Anki is the reference implementation of spaced repetition. It's free, open source, backed by decades of use, and if you're willing to learn it, nothing else gives you the same control.
It also asks a lot of you before you get your first card, which is why "how do I actually start with Anki" is a perennial question on r/Anki and every medical school forum.
If that was your experience, it isn't a willpower problem. Anki was designed as a power tool, and power tools have a learning curve. This is a specific comparison of what Anki does better, what it makes hard, and when a lighter AI-first alternative like ReviseNow is the more sensible choice.
Anki details below were checked in September 2026 against the official Anki manual and app store listings. Anki ships frequently — verify anything pricing-related before you rely on it.
What Anki genuinely does better
The scheduler is best in class. Anki started on SM-2, the algorithm Piotr Woźniak published with SuperMemo in 1987. Modern Anki also ships FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler), a newer model trained on large review datasets that adapts intervals to your actual performance. You can enable it per-deck in deck options. We don't know of another mainstream flashcard app with a scheduler this well developed.
Shared decks are a real asset. For standardized exams, community decks represent thousands of hours of curation — AnKing for USMLE Step 1 and Step 2, long-established community decks for MCAT, and mature language decks like the Core series for Japanese. If a good deck already exists for your exam, using it beats making your own.
Add-ons. Thousands of them, covering image occlusion, heat maps, custom scheduling, statistics. If you want to reshape how the app works, you can.
It's free and open source. No subscription, no upsell, and your collection is a local SQLite file you own outright.
Where Anki actually loses people
The first hour is spent on concepts, not studying. Before your first card you meet decks, note types, card templates, and fields. Note types in particular are the wall: to make a basic card you don't need to understand them, but the moment you want a cloze deletion or a reversed card you do, and the manual explains them in terms of the model rather than the task.
Card creation is entirely manual. Anki has no built-in AI. There's no "paste your lecture transcript and get cards." You type both sides of every card. That's fine once you're in a rhythm, and card-writing is itself good for learning — but it's slow going when you have a full semester of material to get through.
iPhone costs money. This is the detail that surprises people: Anki is free on desktop and AnkiDroid is free on Android, but AnkiMobile for iPhone and iPad is a one-time paid app — around $25 (check the App Store for the current price). It funds development and it's a fair deal for a tool you'll use for years, but "Anki is free" comes with an asterisk if you're on iOS.
AnkiWeb's browser reviewer is deliberately minimal. Sync itself is free and reliable. But the web client is a fallback for reviewing, not a full editing environment, so a school or library computer isn't a great place to build a deck.
ReviseNow vs Anki
| Anki | ReviseNow | |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling algorithm | SM-2, plus FSRS | SM-2 |
| AI card generation | None built in | Built in — text, audio, images |
| Setup before first card | Decks, note types, card templates | Create a subject, paste notes |
| Desktop | Free (Win/Mac/Linux) | Any browser |
| Android | AnkiDroid, free | Any browser, free |
| iPhone / iPad | AnkiMobile, ~$25 one-time | Any browser, free |
| Sync | Free via AnkiWeb | Cloud by default |
| Shared community decks | Very large library | None |
| Add-ons / extensibility | Extensive | None |
| Offline use | Yes | No — needs a connection |
| Open source | Yes (AGPL) | No |
| Price | Free, except iOS app | Free |
Two rows in that table are worth reading as reasons not to switch: Anki works offline and ReviseNow doesn't, and Anki's deck library has no equivalent here.
Stay with Anki if…
- A good shared deck exists for your exam. AnKing for USMLE is the clearest case. Don't rebuild what a community already refined over years.
- You want FSRS, per-deck scheduling control, or add-ons.
- You study offline — on a commute, on a plane, anywhere without reliable signal.
- You already have a working Anki habit. A tool you actually open beats a nicer one you don't.
ReviseNow makes more sense if…
- You're making cards from your own material — lecture recordings, textbook chapters, class notes, photographed slides. Paste a transcript and get a card back in seconds, upload a voice recording, or photograph a page. This is the gap Anki leaves wide open, and it's most of the work for a typical college course.
- You're on an iPhone and don't want to pay to review on the device you actually carry.
- You've already bounced off Anki once. If the setup defeated you, the honest fix is a lower floor, not more discipline.
- You want diagrams and formulas on cards without hunting for the right add-on.
The part nobody says out loud
Both apps run essentially the same science. Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve and the testing effect don't care which app you use — we cover the underlying evidence in our guide to spaced repetition.
So the real question isn't which app is more powerful. Anki is, comfortably. The question is which one you'll still be using in six weeks. For students building cards from their own notes, the answer is usually whichever one made the first card easy.
Try ReviseNow free — first deck running in about three minutes, no card limit. If it turns out you want FSRS and add-ons, Anki will still be there, and it's still free.