You are here for one of two reasons. Either you installed Anki before your first semester, opened the deck options screen and never went back, or you have reviewed with it for two years, sit on a few thousand cards and cannot face typing another one. Both roads end at the same search for Anki alternatives.
The short answer: most complaints about Anki are years out of date. One real gap remains: Anki has no built-in way to write cards for you, only add-ons that an update can break. If you want control and want to pay nothing, staying is the right call. If you want the deck to exist without typing it, Studyflash builds one from the lecture material you already have. Anki is free except on iPhone; the apps that write cards for you limit how many on their free plans.
What each one makes, imports and costs
| Makes cards from your material | Image occlusion and scheduling | Takes an Anki export | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anki, for reference | No, add-ons only | Built in; FSRS included, off by default | Its own native format | Free; iPhone app about $25 once |
| Studyflash | Yes, from PDFs, slides, photos of notes, pasted text or a recorded lecture | One of six card types; spaced repetition and cram mode | Yes, with images; other note types as question and answer; no audio, review history or occlusion notes | Free with a monthly allowance of AI generations; Premium price in the app, what the plans include |
| RemNote | Yes, against monthly AI credits | Yes, 5 images free; SM-2, FSRS as a beta | Yes, with review history; exports too | Free plan; Pro $8 a month, billed yearly |
| Mochi | No deck from a file; AI writes one card or example sentence from your text; 5,000 free tokens | Diagram cards; own algorithm, FSRS optional | Imports with history; exports CSV for Anki | Free; Pro $5 a month, billed yearly |
| Brainscape | Yes, from pasted text, photos of notes, Word and PowerPoint files; no PDF upload | No; confidence rating 1 to 5 | No, convert to a text file first | Free plan; Pro $7.99 a month, billed yearly |
| Knowt | Yes, from notes, PDFs and video | No; spaced repetition | No, pasted text only | Free plan; paid plan $149.99 a year (about $12.50 a month) or $24.99 monthly |
| Quizlet | Yes, Study Guides; Ask Quizlet US only | Diagram sets, made with Plus; spaced repetition on the website | No, pasted text only | Free plan; Plus about €45 a year on the App Store |
| Gemini Notebook | Yes, from your uploads | No; re-runs missed cards when you choose | No, it takes documents, not decks | Free tier; Google AI Pro about $20 a month |
Prices and features checked on 25 September 2026. Prices vary by country and store, and where a vendor publishes no euro price, the figure is the US one.
What Anki does in 2026
Image occlusion has been built in since version 23.10, released in late 2023, so a guide telling you to install an occlusion add-on is describing a three-year-old app.
FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, ships with Anki too. It sits at the bottom of the deck options page, stays off until you switch it on, and the switch covers every deck at once.
Anki costs nothing on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and AnkiWeb sync is free too; the iPhone app is the only purchase, about $25 once. What Anki does not do is write cards: AI generation comes from third-party add-ons, and the manual warns that an update can break them. That manual runs to 26 chapters, and the settings are as deep: many people open the deck options once and never come back.
Two AnkiWeb limits matter if it is your backup: collections are capped at 100 MB compressed, and after 6 months unused AnkiWeb deletes its copy after a warning email. Your account and the cards on your devices stay, and sounds and images sit outside the cap with no total size limit.
Studyflash
Studyflash is for anyone who never got a deck going, and for anyone with a few thousand cards who is tired of making them. A lecture PDF, the slides posted on Moodle, a photo of your notes or a recording of the class goes in, and a deck comes out in six card types, image occlusion among them. The free plan carries a monthly allowance of AI generations; the pricing page lists what each plan includes, and the app shows the price.
The importer reads an Anki package: cards come across with their text and images, cloze turning into fill in the blank, and other note types arrive as question and answer. Audio, review history and Anki's own occlusion notes stay behind. Move the decks built on text and images, and keep audio decks in Anki. An occlusion deck stays there too, or you rebuild it in Studyflash from the original diagram. Expect a term of running both.
RemNote
RemNote keeps cards inside your notes, so each card keeps its context. It has proper image occlusion, imports an Anki package with its review history, and is the one app here that exports a package again. Its default scheduler is SM-2, and FSRS is a beta you switch on. Pro is $8 a month, billed yearly.
The free plan is tight exactly where an Anki user notices: image occlusion on 5 images, 250 AI credits a month and 5 AI card runs from text, PDFs or slides against 50 on Pro. It is also a notes app with cards in it, so if cards are all you came for, you are paying rent on an outliner.
Mochi
Mochi suits anyone who liked Anki's model and not Anki's surface: small, quick, plain. Its Diagram cards give each masked region its own review schedule, and an Anki deck imports with its history intact. Mochi is free with no sign-up; Pro, which adds sync, is $5 a month billed yearly.
Sync being paid means free is one device. Its own export format keeps review history, while CSV and Markdown do not, and the CSV is built for Anki compatibility. Its AI writes one card at a time, a question or an example sentence, from text in a card field, and it cannot build a deck from a PDF. The free plan caps it at 5,000 tokens a month.
Brainscape
Brainscape is for studying material somebody else organised. Your own confidence rating of 1 to 5 after each card decides when it comes back, and the free plan opens up to 2,500 ready-made cards. Pro is $7.99 a month, billed yearly.
Brainscape has no image occlusion. For an anatomy deck, that decides it. Images, sounds and export sit behind the paid plan, and an Anki deck has to be converted to a text file first.
Knowt
Knowt's free plan carries flashcards and notes with ads, the AI capped, and it generates cards from notes, PDFs and video. Paid is $149.99 a year, about $12.50 a month, or $24.99 month to month.
It is built around US exams, and the website is English only, with the language switch inside the app. An Anki deck goes in only as pasted text; the importer Knowt advertises is for Quizlet sets.
Quizlet
Quizlet is for when a deck already exists for your course. Its own figure is over 700 million study sets, and that breadth is the reason to go there. Plus is about €45 a year on the App Store, and even Plus carries monthly usage limits.
Your Anki collection has nowhere to land: the website takes pasted text only, so a few thousand cards arrive stripped of media, and export is text the other way too. The Quizlet alternatives piece goes into the rest.
Gemini Notebook
Google has renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook. It is built for getting on top of a pile of source material, and it makes flashcards and quizzes from your uploads, with difficulty levels and an Explain button. On the free tier, cards and quizzes run on usage limits that refresh every 5 hours up to a weekly cap, and Google AI Pro is about $20 a month.
It remembers your progress and lets you re-run all the cards, or only the ones you missed, whenever you choose, and nothing sets a date for the next review. For anyone leaving Anki, whose scheduler makes that choice for you, this is the whole question.
Who should pick what
- You want control and want to pay nothing: stay with Anki. Free on desktop and Android, open source, exports the whole collection, native image occlusion, FSRS, and the most configurable scheduling here. The latest desktop release came out in September 2026.
- You never got started and want the cards to exist: Studyflash, because the deck comes out of material you already have, which removes the step where you stopped. Happy writing your own? Mochi.
- You want notes and cards in one place: RemNote, the only app here that both imports and exports Anki packages.
- You want a library instead of a blank deck: Brainscape's 2,500 free cards, or Quizlet for breadth. Neither imports an Anki package directly.
- You want to understand the material before memorising it: Gemini Notebook, alongside something that schedules the reviews.
- Your deck is medical, with audio and occlusion notes: the audio decks stay in Anki, the occlusion ones stay or get rebuilt from the original diagrams, and medicine has an article of its own.
Questions and answers
Which Anki alternative fits depends on why you are leaving. Studyflash writes the deck from your lectures, while Mochi suits anyone happy to keep writing their own cards. If control at no cost is what you want, staying with Anki is still the right call.
RemNote, Mochi and Studyflash; Mochi exports a CSV built for Anki, RemNote a package. Brainscape wants the deck converted to a text file first, while Quizlet and Knowt take it only as pasted text. Studyflash reads the package as Anki exports it.
Yes: each card keeps its text and images, cloze cards become fill in the blank, and anything else turns into a plain question-and-answer card. Audio, review history and Anki's own image occlusion notes do not come across. Keep audio decks in Anki; an occlusion deck can stay there as well, or you upload the original diagram and Studyflash makes its occlusion cards again.
Anki has it built in but switched off, and the switch is global. RemNote has it as a beta beside its SM-2 default, and Mochi offers it beside its own algorithm.
After 6 months unused, AnkiWeb deletes its copy of the data after a warning email; the account and the cards on your devices stay. Collections are capped at 100 MB compressed, and sounds and images sit outside that cap with no total size limit. Keep a local export; that same export is what Studyflash reads if you decide to move.
No. Move one text-heavy deck to Studyflash, study it for two weeks and see whether the scheduling suits you before you bring the other text and image decks. Audio decks stay in Anki, and occlusion decks either stay with them or are rebuilt from the original diagram. Studyflash imports deck by deck, so the rest can wait while you decide.