Notion has been my go-to note-taking app for years, and I’d argue it’s still a decent option for those who aren’t too bothered by the pricing model and privacy issues - few tools come close to its note-taking and database capabilities. But I’ve almost completely replaced Notion with open-source alternatives at this point, some of which even outperform it.

NotebookLM is not a tool I plan on replacing any time soon though - its AI retrieval and synthesis remain unmatched. And together, Notion and NotebookLM are a really powerful duo (or in my case, Notion alternatives). You’ve got smart research mixed with broad-spectrum project management. However, there’s no real overlap between Notion and NotebookLM; their functions remain completely separate in two different apps.

This is where Gistr comes in. It combines the best of both NotebookLM and Notion with its RAG-based generative AI and block-based notes. I’ve been using this tool for a while now, and not only is it better than NotebookLM at handling YouTube transcripts, but it’s also a better note-taking app. And here’s how it could replace both of them…

What does a NotebookLM-Notion hybrid look like?

Gistr is the best of both worlds

To determine if something is a good hybrid, I just look at the core of what each parent does. Notion is primarily built to help you plan, organize, track, and maintain. It’s basically where we go to store our work. NotebookLM is like a second brain, and it pretty much sits on the opposite end of what Notion does. It doesn’t have great organizational features, because this is the place you go to work with the raw materials - understanding the content and pulling meaning out of it, that sort of thing. So NotebookLM is the intelligence and Notion is the architecture that can hold that intelligence.

Gistr blends both of these worlds together seamlessly. It doesn’t look the same as either, so you won’t find any of the surface features you’re used to. But it does operate on the same fundamentals of both note-taking and AI retrieval. Gistr markets itself as a smart note-taking app, and it certainly lives up to its name, and beyond (it’s also a YouTube learning powerhouse).

How Gistr can replace Notion

Comprehensive note-taking and organization features

One of my and some of my colleague's complaints about NotebookLM is that it’s not a great note-taking app. It has one note-taking feature with just a handful of formatting options, that’s it. Notion, on the other hand, is one of the most renowned note apps of our time. It gives you rich text blocks and embedded views, which is something Gistr handles really well.

Gistr doesn’t have database capabilities or widgets, but it does have block-based editing with rich text formatting. It also uses the slash command that lets you insert headers, checklists, bullet lists, numbered lists, code blocks, quotes, and images. The text itself has bold, italicize, underline, strikethrough, and coloring options, and you can also turn it into plain text with the angle brackets icon. Moreover, you can embed weblinks directly in your text.

All of this happens in the same window where you’d prompt the AI. You can type out your own notes and format them or drag them around. And you can also edit, format, and drag the AI’s responses. Every prompt, note, and response lives in its own customizable block, just like your notes do in Notion. Additionally, if you’re using the YouTube transcript features, like Moments and Highlights, they will also appear as movable, editable blocks in the chat/edit window.

So overall, you get the fundamentals of how Notion operates. You’re able to give your notes, prompts, responses, and YouTube highlights more structure, which lets you build out pages of organized learning materials. Something I’ve discovered embarrassingly late: you can also export your notes as Markdown, PDFs, and images. Plus, all of your chats (called Threads) can be organized in collections.

How Gistr can replace NotebookLM

The AI is almost as powerful

NotebookLM’s biggest flex is its retrieval engine. The whole appeal is that not only can it summarize information from your sources, but lay it out with additional context and in whichever structure you prompt it to. So if a tool wants to compete with NotebookLM, it needs to get two things right: retrieval quality and how well the AI adapts to whatever sources and prompts you throw at it.

Gistr gets surprisingly close. It pulls context from your notes, PDFs, links, and videos with more precision than I expected, along with timestamps if the information is from a video. To test whether I was possibly overhyping Gistr’s abilities, I actually used the exact same prompts on the same sources in both of the AI models (as shown in the screenshots). NotebookLM didn’t disappoint, of course, but Gistr holds its own. It pulls ideas, backs them with the same supporting details, and even surfaced a few nuances NotebookLM didn’t (but NotebookLM still covers more ground overall).

Its prompt recommendations are also top-tier. It gives you a list of Smart Guide questions to get the overall gist, a list of Smart Question for deeper dives, and Tools for Students, Creators, and Educators to narrow down the context of your prompts.

It’s the best of both worlds

The more I use Gistr, the more I love it. It truly gives you the best of both a note-taker and AI research assistant. Notion still wins on flexibility and robustness, and NotebookLM still wins on raw material power. But Gistr sits right in the middle. It’s structured, and also really fast. And I just love that I don’t have to juggle between separate tools for my notes and research anymore.