Ross ROSS = Recommend OSS · open-source software intelligence for agents

MODSetter/SurfSense

Open-source NotebookLM alternative. Research the open web with live data(Reddit, YT, IG, TikTok, Indeed, Google Search, Maps etc) through one platform, API or MCP server. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9 observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense · homepage · Python · NOASSERTION (other) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

90/100

  • Activity 99
  • Release rhythm 98
  • Longevity 54

Flags: no_license

How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: 6.5
  • age_days: 764
  • days_rel: 12
  • days_push: 8
  • n_releases_24m: 31

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

16017 stars · 1529 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

SurfSense is an open-source, self-hostable NotebookLM alternative that combines a personal knowledge base with live open-web research connectors (Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Google Search, Google Maps, Indeed, and more). It exposes its capabilities through a web UI, REST API, and MCP server, with scheduled agents that produce cited briefs, reports, podcasts, and alerts.

Use cases

  • research what Reddit says about a product or competitor
  • monitor Google search rankings and AI Overview citations
  • build a searchable knowledge base with cited chat answers
  • scrape YouTube comments and transcripts for sentiment analysis
  • give AI agents live web data through an MCP server
  • automate scheduled research briefs and alerts
  • self-host an alternative to NotebookLM for documents and web sources

When to choose

  • you want agents to reason over live web data instead of a static index
  • you need a self-hosted, open-source NotebookLM alternative with citations
  • you want platform-native scraping APIs (Reddit, YouTube, SERP) without official API quotas
  • you need MCP or REST access to web research for your own agent stack

When to avoid

  • you only need simple document Q&A without web research
  • you require a fully permissive OSS license (license is listed as NOASSERTION)
  • you want a fully managed hosted service with no self-hosting setup
  • your use case depends on connectors SurfSense does not yet offer

Facets

application · maturity active

rag web-scraping agent-framework search-engine mcp chatbot api-framework self-hosted artificial-intelligence crawlers self-hosted developer-tools self-hosted python cross-platform notebooklm-alternative live-web-research data-connectors serp-api knowledge-base fastapi nextjs langchain ollama automations citations ai-agents retrieval-augmented-generation search web-server docker nodejs desktop

7 sources

Member repositories

RepositoryRoleHealth v2
MODSetter/SurfSensemain90

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="MODSetter/SurfSense")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem