You are in the first years of medicine in Leuven, Zurich or Montpellier, the module handouts keep stacking up, and everyone in your year swears by flashcards. Choosing the best flashcard app feels like comparing feature lists. For medicine, though, it comes down to four things: image occlusion, what a ready-made deck is worth to you, how the cards get made, and the price.
Start here: if you are sitting the USMLE, the United States Medical Licensing Examination, use Anki with the AnKing deck and stop reading. On a European curriculum nobody has built your faculty's cardiology module, so the choice turns on image occlusion and on how the cards get made. That second one is where Studyflash comes in: it builds the deck from the lecture PDF, the slides or the recording. Studyflash starts on a free plan; the pricing page lists what each plan includes, and the app shows the price.
The best flashcard app for medical students, compared on four things
| Image occlusion | Ready-made medical decks | Cards from your own material | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studyflash | Yes, one of six card types | None; decks shared by link | PDFs, slides, photos of notes, pasted text, recorded lectures | Free with a monthly allowance of AI generations; mock exams with Premium; price in the app, what the plans include |
| Anki with AnKing | Yes, built in | AnKing Step deck, over 30,000 cards for the USMLE | No, add-ons only | Apps free; iPhone about $25 once; AnkiHub Core $6 a month or $66 a year |
| RemNote | Yes, 5 images free, unlimited on Pro | Only an MCAT course, the US entrance exam | Yes, against AI credits | $8 a month billed yearly |
| Brainscape | No, "coming soon" | Certified USMLE Step 1 set, around 9,700 cards | Pasted text, photos, Word and PowerPoint; no PDF upload | $7.99 a month billed yearly |
| Mochi | Yes, Diagram cards | Only decks users publish to its library | No deck from a PDF; AI helps write single cards | Free; Pro $5 a month billed yearly |
| Quizlet | Diagram sets; making one needs Plus | Over 700 million sets, public by default | Ask Quizlet, US only | About €45 a year on the App Store |
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.
Image occlusion decides most of this
Cover the labels on a diagram and recall them one at a time: that is the technique anatomy, histology and pathology are built for, so read that column first. Anki has had image occlusion built in since version 23.10, and the old add-on is no longer needed. RemNote gives you 5 images free and unlimited on Pro.
Mochi calls them Diagram cards and schedules each region separately. Studyflash has it as one of six card types, made from the diagrams in the files you upload. Brainscape does not have it yet and says so on its own site. If your subject is taught through labelled figures, that one column removes Brainscape before you compare anything else.
Studyflash
Studyflash is built for the material your faculty actually hands you. Upload the lecture PDF, the slides or a photo of handwritten notes and the deck comes back built, with occlusion cards made from their diagrams. Record the lecture and the transcript becomes cards, a summary and a quiz, the remark your lecturer drops about the exam included. A mock exam covers the whole course, timed and graded, with last year's exam as the template. The free plan carries a monthly allowance of AI generations.
There is no AnKing equivalent here, no public library, just decks shared by link. The Anki importer brings cards across with their text and images, but not Anki's own image occlusion notes, which you rebuild in Studyflash from the original diagram. A deck the size of AnKing is over its limit, so keep Anki for AnKing and use Studyflash for your own course.
Pharmacokinetic calculations do not suit flashcards. Work them through step by step with Max, Studyflash's AI tutor, or in a mock exam's calculation questions.
Anki with the AnKing deck
AnKing is a maintained deck aimed at one exam: over 30,000 cards for Step 1, 2 and 3. The nearest thing here is Brainscape's Step 1 set, around 9,700 cards. Anki's apps are free apart from the iPhone one, and AnkiHub, which hosts AnKing, puts it in the Core plan at $6 a month or $66 a year. The free plan covers a starter deck and community decks.
Where it stops is everything that is not a pre-made deck. There is no native AI generation, so turning your own lecture PDF into cards means a third-party add-on that the next Anki update can break. More in the piece on moving away from Anki.
RemNote
RemNote keeps the cards inside the notes they came from. You annotate a PDF and the card grows out of the annotation. Reviews run on Anki's classic algorithm unless you switch on FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, which RemNote still calls a beta. A deck imported from Anki arrives with its scheduling intact. Its AI writes cards from your own material, drawn against AI credits.
The free plan is where it pinches: it stops at 5 occlusion images and 3 annotated PDFs, about one week of lectures, so a term of either means Pro. Its ready-made medical content is an MCAT course, for the US medical-school entrance exam, which leaves your modules yours to build.
Brainscape
Brainscape schedules by confidence instead of a pass or fail button. You say how sure you were, and the card comes back anywhere from minutes to months later. Its certified USMLE Step 1 collection runs to around 9,700 cards, and $7.99 a month, billed yearly, buys that ready-made content.
There is no image occlusion, and the site says it is coming. Images and sounds on cards belong to the paid plan, so the free tier is a text product in a subject taught through pictures, and its AI takes pasted text, photos of notes, Word and PowerPoint files, but no PDF upload.
Mochi
Like Anki, Mochi gives you occlusion for free. Its Diagram cards give each region its own schedule, and an import from Anki keeps your review history. Sync across devices is the paid tier.
Nothing in it is medical-specific, and the AI will not build a deck from your lecture PDF: it works on text inside a card, turning a statement into a question or adding an example sentence. Mochi suits the student who writes their own cards and wants them scheduled properly.
Quizlet
Quizlet's feature is that the set already exists. It holds over 700 million study sets, public by default, and if your cohort passes links around, that network is worth more to you than any card type.
Learn has monthly limits even on base Plus, and Ask Quizlet, the chat that reads your files, is US only. Study Guides come in English, French and German. Exports are text only, so a set built on diagrams does not leave Quizlet.
Who should pick what
- Sitting the USMLE: Anki with the AnKing deck. 30,000 cards written and corrected against that exact exam. The deck costs $66 a year through AnkiHub, and Anki itself is free except on the iPhone.
- On a European curriculum, working from your faculty's slides: the question is how the cards get made. Studyflash if you want the deck built from the PDF and the recorded lecture, plus a mock exam modelled on last year's exam. RemNote if you want the cards inside annotated notes and will pay for Pro.
- Short of money: Anki, free on every device but the iPhone, with image occlusion built in. Mochi has Diagram cards on its free plan too, and Brainscape's free plan works only if your material is text.
- Your cohort already lives in Quizlet: stay for the shared sets, knowing Learn is metered even on paid base Plus and your diagrams will not export.
- Already on Anki and drowning in reviews: the app is not the problem. Check that FSRS is switched on and prune before you switch tools. If the time goes on making cards rather than reviewing them, that is the case for generating them from your own material.
Questions and answers
No. Image occlusion has been built into Anki since version 23.10, so a guide telling you to install an add-on is describing an older version.
AnKing comes with the Core plan of AnkiHub, which hosts it: $66 a year, or $6 monthly. AnkiHub's free plan gets you only a starter deck and community decks.
No, AnKing is over the size limit of Studyflash's Anki import, so the deck stays in Anki, which is where it belongs if you are sitting the USMLE. Smaller Anki decks come across with their text and images, cloze cards turning into fill in the blank, while audio and Anki's own image occlusion notes stay behind. Studyflash's place is your own lecture material, built into cards beside the deck you keep in Anki.
Quizlet is enough for drug names, vocabulary and anything list-shaped, especially if your cohort already shares sets. Where medicine is visual it gets thinner: making a diagram set needs Plus, each set labels one image, and images do not leave Quizlet if you export. Studyflash makes occlusion cards from the diagrams in the material you upload.
Anki does, through AMBOSS's official add-on, which shows its explanations inside your cards. The add-on is free with 50 short definitions, and beyond those it needs an active AMBOSS account, through a subscription or a campus licence. Ask your faculty whether it has a campus licence before you pay.