Anki Review, Pricing & Alternatives (2026)

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.

Since version 23.10, released in late 2023, Anki includes FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, as an option alongside its long-standing algorithm derived from SuperMemo 2. FSRS models each card's memory with three values, difficulty, stability and retrievability, and uses machine learning on your own review history to fit parameters. You set a desired retention rate, and FSRS schedules reviews to hit it. Anki's documentation says FSRS lets users do fewer reviews for the same retention than the older algorithm and handles breaks in study better, and that early tests put it roughly on par with SuperMemo's proprietary SM-17. Anki has no built-in generative AI.

Anki desktop is free for Windows, Mac and Linux. AnkiWeb, the official sync service, is free and lets you study in a browser, share decks and download add-ons. AnkiDroid, a separate open-source Android app developed by the community under the GPL, is free on Google Play. AnkiMobile for iPhone and iPad, sold by Anki's developers, costs $24.99 as a one-time purchase in the US App Store, with no subscription. Advanced users can run a self-hosted sync server instead of AnkiWeb, as one is built into recent desktop versions. The desktop app is available in more than 50 languages.

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.