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The short answer: most complaints about Anki are years out of date, and the one real gap is that it never writes a card for you. 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 unless you study on an iPhone, and the apps that write your cards cap that on their free plans.
What each one makes, imports and costs
| Makes cards from your material | Image occlusion and scheduling | Takes an Anki export | Rough cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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, basic and cloze cards with their images; audio dropped | Free with a monthly allowance of AI generations; Premium per country at checkout, what the plans include |
| RemNote | Yes, against monthly AI credits | Yes, 5 free; SM-2, FSRS as a beta | Yes, with review history; exports too | $8 a month |
| Mochi | AI card-making listed; 5,000 free tokens | Diagram cards; own algorithm, FSRS optional | Imports with history; exports CSV for Anki | Free; Pro $5 a month |
| Brainscape | Yes, from pasted text, images, slides and video transcripts | Not documented; confidence rating 1 to 5 | No, convert to a text file first | About $96 a year |
| Knowt | Yes, from notes, PDFs and video | Not documented; spaced repetition | Not documented | $12.99 a month on the annual plan; $24.99 monthly |
| Quizlet | Yes, Study Guides; Ask Quizlet US only | Not documented; not documented | No, pasted text only | €44.99 a year on the German App Store |
| Gemini Notebook | Yes, from your uploads | Not documented; none documented | Not documented | Free tier; Google AI Pro about $20 a month |
Prices and features checked on 10 August 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 advises a few weeks on the defaults before you change anything, which is good advice and also why you never came 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 the reader 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; Premium is priced per country and shown at checkout.
The importer reads an Anki package or a plain text export: basic and cloze cards come across with their text and images, cloze turning into fill in the blank, formatting stripped. Audio is not imported, and other note types, Anki's own occlusion notes included, are not documented. Import the basic and cloze decks, keep Anki for the rest, and expect a term of running both.
RemNote
RemNote keeps cards inside your notes, so each card keeps its context. It has proper image occlusion and is the one app here that reads and writes Anki packages, review history included. Its default scheduler is SM-2, and FSRS is a beta you switch on. Pro is $8 a month.
The free plan is tight exactly where an Anki user notices, at 5 image occlusion cards, 250 AI credits a month and 5 AI card generations from a file 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 the reader 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 is $5 a month for sync.
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. The pricing page lists card-making with AI and the home page example sentences, and the free plan caps AI at 5,000 tokens a month.
Brainscape
Brainscape is for studying material somebody else organised. Repetition runs off your own confidence rating of 1 to 5 rather than a scheduler, and the free plan opens up to 2,500 ready-made cards. It costs about $96 a year.
No Brainscape page documents 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 $12.99 a month on the annual plan, billed $149.99 upfront, or $24.99 monthly.
It is built around US exams, and the website is English only, with the language switch inside the app. No Anki import is documented; the importer Knowt advertises is for Quizlet sets.
Quizlet
Quizlet is for when a deck already exists for your course. Its own figure is 900+ million study sets, and that breadth is the reason to go there. Plus is €44.99 a year on the German App Store, and even Plus carries monthly usage limits the vendor no longer quantifies.
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. No Quizlet page documents image occlusion. 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. The free tier allows 10 flashcard generations and 10 quizzes a day, and Google AI Pro is about $20 a month.
No review scheduling is documented. It remembers the cards you missed and serves them again, and says nothing about intervals, which for anyone leaving Anki 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. Desktop current as of 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 will take your Anki deck.
- You want to understand the material before memorising it: Gemini Notebook, alongside something that schedules the reviews.
- Your deck is medical and heavy with images and audio: that need has an article of its own.
Questions and answers
RemNote, Mochi and Studyflash; Mochi exports a CSV built for Anki, RemNote a package. Brainscape wants the deck converted to a text file first, Quizlet takes pasted text on the website, and neither Knowt nor Gemini Notebook documents an Anki import. Studyflash reads the package as Anki exports it.
Basic and cloze cards come across with their text and images, and cloze cards become fill in the blank. Audio is not imported and other note types are not documented, so a deck built on those is worth rebuilding in Studyflash from the original lecture material.
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. Studyflash schedules each card by how well you remembered it, with no options page first, and a cram mode for the night before.
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, study it for two weeks and see whether the scheduling suits you before you touch anything with images. Studyflash imports deck by deck, so the rest can stay in Anki while you decide.