| API | Only in the enterprise edition. Gemini Notebook Enterprise carries a REST Notebooks API on Google Cloud, in preview, for creating, retrieving, listing, sharing and deleting notebooks and for adding and managing their sources; it requires Gemini Notebook Enterprise licences and is not part of the free consumer product | Yes, a local OpenAI-compatible server at http://127.0.0.1:1337/v1, authenticated with a bearer key, with configurable host, port, path prefix and CORS |
| Deployment | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | On-premise |
| Support | Not stated | Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, YouTube, Google Workspace | more entries OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, Groq, Mistral AI, OpenRouter, Hugging Face, llama.cpp, MLX, Model Context Protocol, Claude Code, OpenClaw, Exa |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price Gemini Notebook Free; higher limits on paid Google AI plans Jan Free and open source
- Free trial Gemini Notebook Free tier Jan Free and open source; local models run with no API key
- Deployment Gemini Notebook Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Jan On-premise
- Output Gemini Notebook Cited answers, Audio and Video Overviews, Mind Maps, Infographics and reports from your own sources Jan A desktop AI assistant answering from local or cloud models
- Ecosystem Gemini Notebook Google; syncs with the Gemini app, with organisation access through Google Workspace, Workspace for Education and Google Cloud Jan Desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, with Jan Agent as a separate command-line agent and Tokamak as a self-hosted router carrying policy controls and audit trails for organisations. MCP servers attach under Settings, and documented integrations cover Claude Code and OpenClaw
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
Gemini Notebook
Strengths
- Answers are grounded in your own sources and carry citations
- Wide range of source types, including YouTube, audio, images and Google Drive files
- Audio and Video Overviews, Mind Maps, Infographics and reports from the same material
- Each notebook has a cloud computer that runs code for analysis
- Free tier allows 100 notebooks with 50 sources each
Limitations
- Free tier is capped at 50 chat queries and 3 Audio Overviews per day
- Built for working through sources rather than open-ended chat
- Higher source and chat limits require a paid Google AI plan
Jan
Strengths
- Local models are the default and run on your own machine, with no account and no API key
- Web search and page fetching work out of the box, keyless, with no provider to configure
- Its own OpenAI-compatible local server, so other applications can call the models it runs
- Wide model choice, from llama.cpp and MLX locally to eight cloud providers and any compatible endpoint
- Open source under the Apache 2.0 licence
Limitations
- Desktop only: installers cover macOS, Windows and Linux, and there is no hosted version
- Jan Agent is a preview distributed on a nightly channel rather than a stable release
- Frontier models still need a third-party key and are billed by that provider
- Answer quality from local models depends on the hardware you have
- Memory is announced as coming soon and Cowork is marked preview
Plans
Pricing
Gemini Notebook
- Free $0 100 notebooks per user, 50 sources per notebook, 50 chat queries and 3 Audio Overviews per day.
- Google AI Plus Not stated 200 notebooks, 100 sources per notebook, 200 chat queries and 6 Audio Overviews per day.
- Google AI Pro Not stated 500 notebooks, 300 sources per notebook, 500 chat queries and 20 Audio Overviews per day.
- Google AI Ultra Not stated 500 notebooks, 500 to 600 sources per notebook, 2,500 to 5,000 chat queries and 100 to 200 Audio Overviews per day, depending on the storage tier.
Jan
- Free $0 The whole desktop app under the Apache 2.0 licence. Local models run on your own hardware; cloud models are billed by the provider whose key you add.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
Gemini Notebook
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
Jan
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Reviews are not published yet. The form on a tool's page works and reaches us, but nothing from it appears on this site, so no score here is based on a review. The rules below are the ones that will apply once reviews go live.
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Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Gemini Notebook https://notebook.google · no check date recorded yet
Jan https://jan.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-09-15
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.