These two sit at opposite ends of a week's studying, which is why the comparison is more useful than it first looks.
Gizmo is a memorisation engine. It turns material into cards, makes you type the answer, grades it automatically, and schedules the ones you miss to come back sooner. Its spaced repetition is real, which is rarer in this category than the marketing suggests.
NotebookLM, renamed Gemini Notebook in July 2026, is a comprehension tool. It answers only from your sources with citations, and it will not remember you tomorrow.
Round by round
Five jobs, and which of the two does each one better.
Round 1
Remembering it in six weeks
Gizmo
This is the only round where NotebookLM does not compete, because it has no scheduler at all. Gizmo implements a genuine SM-2 derivative, retuned to recover faster after wrong answers, and weights easy formats lower so a lucky true-or-false does not fool it. Independent reviews confirm week three re-serves week one mistakes rather than cycling the whole deck. NotebookLM will quiz you if you ask, and forget the result immediately.
Round 2
Opening the app on a Tuesday
Gizmo
Gizmo is built around a hearts and streaks loop designed to get you back daily, and it works. NotebookLM has no habit mechanic whatsoever: it is a tool you open when you have a reason to, which in practice means the week before the exam. If your problem is consistency rather than comprehension, this round matters more than the rest combined.
Round 3
Understanding it the first time
NotebookLM
Gizmo’s cards skew shallow. They are rote one-liners that often need editing before they are useful for anything conceptual, and nothing in the product explains a mechanism to you. NotebookLM is the best tool on the market for making unfamiliar material approachable, and its Audio Overviews turn a stack of slides into something you can listen to on the walk in. If you do not yet understand the material, carding it is premature.
Round 4
Getting your own material in cleanly
NotebookLM
NotebookLM takes up to 50 sources per notebook on the free tier and answers strictly from them with a citation on every claim, so nothing gets mangled or invented. Gizmo generates cards from your upload, and the quality of that generation is the weakest link in an otherwise strong product. Expect to edit.
Round 5
What it costs, and how you pay
NotebookLM
Gizmo has no monthly plan at all: it is $13.99 a week or $155.22 a year in the US, with student rates roughly half. A weekly subscription is an awkward commitment for a semester, and an annual one is a large bet on a tool you have used for a fortnight. NotebookLM is free for realistic student workloads, with paid tiers from $4.99 a month if you want more.
At a glance
Gizmo
vs
NotebookLM
Auto-graded flashcards with a real scheduler
What it is
Source-grounded notebook with citations
You type the answer, it grades and schedules
Core mechanic
It answers from your sources, with citations
$13.99/week or $155.22/yr
Price
Free. From $4.99/mo via Google AI Plus
Gated by hearts and timeouts
Free tier
50 sources per notebook, 50 chats a day
Yes, and genuinely implemented
Spaced repetition
None
No
Explains material
Yes, and better than anything here
Who should pick which
These are sequential rather than competing: you understand something first, then you make it stick. The question is which half you are in.
Pick Gizmo if
- Your load is memorisation: vocabulary, anatomy terms, formulas
- You already understand the material and need it to stick
- You want a daily habit loop that gets you opening the app
- You want recall graded rather than self-rated
Pick NotebookLM if
- You do not yet understand the material well enough to card it
- Budget is the deciding factor, or you will not enter a card
- You want a podcast of your sources for the commute
- You want every claim traceable to a passage you uploaded
A third option, and it is ours
Both of these are intake tools. They leave you holding a much nicer pile of material and the same original problem: at some point you have to produce this yourself, under time pressure, with nothing in front of you. Neither one ever asks you to.
That is what Akono does instead, and it is ours, so weigh this accordingly. Same input, your slides or recordings, but it builds a course from them and runs sessions where a tutor asks the questions, reads what you wrote, and picks the next question from your answer. What you misunderstand stays on file until you can state it correctly. The plan works backwards from your exam date.
Where it is honestly the wrong tool: it does not record lectures, it is built for exams weeks out rather than tonight, it is weaker for pure calculation drilling, and there is no free tier. A 3-day trial, card required, then €11.99 a month or €59.88 a year. If free is non-negotiable, take NotebookLM from this page and ignore this section.