Best AI Note-Taking Tools in 2026: Brain2, Glasp, Mem, and Gemini Notebook Compared

A four-person startup spent an afternoon in July 2026 rebuilding a decision trail from forty open browser tabs, because nobody's notes app had been capturing anything automatically while the actual work happened.

Hokai chart of what starts capture in each tool; Brain2's price is planned and Glasp's is billed yearly. Source: the vendors' own pages, checked 7 November 2026.

Hokai now lists six AI note-taking tools. Four are the subject of this guide: Brain2, Glasp, Mem, and Gemini Notebook, Google's mid-2026 rename of NotebookLM. Two newer listings, Goodnotes and Clarify AI, are covered near the end. None of them are really substitutes for one another.

The axis that separates them isn't which one has the smartest model. It's what triggers capture in the first place: your own screen activity, someone else's webpage, your own scattered thoughts, or a document you deliberately hand it. Picking the wrong axis is exactly what left that founder rebuilding forty tabs from memory. If you would rather answer a few questions and get a shortlist matched to your own use, Smart Match does that in a couple of minutes.

What changed since 16 August 2026

Re-checked on 7 November 2026, with every price below read on the vendor's own page that day. The lineup holds, but two of the four pages moved enough to change advice.

The old "$12 to $14.99" Mem range from August is gone. It came from third-party reviews and matches nothing Mem sells today.

Challengers considered across the three jobs this guide covers (capture, research, handwriting): Goodnotes, Clarify AI, Granola, Fathom, Otter.ai, Notion AI and the names that recur in this month's roundups. None beat an existing pick on the criteria used here, so none replaced one. The evidence re-opened was each vendor's own pricing or product page, all read on 7 November 2026.

The shortlist

Pick one by the job, not by the badge. Choose Gemini Notebook if you start from a stack of documents. Choose Mem if you start from your own thoughts. Choose Glasp if you start from other people's writing. Wait for Brain2 only if you want nothing to depend on your own discipline.

How to Choose Between Four Tools That Don't Compete

Start with what you are trying to capture, not which tool ranks highest in a listicle. Five questions do most of the sorting, and the answers matter more than any feature list.

What triggers the capture?

Brain2 logs your Mac screen, clipboard and AI chat history in the background. Glasp only saves what you deliberately mark. Mem catches what you type or say. Gemini Notebook works only from documents you upload, and it will not notice anything you did not hand it.

Does the free tier survive your real volume?

Mem's free plan stops at 25 notes and 25 messages a month. Glasp's free plan keeps unlimited highlights but caps PDFs and AI chat. Gemini Notebook is free on any Google account. Count how many notes, PDFs or videos you handle in a normal week, multiply by four, and compare it to the cap before you sign up for anything.

Does the output need to stay private, or can it be social?

Glasp's social feed shows what other readers marked on the same article, and none of the other three offer that. Private highlighting is free on every Glasp plan, so the social side is a choice rather than a toll.

Does it need to talk to tools you already use?

Glasp exports to Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research and Evernote. Gemini Notebook keeps everything in its own notebooks, so anything you want elsewhere has to be copied out by hand.

How much do you want to organize later?

Mem and Gemini Notebook sort on the fly. Glasp and Brain2 leave more manual work behind, a highlight library and a raw activity log, and both reward someone willing to search rather than browse. If you know you will never tidy a library, favor the tools that tidy for you.

What each one costs

Prices below were read from each vendor on 7 November 2026, except where marked.

Mem's plans

Mem's pricing is the biggest change since this guide was first published.

An Extra Usage unit costs $50. Voice mode grows with the plan, from 3 hours on Free to 50 hours on Pro 2x. Pro adds one custom routine and one connection to a source such as Gmail or Slack.

Glasp's plans

Pricing rose on 1 May 2026 and has not moved since.

Pro adds 1,000 advanced YouTube summaries a month, 100 PDF uploads, 500 chat credits and 300 audio minutes. Unlimited lifts those to 5,000 summaries, unlimited PDFs, 2,000 credits and 1,500 audio minutes.

Gemini Notebook and Google's plans

Gemini Notebook itself is free. Heavier use rides on Google's own subscription ladder, and Google's May 2026 announcement listed these monthly prices.

These figures were not re-confirmed on a live pricing page on 7 November, so check Google's current plans page before buying.

• Brain2 (planned)$6.99 Leader
• Mem Plus$9
• Glasp Pro (yearly)$12.50
• Glasp Pro (monthly)$15

Read from each vendor's own page. Brain2's price is Hokai's record, not a live offer.

Run a year forward: Mem Plus is $108 and Mem Pro is $348. Mem's free plan allows 300 new notes across twelve months, which a busy solo operator can clear in a single active quarter.

Gemini Notebook Is the Default, and Mostly Deserves It

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026, and its own FAQ confirms it is the same product, with every existing notebook still accessible. The reporting at the time (9to5Google, 16 July 2026) put the rename on the 16th.

The switch shipped alongside a real capability jump: each notebook now gets a secure cloud computer that can write and run code against its own sources, not just summarize them. Google says the upgrade is rolling out gradually through the rest of 2026, so not every account sees it on the same day.

The reach is the headline number. Google says Gemini Notebook has reached more than 30 million people and 600,000-plus organizations. Google says it is built on its Gemini models, the family that includes Gemini 3.5 Pro. Its source-grounded answer model will say it doesn't know rather than guess when a source doesn't cover the question.

The catch is the walled garden. Nothing Hokai found promises offline access on any plan, and notebooks cannot cross-reference each other, so overlapping sources uploaded to two different notebooks never connect. For a reader whose real problem is a rolling stream of scattered material rather than a fixed document set, that limit matters more than the user count.

Mem Is Now an Agent, Not Just a Notebook

Mem skips folders and tags. Everything you type or dictate goes into one pool, and an AI layer connects related notes and surfaces them by context. Since August the product has repositioned itself as "Mem Agent": it detects tasks and projects in your notes, and the paid plans add custom routines and connections to sources such as Gmail, Slack and Todoist. A Windows app is now offered.

One thing worth stating plainly: Mem is not Mem0. Mem is the consumer note-taking app described here. Mem0 is a separate open-source memory API that developers plug into their own AI agents, with no note-taking interface of its own.

For someone whose workflow is voice memos and half-written ideas typed into a phone late at night, Mem's free plan is still the better starting point, and Plus at $9 a month is a smaller step up than the old price range suggested. For a two-person team compiling client research from PDFs and reports, Gemini Notebook's free tier wins outright, because it costs nothing beyond a Google account and cites its sources inline.

Glasp Is Built for People Who Read for a Living

Glasp is a highlighter first. Color-coded highlights save straight from any webpage, PDF or YouTube video, and a single click generates a summary using whichever model you have picked. Its social feed is the genuine differentiator: it surfaces what other readers highlighted on the same article, and following people whose annotations you trust turns reading into something closer to a shared habit.

The tradeoff is no longer privacy. It is volume. The free plan runs out quickly if you summarize a lot of video, and the heavy AI features are the part you pay for.

Brain2 Is a Bet on Passive Capture, If It Ships on Time

Brain2 is the only tool here that captures nothing you deliberately did. It silently records screen text, clipboard contents, and your Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor conversations in the background, then turns a full day of that activity into a one-click standup report. An exclusion list lets you block banking apps or password managers from capture.

That positioning is a direct answer to Rewind AI, the closest precursor to this idea. Rewind rebranded to Limitless, was acquired by Meta, and had its Mac app disabled on 19 December 2025.

Brain2 is still pre-launch as of 7 November 2026: the site says "Coming Soon", macOS 13 Ventura or later only. Waitlist signups get three months free once it ships. There is no team tier and no public user base yet, so treat every claim above as a roadmap, not a review.

How to test one before you commit

Choosing from a page like this one only gets you to a shortlist. A two-week trial settles the rest, and it costs nothing on any of the free plans.

Pick one real project, not a demo. Put every note, clip and document for that project into the single tool you are testing, and resist the urge to use a second app as a safety net. The point is to find out whether capture happens without effort, because a tool you have to remember to feed is a tool you will stop feeding by week three.

At the end of the first week, try to answer three questions about the project using only what the tool holds: what was decided, who said it, and where the source is. If you cannot, the capture model does not match how you work, and no amount of AI on top will fix that. The Mem and Glasp free plans are the easiest to trial this way, because both have a permanent free plan.

At the end of the second week, check the free-plan counters. A plan that is already at 80 percent of its limit after ten days will not survive a busy month, and you want to know that before you move your habits in.

Keep a short list of what annoyed you, and run the same trial on a second tool if the first one was close. Two weeks each is enough, and the comparison is worth more than any review. Readers who want a guided version can use Smart Match to narrow the field first, then test only the top two.

Keep a short list of what annoyed you. Friction in the first fortnight tends to be the permanent kind: a missing export, a slow search, an app that needs the network at the worst moment. Compare that list to the "where the obvious pick breaks down" section below, because the two usually point at the same weakness.

Data handling and privacy

Where your notes go is the question buyers skip and later regret.

Brain2. The vendor says all captured data stays on the device. That is a claim for a product that has not shipped, so it cannot be tested yet.

Gemini Notebook. Google says an organization's data is never used to train it, and that individual use is not used for training unless you share feedback.

Glasp. Highlights can be private on any plan, and public highlights feed the social feed by design.

Mem. Hokai did not re-read Mem's privacy terms in this pass, so check them before putting sensitive client material in.

Whichever tool you pick, keep regulated or client-confidential material out of any cloud notes app until you have read its current terms.

Two Newer Listings Worth Knowing

Hokai added two note-taking tools since this guide was first written. Neither displaces the four above, because each answers a different job.

Goodnotes is for people who think on paper. Hokai's record describes it as built for students and professionals who want handwriting to be searchable, with AI as an add-on rather than the core. Its free plan stops at 3 files and 5MB imports. Skip it if you want typed, AI-first notes.

Clarify AI is for students and self-learners who want the gist of a lecture or podcast before giving it an hour. Its record notes that content may pass through Google's free Gemini API tier, so keep private material out.

If your real job is capturing meetings rather than notes, see our guide to AI meeting assistants, or look at Granola, Fathom or Otter.ai.

Where the Obvious Pick Breaks Down

Gemini Notebook's free price tag and 30-million-user reach make it the safe recommendation for almost anyone asking which AI note tool to use. That recommendation breaks for two specific readers.

The first is anyone who needs to work without a live connection. Nothing Hokai found promises offline access for Gemini Notebook on any tier. The second is anyone whose material isn't a fixed set of documents at all: someone whose real input is a rolling stream of screen activity or scattered voice notes that never gets deliberately uploaded. Gemini Notebook cannot ingest what it was never handed, no matter how good its answers are once it has something to work with.

Sponsor spot open

Who Should Skip This Category Entirely

Meeting transcription is a different job. Anyone whose real need is a bot joining a call, transcribing it live and producing action items should read the meeting assistants guide instead. None of the four tools here join a call.

Anyone who already lives inside a single all-in-one workspace, writing docs, tracking projects and taking notes in the same place, is probably better served staying inside Notion's own AI features than adding another app to the stack. Our write-up Is Notion AI worth it? covers the current price. Teams comparing project tools may also want monday.com vs Notion, and readers weighing a broader stack can browse the AI directory for alternatives.

A note-taking habit that is mostly copy and search doesn't need an AI layer at all. Whatever notes app already ships with the operating system does that job for free, and it will still open when a vendor changes its pricing, which two of the tools in this guide have done in the past six months.

The same goes for anyone who takes fewer than a handful of notes a week. The overhead of learning a new tool, moving old material in and trusting it with something you care about is real, and a free plan that is never hit is a sign you did not need the upgrade.

What would change the verdict

Three things would move this ranking, and each can be checked.

• Brain2 ships. A Windows build with the local-only model intact would undercut every cloud tool here on the one promise none of them can make: that a day of captured activity never leaves the machine.
• Mem's Agent plans prove sticky. If the routines and connections work as described, Mem stops being a notes app and competes with task tools, which changes who it is for.
• Gemini Notebook adds export or offline use. Either would remove the two limits that send readers elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

Is NotebookLM the same product as Gemini Notebook?

Yes. Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook on July 16, 2026, keeping every existing notebook, source, and Audio Overview intact. The address notebooklm.google now redirects to notebook.google, and the update added a secure cloud computer that lets each notebook write and execute code against its own sources. Pricing and the underlying source-grounded answer model did not change in the switch.

Is Mem the same product as Mem0?

No, and the near-identical name causes real confusion among buyers. Mem is a consumer note-taking app that auto-organizes personal notes and voice memos through an assistant called Mem Chat. Mem0 is a separate open-source memory API that developers plug into their own AI agents, with no note-taking interface at all.

Can any of these four tools work offline?

Brain2 is the only one built around local storage, saving every capture to an on-device SQLite database on macOS with nothing sent to a server. Glasp, Mem, and Gemini Notebook all require an active connection, and Gemini Notebook specifically has no offline mode on any plan. Brain2 itself remains in pre-launch waitlist status, so it is not something you can install today.

How much do the free tiers actually let you do?

Gemini Notebook is free for any Google account with no note or source cap published. Mem's free plan stops at 25 notes and 25 chat messages a month, and Glasp's free plan caps out at 30 PDF uploads and 20 AI chat credits a month. Brain2 has no permanent free tier; waitlist signups get three months free before the $6.99 monthly plan starts.

Which of these tools should a small team pick first?

Start with whichever one matches the moment you're actually trying to capture, not the vendor with the biggest user count. A team compiling research from PDFs and reports should start with Gemini Notebook, since it's free and cites sources inline. A team whose real problem is scattered voice memos and half-written ideas should start with Mem instead, free-tier caps permitting.

Covered in this guide

• notebooklm: AI-powered research assistant that grounds insights in your sources
• mem: Your AI Thought Partner that captures, organizes, and surfaces information automatically
• brain2: Brain2 is a local-only Mac app that silently logs your screen, clipboard, and AI chats to auto-generate daily standup reports.
• glasp: Social web and PDF highlighter for researchers and learners
• clarify-ai: Browser extension and web page that summarize YouTube videos up to 3 hours long, with timestamps, comment summaries and video Q&A, used by 20,000 Chrome users.
• fathom: AI notetaking for meetings - summarize conversations to focus on what matters
• Gemini 3.5 Pro: Google named Gemini 3.5 Pro at its May 2026 developer conference, but the model has not been released. Google has published no context window, price or benchmarks for it.
• goodnotes: Handwritten note app for iPad, Mac, Windows, Android and web with AI search and summaries. Free for 3 files, with paid plans and an AI add-on.
• granola: Bot-free AI notepad that merges your typed notes with a device-audio transcript, with apps for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android and a free plan.
• mem0: Memory layer for AI agents: an Apache-2.0 SDK, a managed Platform and an MCP server, with a free plan and 68.8k GitHub stars.
• notion: Your AI everything app: All your tools and work in one unified workspace.
• otterai: AI Notetaker that builds your knowledge base with transcription, summaries, and AI Chat
• rewind-ai: Discontinued December 2025. Rewind captured, searched and recalled everything you saw, said or heard on a Mac, until Meta acquired Limitless and switched it off.

Sources