Anki alternatives in 2026: what to use instead

Short answer first: if you have years of cards in Anki and the scheduler works for you, keep it; nothing else is free on a computer with a scheduler this well documented. Look elsewhere when the problem is making the cards. Mochi gives you a cleaner editor with markdown and FSRS for 5 US dollars a month. Brainscape uses a 1 to 5 confidence scale and makes AI cards on its free plan. Notibo writes cards from your PDFs and slides, 10 per document on the free plan, at 9.99 euro a month on Pro.

Every price, platform and limit below was read on the vendors' pricing pages, manuals, help centres and app store listings on 25 September 2026. A vendor that prints no figure gets not published in the table, never an estimate.

What should an Anki replacement do better?

Anki is the reference point for spaced repetition, and most students who leave it are not unhappy with how it schedules. They are tired of the work around the schedule: typing every card, fiddling with deck options, paying for the iPhone app. A replacement has to fix one of those without breaking the reviews.

Does it make the cards for you?

The strongest reason to leave Anki is time. A lecture with 40 slides can take an evening to turn into cards by hand. An app that reads a PDF or a slide deck and drafts the cards changes the maths, as long as you can edit the drafts before you study them. Check whether the free tier allows this and how many cards it makes per file.

Does it name the algorithm that schedules your reviews?

Spaced repetition is not one method. Anki offers two schedulers and documents both. Some alternatives name theirs, and some only say the app uses spaced repetition. If you care about intervals and retention targets, prefer an app that tells you which algorithm it runs and lets you see or change the target.

Does it run where you study, at a price you accept?

Anki is free on a computer and on Android, and paid once on an iPhone. Alternatives usually charge a subscription and often keep sync for paying users. Add up what a year costs on the devices you actually use, including sync.

How do the alternatives compare with Anki?

The table covers the apps with their own section below plus RemNote, which has its own comparison article. Quizlet and Knowt appear in the section on AI cards rather than here, because neither is chosen for its scheduler.

Read the table by the column that made you look for an alternative. If it is the typing, the AI cards column matters and Anki has nothing there. If it is the phone price, compare 24.99 US dollars once with a monthly fee over the two or three years you will study.

What does Anki do well, and where does it stop?

Anki pays for itself through the iPhone app: its download page says AnkiMobile purchases help fund development. That model keeps the desktop version free and open source, and it shows in how carefully the manual documents every setting.

• The computer version is free on every major system. The Anki download page offers it for Windows, Mac and Linux, points Android users to the free AnkiDroid, and describes AnkiWeb as a free sync service across devices.
• AnkiMobile costs 24.99 US dollars once. The AnkiMobile listing in the US App Store explains that its sales pay for both the computer and mobile versions, which is why it is priced like desktop software.
• Image occlusion is built in. The manual's editing chapter says Anki 23.10 and later support image occlusion natively, with rectangles, ellipses or polygons drawn over a diagram.
• Add-ons fill the gaps. The download page says add-ons extend Anki with new features, which is how many students get what the core app lacks.
• Synced cards sit in the EU and the USA. The AnkiWeb privacy page, last updated 17 February 2021, says it stores your data on servers and cloud services in secure data centres in the EU and the USA.

Moving cards in and out is documented too: the manual's exporting chapter covers .apkg deck packages, .colpkg collection packages and plain text, and its importing chapter takes text files and packaged decks back in. Where it stops is card creation. The manual describes the editor, note types and occlusion, and nothing that reads a PDF or a recording and drafts cards. A student who wants that has to find an add-on, trust its maintainer and keep it working after updates, or move to an app where it is part of the product.

What are FSRS and SM-2, and what do the alternatives use?

This is the question that keeps many students in Anki, so it is worth being precise about what each scheduler does according to the people who ship it.

SM-2 is the older method, based on SuperMemo 2. The Anki manual's deck options chapter explains it through ease: each card starts with an ease of 2.50 when it graduates, so answering Good stretches the gap by about two and a half times, from 10 days to around 25. The ease then rises or falls with your answers. The manual also mentions the problem users call "ease hell", where repeated failures drag a card's ease down.

FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, came to Anki in version 23.10. The same chapter describes it as an alternative to legacy SM-2 that estimates more accurately how likely you are to forget each card. You set a desired retention, the share of cards you want to recall when they fall due, and the default is 90 per cent. FSRS is off until you enable it in the deck options, and every Anki client you sync from has to support it.

The alternatives split three ways. Mochi and RemNote both offer FSRS next to a default of their own. Mochi's FSRS documentation says its default scheduler moves intervals by fixed multipliers and that switching to FSRS keeps your history. RemNote keeps SM-2 as the default and calls FSRS a beta. Brainscape runs its own system, described below. Notibo names SM-2 on its flashcards page for the spaced repetition that comes with Pro. For the background on why spacing works at all, the spaced repetition guide covers it.

Is Mochi the closest thing to Anki with a cleaner interface?

Mochi is a small, independent app aimed at people who like Anki's model but not its editor. Notes and cards live in the same place, written in markdown, and the free plan is usable offline without an account.

• Pro is 5 US dollars a month. The Mochi home page lists a free plan with unlimited offline use and Pro at 5 US dollars a month, which adds sync across devices, published decks and AI integration.
• Markdown is the editor. The same page describes headings, lists and code formatting in cards and notes, plus dictionaries, text-to-speech and image search for language learners.
• It runs on every platform. Mochi lists Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android apps next to the web version.
• FSRS is one switch away. The Mochi docs move a deck to FSRS from the review settings, and say learned cards keep their progress.

The trade-off is sync. On Anki, moving between a laptop and a phone is free through AnkiWeb. On Mochi it is a Pro feature, so the realistic price for a student with two devices is 5 US dollars a month. The AI integration on Pro writes example sentences or study prompts, according to the home page; Mochi does not describe turning PDFs or recordings into cards, so it saves time on formatting, not on writing.

What does Brainscape's confidence-based repetition change?

Brainscape asks a different question after each card. Instead of Again, Hard, Good or Easy, you rate how confident you were on a scale of 1 to 5, and the app decides when the card comes back.

• Low ratings return the card soon. The Brainscape Academy article on confidence-based repetition says a 1 or 2 brings a card back soon and often, while a 5 pushes it further out.
• AI card making is on the free plan. The Brainscape pricing page says Basic users can use AI to make hundreds of flashcards, without printing an exact number, and Pro makes that unlimited.
• Pro is 7.99 US dollars a month on the yearly plan. The pricing page shows that figure, 95.88 US dollars billed every 12 months, and its plan list also offers 19.99 US dollars billed monthly, 9.99 a month billed every six months and a lifetime licence at 199.99. Pro adds unlimited study of its Certified flashcards, and group licences are on request.
• Data is hosted in the United States. Brainscape's privacy policy, updated 17 December 2025, says the service and the information it collects are hosted on servers in the United States, and that it runs no personalised ads.

Brainscape calls its method confidence-based repetition and describes it as a more granular, adaptive form of the Leitner system, in which cards move between boxes according to how well you know them. It names no FSRS-style model and publishes no retention target you can set. The confidence scale is easy to learn and suits a student who finds Anki's four buttons fussy. A student who tunes desired retention in FSRS will find less to adjust here.

Are RemNote, Knowt or Quizlet better if you want AI cards?

Each of the three has its own comparison article, so this is only where each one stands for a student coming from Anki.

RemNote is the natural next step for a student who wants Anki's scheduler inside a notes app. Its pricing page allows 5 AI card runs from PDFs on the free plan and puts the lecture recorder in Pro with AI at 18 US dollars a month billed yearly, while the default scheduler stays SM-2. The RemNote alternatives article looks at the editor and plans in detail.

Knowt keeps its study modes free, spaced repetition included, and imports Quizlet sets through a browser extension. Its AI tools are capped at one summary a month on the free plan. The Knowt comparison covers that limit and Knowt Ultra.

Quizlet is where many Anki users started. Its app now records or takes a lecture upload and turns it into study sets, and the US App Store listing notes that the app contains advertising. The Quizlet alternatives article sets out what its free tier gives.

Which should you choose?

The answer depends mostly on how many cards you already have and who you want to write the next thousand.

If you already have 5,000 cards and review daily, stay on Anki. Switch on FSRS if you have not, and spend the time you would lose migrating on reviews instead. No alternative here imports years of review history with less risk than simply keeping it.

If Anki's editor is what you dislike, try Mochi's free plan with a new deck, and pay 5 US dollars a month only when you need sync.

If the four answer buttons feel like guesswork, Brainscape's 1 to 5 confidence scale is simpler, and its free plan makes AI cards to start you off.

If typing cards is the real cost, use an app that drafts cards from your files: RemNote on Pro with AI if you also want a notes editor, or Notibo if your material arrives as slides and recorded lectures.

If you study on an iPhone and do not want to pay 24.99 US dollars, check the yearly cost of the alternative first: every paid plan in the table costs more than that within its first year.

Before you move a whole term, run one real lecture or slide deck through the new app on its free plan or trial and compare the cards with the ones you would have written.

Where Notibo fits

Notibo is not a replacement for Anki's scheduler. It is for the step before it: getting from a lecture or a slide deck to a set of cards without typing them. You upload a PDF, PPTX or DOCX file, or record a lecture on a computer in Chrome or Edge, and it returns notes you can correct and a set of flashcards drafted from the document.

Pro is free for 14 days with no card and comes with 240 minutes of audio, and flashcards from a recording and spaced repetition work during the trial because they are part of Pro. After that the account keeps the free plan: five documents a month that each give up to 10 flashcards, and 30 minutes of audio a month. Pro costs 9.99 euro a month or 88.99 euro a year and includes 1,200 minutes of audio a month. The flashcards page shows how the cards look.

Files are stored in the EU, in Frankfurt, while transcription and the AI notes run on US processors, and the audio is deleted once the notes are saved. Notibo runs in the browser on a computer and has none of Anki's add-ons or deck options. If the evenings you spend typing cards are the reason you are reading this, one slide deck during the trial will show whether it helps.