Anki vs RemNote: pricing, features and which to choose

Anki was created by Australian developer Damien Elmes and first released in October 2006. Its name comes from the Japanese word for memorization. It became the standard flashcard tool for medical students, language learners and anyone who needs to retain large amounts of material, with communities sharing huge decks such as AnKing for the USMLE exams and Core 2k/6k for Japanese vocabulary. The desktop app is open source under the AGPL, written in Rust, Python and TypeScript, and maintained by Elmes's company Ankitects with community contributors. Sales of the paid iPhone app fund development, which keeps the desktop app, Android app and sync service free without ads.

You create notes with fields, and Anki generates cards from templates, so one note can produce forward, reverse and cloze-deletion cards. Each review asks you to recall the answer, then grade yourself Again, Hard, Good or Easy, and Anki schedules the next review accordingly. Cards can include images, audio, video and LaTeX or MathJax equations, and the app handles collections of more than 100,000 cards. Filtered decks, tags, a powerful search and detailed statistics help manage study. Collections are stored in an open SQLite format. Thousands of community add-ons extend Anki with features such as image occlusion, heatmaps, AI card generation and text-to-speech.

Anki's strengths are a proven scheduler with the modern FSRS option, zero cost on most platforms, complete control over cards and data, huge shared decks and a large add-on library. Its weaknesses are a dated, complex interface, a steep learning curve, manual card creation and a paid iPhone app. Quizlet is easier to use with study games and AI study tools, but locks more behind a subscription. RemNote and Mochi combine notes with spaced repetition. Knowt and StudyFetch generate flashcards from notes with AI. Memrise targets language learners. Choose Anki if you want the most configurable, free spaced repetition system and are willing to learn it.

RemNote is a study app built around one idea: the notes you take should become the material you review. It was founded by Martin Schneider, who leads the company as CEO, and it is aimed at students in medicine, law, languages and other subjects with heavy memorization, as well as lifelong learners. Notes are written as nested bullet points, and any line can be turned into a flashcard with simple syntax. Those cards then enter a spaced repetition queue that schedules reviews shortly before you are likely to forget. Because notes and cards live in the same place, editing a note updates its card, and every card links back to its context.

The note side works like an outliner. Each bullet, called a Rem, can be referenced from other pages, tagged and nested, which builds a linked knowledge base over a semester. Students can import and annotate PDFs, highlight text and create cards from highlights, add images and use image occlusion cards that hide parts of a diagram for anatomy or maps. Handwritten documents are supported for tablet users. An exam scheduler lets you set a test date so reviews are paced toward it. RemNote runs on the web and has desktop and mobile apps, and the free plan syncs across an unlimited number of devices.

RemNote's strengths are the tight link between notes and flashcards, a mature spaced repetition scheduler, PDF annotation that feeds cards, and an AI tutor grounded in your own material. Its weaknesses are a learning curve for the outliner and card syntax, tight document limits on the free plan and AI features that push heavy users toward Pro+AI. Anki is the free, highly customizable flashcard standard. Quizlet suits quick study sets. Knowt turns notes into AI flashcards. Obsidian and Logseq are general note apps with flashcard plugins. Choose RemNote if you want to write notes and review them with spaced repetition in one app.