Retain Cards review 2026: Retain and Studyflash compared

Prices and features checked on 16 September 2026; prices vary by country and store.

From definitions to image occlusion, Studyflash offers six kinds of card, more than Retain, and you decide which ones each deck gets. Image occlusion hides part of your own diagram for you to recall. Studyflash, like the Retain Cards app, lets you choose how thorough the cards are.

In our test, Retain's card types stayed fixed for every deck we made. Not one diagram, chart or image in our four lectures became an image occlusion card. A medical student can't ask Retain for cards that hide the labels on an anatomy diagram. From the same lectures, Studyflash made 258 cards and Retain 193.

Studyflash takes a PDF or other document, a photo of handwritten notes, pasted text or a lecture recorded live. It builds the deck to cover all of it, with the number of cards and the level of detail you set. Studyflash works in 27 languages.

If a deck misses the mark, you tell Max, Studyflash's AI tutor, what to change without losing your own cards. Your flashcards are then ready for spaced repetition or a full cram session. The mobile app lets you study them offline.

In Studyflash you pick an overview or an in-depth summary, then set its length and format before it is written. Whichever you choose, the summary is built to cover all your material, and it can include reflection questions if you want. With a whole course uploaded, Retain's summaries came with very few settings. That makes it hard to shape a summary around what your exam asks for.

Quizzes follow the number of questions and the question types you choose. Each answer is explained from your own material. Max has read the course and makes a summary or a quiz when you ask.

The closer a mock exam comes to your real exam, the more it tells you, so Studyflash builds yours from the whole course and matches it to the structure and question style of your old exam or example questions. It draws on eight question types, times the paper and grades it on your country's scale.

Without an old exam, you set the number of questions, the time limit and the question types yourself. Given a whole course, Retain produced a short mock exam with few options to shape it. A short test you can barely adjust is no rehearsal for a two-hour exam.

You can take mock exams whenever you like, as often as you like. Studyflash's study plan takes the course topic by topic to mastery and offers a mock exam as its last step. The plan suggests an order for the topics, but you don't have to follow it.

Retain suits students who only have a few pages a month to turn into cards.

• Your own notes or a term's worth of lecture slides: Studyflash turns them into cards in the types your material needs, diagrams included.
• Summaries you control: Studyflash lets you set their depth, length and format before it writes them.
• A mock exam that looks like the real one: Studyflash shapes it on an old exam you upload.
• Studying without paying: Studyflash's free plan keeps flashcards, quizzes and spaced repetition with no ads. Chat with Max, Studyflash's AI tutor, is unlimited on it.

Maximilian S. from the Studyflash team tested both apps in September 2026, uploading four master's-level lecture presentations unchanged to each. The 130 slides are heavy on images and charts, formulas, definitions and worked examples, with many notes a student typed onto them. Retain ran on its Premium plan. We looked at how many cards came out, whether you can pick the card types and whether a diagram became cards with parts hidden. Then came the summaries, podcast and mock exam made from all four, uploaded as one course.

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