BYOAIK (Bring Your Own AI Key) is a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.
Open Notebook
Open-source, privacy-first NotebookLM alternative that chats with your sources and generates multi-speaker AI podcasts.
- Category:
- Research Tools
- Maintenance:
- Actively developed (last commit yesterday)
- Pricing:
- Open Source
- Open source:
- Yes (MIT)
- Self-hostable:
- Yes
- Local-first:
- Yes
- Platforms:
- Web, Self-hosted, Docker
- AI providers (bring your own key):
- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Ollama, Custom / OpenAI-compatible
- API key storage:
- User controls deployment
- Key risk level:
- LOW
- Trust score:
- 89/100
Open Notebook is a self-hosted, MIT-licensed alternative to Google's NotebookLM. You add your own sources (documents, links, media), then chat over them with context-aware AI, run vector search, and generate multi-speaker audio podcasts with configurable per-speaker voices and personalities. It is fully BYOK: keys are entered in-app via Settings -> API Keys -> Add Credential, where you pick a provider, paste your key, run Test Connection, then Discover/Register Models. Thanks to its "Esperanto" provider-abstraction layer it supports 18+ providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral, Groq, xAI, DeepSeek, Ollama/LM Studio local, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI, Vertex AI, plus TTS/STT services like ElevenLabs and Deepgram) and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint via a configurable base URL. It runs locally through Docker (default at localhost:8502) and exposes a REST API.
Why this trust score (89/100)
Trust measures how the tool treats your API key and how much of that has been verified. It contains no popularity signal.
- Key Safety 21/25: The key lives in a deployment you run yourself.
- Request Routing 17/20: Requests go straight from you to the AI provider.
- Transparency 20/20: Source is public under MIT, so anyone can check how the key is handled. Key handling was located in the published source.
- Privacy 14/15: Local-first: it works without sending your data anywhere. Can be self-hosted, so the data path stays inside infrastructure you control.
- Maintenance 10/10: Actively developed: commits within the last three months.
- Verification Confidence 7/10: Key handling was found in the published source by BYOAIK's scanner.
What was checked
Verification tier SOURCE_VERIFIED, derived from the evidence below and not set by hand.
- [REPORTED · RESEARCH] This listing was compiled by an AI-assisted research pass over the tool's public website, README and documentation. No person independently confirmed it.
- [STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] Supports a local model backend, so it can run with no cloud provider key at all. source
- [STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] The user supplies their own OpenAI key: the project references its API key variable. source
- [STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] The user supplies their own Anthropic key: the project references its API key variable. source
- [STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] The user supplies their own Groq key: the project references its API key variable. source
- [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Ships a container definition, so it can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure. source
- [CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Most recent commit 2026-08-01, about 0 month(s) ago. source
How your API key is handled
You self-host the app, so your API key lives in your own deployment. Requests are sent directly to the AI provider. Because it can be self-hosted, your key never has to touch a third-party backend.
Setup
Deploy it (Docker/compose), add your provider API key in the admin or environment config, then select models.