You dropped a term's worth of lecture PDFs into NotebookLM, it handed back a podcast that sounds like two people who actually read them, and now you wonder whether you still need a flashcard app like Quizlet. Google has since renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook; most students still use the old name, so this page does too.
The short answer: of NotebookLM and Quizlet, only Quizlet now decides when you see a card again, on its website. NotebookLM is better than Quizlet and Studyflash at making sense of a pile of sources, and Quizlet is where a deck somebody already built lives. Studyflash turns your own lecture material into cards it schedules across the term, and unlike Quizlet's, that schedule also runs in the phone apps. Google's free tier is enough for most students, a year of Quizlet Plus costs about €45, and the Studyflash app shows the price in your country.
The three side by side
| NotebookLM, now Gemini Notebook | Studyflash | Quizlet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Refining and organising your ideas, in Google's words | Your own lecture material, reviewed across a term | Studying decks, mostly ones other people made |
| Cards from your files | Yes, from your sources, with difficulty and question count | Yes, from PDFs, slides, photos of notes, pasted text or a recorded lecture; six card types | Yes, via Study Guides, in English, French and German only |
| Review scheduling | No intervals or due dates; remembers progress, you re-run all cards or only the missed ones | Spaced repetition per card, plus a cram mode | Spaced repetition in the browser, not the phone apps; Learn is a free taste, then Plus |
| Audio | Audio Overviews, 4 formats, over 80 languages | A podcast from a deck, two voices, synced searchable transcript; Premium | Podcasts from your sets, study guides or uploads |
| Free plan | 100 notebooks, 50 sources each; usage limits reset every 5 hours, up to a weekly cap | Flashcards, quizzes, spaced repetition, a monthly allowance of AI generations; chat with Max, Studyflash's AI tutor | Flashcards and Match, with ads |
| Price | Google AI Pro, about $20 a month | What each plan includes; your country's price in the app | Plus, about €45 a year on the App Store |
| Phone and offline | Google recommends the desktop version; Audio Overviews download for offline | iPhone, iPad, Android; generated decks, quizzes, summaries and mind maps work offline, podcasts need a connection | Offline on the phone apps for your 8 most recent sets |
Prices and features checked on 25 September 2026. Prices vary by country and store, and where a vendor publishes no euro price the figure is the US one.
It makes flashcards now
The line you will still read on most comparison pages, that NotebookLM cannot make flashcards, stopped being true. Google's help centre describes flashcard and quiz generation in Gemini Notebook: cards and questions grounded only in your sources, easy, medium or hard, fewer, standard or more of them, and an Explain button on every card. So all three generate cards now; where they differ is the kind of card, and what happens to it afterwards.
Studyflash turns the same upload into six card types, a quiz and a summary, and one of those types is image occlusion, where the labels on a diagram are hidden and you recall them. That is the format a labelled anatomy plate or a wiring diagram actually needs. NotebookLM's cards stay within your sources, at the difficulty you pick. Quizlet, where you mostly study decks other people made, builds cards through Study Guides, in English, French and German only. Ask Quizlet, the chat that reads your uploaded files, is US-only.
NotebookLM leaves the review schedule to you
This is the hinge of the whole comparison. NotebookLM remembers your progress and lets you re-run the same cards, all of them or only the ones you missed, which is a bookmark and a filter for the session you are sitting in. Nothing in it spaces your cards out: no intervals, and no card that comes back after a delay.
For a week of reading, that is fine. For a module examined in eleven weeks it is the whole problem, because choosing what to review today is the decision you are worst placed to make. Studyflash schedules every card by how well you remembered it, and cram mode drops the schedule for the night before.
Quizlet now makes that decision for you on its website: you rate each card and it schedules when the card comes back. Learn is a free taste and then it is Plus, which has monthly usage limits, with Unlimited the tier that removes them. Studyflash against Quizlet goes through the free plans row by row. Studyflash keeps the same schedule in its phone apps, so the cards you review on the tram count.
NotebookLM's podcast and Studyflash's are different products
They get treated as the same feature and they do different jobs. An Audio Overview is free, comes in 4 formats and runs in over 80 languages, and it is generated from your sources, so what you get is a briefing on the reading.
The Studyflash podcast is two voices working through a deck you are already studying, with a transcript that stays in sync: tap a line to jump the audio there, or search it when you cannot listen. The episode and the cards are the same material, so the tram ride across Vienna feeds the review session that evening. Audio Overviews download for offline listening while Studyflash podcasts stream, so a commute with no signal goes to Google. Podcasts are Premium.
Free plan, cost and your data
NotebookLM's free tier is the one most students will use: 100 notebooks and 50 sources in each, with usage limits that reset every 5 hours, up to a weekly cap. Google AI Pro, at about $20 a month, is the step above it.
The Studyflash free plan carries flashcards, quizzes, spaced repetition, unlimited chat with Max and a monthly allowance of AI generations, with no credit card to start. The pricing page lists what Premium adds. On the App Store, Quizlet Plus costs about €45 a year, with the monthly limits above, and Unlimited removes them.
Who should pick what
- Fifteen papers to get through for a literature review: NotebookLM, on the free tier. Ask questions across all of them and take an Audio Overview with you.
- A deck for a standard first-year course by tomorrow: Quizlet, where somebody has already built it. Expect to pay for the modes that test you rather than show you.
- Examined on your own lecturer's material in ten weeks: a study app that schedules reviews of your own material, which is what Studyflash does with the slides, notes and recordings you upload.
- Lots to read and lots to remember, which is what most terms look like: the hard reading list in NotebookLM, then everything you have to retain into Studyflash.
- Studying in a language other than English: Ask Quizlet is US-only and Study Guides covers three languages, so Audio Overviews in over 80 languages make NotebookLM the strongest multilingual option. Studyflash generates from your material in your own language.
Questions and answers
No. Google has renamed it Gemini Notebook and the help centre has moved with it, though most people and most search results still use the old name. It is the same product.
On a personal account, free or paid, Google says notebook content is not used to train its models unless you submit feedback, and feedback is reviewed by people. Workspace and Workspace for Education accounts get the stronger guarantee, and paying for a personal plan does not move you to it. If you have a university account, upload with that.
No, not fully: Google recommends the desktop version of NotebookLM for the full experience, and on a phone only Audio Overviews download for offline use. In the Studyflash apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, generated decks, quizzes, summaries and mind maps work offline, and your review progress syncs when you are back on a connection.
Base Plus has monthly usage limits on Learn and practice tests, and if you study daily during an exam period you reach them early; Unlimited is the tier that removes them. On Studyflash, flashcards, quizzes and spaced repetition sit in the free plan, alongside a monthly allowance of AI generations.
Yes: read and interrogate the sources in NotebookLM, then move what you actually have to retain into Studyflash, where every card is scheduled by how well you remembered it.