SurfSense
Air-gapped, privacy-focused, open-source NotebookLM alternative. AI agent that researches, transforms, and edits your documents. Join our Discord: https://disc…
What it does
Core capabilities at a glance
- Agent
- Agents
- Notebooklm
- Notebooklm Alternative
- RAG
- Self Hosted
- Self Hosted AI
- WEB Scraping
Deep dive
The full breakdown - performance, comparisons, and setup
SurfSense
SurfSense is a RAG toolkit - Air-gapped, privacy-focused, open-source NotebookLM alternative. AI agent that researches, transforms, and edits your documents. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9.
Overview
The AI agent that researches, transforms and edits your documents, on your machine.
SurfSense is a free, open-source desktop app for documents you can't upload. A privacy-focused, NotebookLM-style AI agent that researches, transforms and edits your documents, on your machine. The index stays on your disk, you pick the model, local or remote, and there is no account.
- Install SurfSense and do the initial onboarding setup. 2. Drop your files or folders in your sources. 3. Ask the agent to search or extract or edit your files.
¹ With Office support (LibreOffice), turned on in Settings; it is never in the installer. ² Needs an image model, local or remote; none is chosen by default. ³ OCR reads Latin, Chinese and Japanese script.
Edits, conversions and PDF tools always make a new file; your original is never changed. PDF, Word and Excel do the most today, and support for the other formats keeps improving.
By SurfSense. They read public pages without your own accounts and need a SurfSense license: download the app and enter your email there for a free 30-day one.
Third-party. MCP servers from the plugin registry, such as DeepWiki and Notion, or any you add by URL. No license needed; they stay off until you allow them.
SurfSense is open-source, written primarily in Python, with 16,466 GitHub stars under the Apache 2.0 license. The latest release is v2.2.2 (2026-10-16).
How it fits a local-AI stack
SurfSense runs on your own hardware, so pair it with a model and a GPU sized to your needs. Use the VRAM calculator to pick a model that fits your card, and see what you can run for hardware guidance. Related RAG toolkits in the directory:
Sources
- Source code & docs: MODSetter/SurfSense
- Official website: https://www.surfsense.com
Stats from GitHub, 2026-10-17.
Frequently asked
Quick answers to common questions
What is SurfSense?
SurfSense is a rag tool for local AI workloads. Air-gapped, privacy-focused, open-source NotebookLM alternative. AI agent that researches, transforms, and edits your documents. Join our Discord: https://disc…
Is SurfSense free and open source?
Yes, SurfSense has 16,466 GitHub stars and is licensed under Apache 2.0. You can self-host it for free on macos, linux, windows, web.
What platforms does SurfSense support?
SurfSense runs on macos, linux, windows, web.
What hardware do I need for SurfSense?
The hardware requirements depend on which models you run. Check our hardware directory for compatible GPUs and systems. SurfSense has 16,466 GitHub stars and an active community.
Does SurfSense support GPU acceleration?
SurfSense supports GPU acceleration via CUDA, Metal, or Vulkan depending on your platform. For the best performance, pair it with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 or 5090.
What are the best alternatives to SurfSense?
Popular alternatives include other rag tools in our directory. Browse our full collection at /tool for comparisons, community reviews, and benchmark data to find the right fit for your workflow.
How much does SurfSense cost?
SurfSense is free-open-source. It is completely free and open source to self-host.
Pairs well with
Complementary tools, models, and hardware