Anki alternatives, sorted by what made you leave

Most lists of Anki alternatives are a list of flashcard apps. That is not useful, because nobody leaves Anki for a flashcard app; they leave for a reason, and the reason decides where they should go. Someone who quit because writing cards on a Tuesday evening was the step that never happened needs something different from someone who quit because the interface looked like 2009, and both need something different from someone who came back after a holiday to nine hundred due cards and closed the app for good.

So this is sorted by reason. Five of them, in the order they come up, with the alternative that actually addresses each, what you give up by leaving, and the honest case for staying. Everything is as of September 2026, and Agent Memo, which appears under two of the reasons, is the tool we make; the description is in the same terms as the others.

First, what Anki gets right

It is worth being clear about this before listing what replaces it, because the alternatives are all trading some of it away.

Anki is free and open source on desktop and Android, and a one-time purchase of about $25 on iPhone. Its spaced repetition schedule is as good as any available, and since late 2023 a modern scheduler has been an option. Its shared-deck library is the largest in existence, and for medicine, law and languages there are decks that amount to a standard. Its add-ons can make it do almost anything. Its export is complete and every serious tool imports it. Fifteen years of people have used it to keep enormous bodies of knowledge, and it still works.

If none of the five reasons below is yours, stay.

Reason 1: you stopped writing cards

The most common reason, and the one the alternatives lists tend to skip because it is not about the app. Anki assumes the cards exist. Writing a good card from a book, one that asks for the mechanism and not the date, is real work, and after the first fortnight it is work that competes with starting the next book. The cards stop being written, the queue runs dry, and the app is still installed but no longer used.

What fixes it: a tool that drafts the cards from the source. Three take different approaches.

• RemNote drafts cards from a PDF or from your notes. Its instinct is volume; a chapter can come back as sixty cards, and deciding which to keep is your job. Fine if you like pruning; a new kind of backlog if you do not.
• Quizlet drafts sets from pasted notes and has a library where someone may already have made the set. Built for the exam next month rather than the year after, and the drafted cards lean toward recognising answers rather than producing them.
• Agent Memo reads the whole source, a book, article, PDF, video or recording, and proposes the handful worth keeping, a dozen from a book rather than sixty from a chapter, each traceable to the passage it came from. You see all of them before any enter review, dropping one is a click, and you can write your own beside them. It does not know what you wanted from the book unless you tell it.

What you give up: control over the exact wording of every card, and the shared-deck library. A drafted card is a proposal; if you want to author every one from scratch, you did not have this reason.

Drafting saves time only when every proposed card can still be checked against its source.

Reason 2: the backlog

You went on holiday. You came back to a number, and the number was large, and Anki showed you the number. There are settings to cap reviews per day and add-ons to spread a backlog, but the default is the whole pile, and the pile is the single most common way a spaced repetition habit ends.

What fixes it: a tool that fits what is due into a session rather than showing you a total.

• Agent Memo has a daily ceiling you set, five, ten or twenty minutes, and the schedule fits inside it. A missed week comes back as a fuller session, not a wall.
• Readwise shows a fixed small number of items each day regardless of how many are waiting. Gentle, and by design not a complete schedule.
• Anki itself, with the daily review limit set low and the modern scheduler on, is more forgiving than its defaults suggest. If the backlog is your only complaint, try this before leaving.

What you give up: the honesty of the number. A tool that hides the pile is deciding for you which cards you will not see today. That is the right trade for most people and the wrong one for someone with an exam.

Reason 3: the interface

Anki's desktop app looks like the year it was written and its mobile apps are functional rather than pleasant. This bothers some people not at all and others enough to stop.

What fixes it: almost anything newer. The question is what else changes.

• Mochi is the calm option: markdown cards, decks as files, an interface that gets out of the way. You still write every card. Free with limits, paid for sync.
• RemNote is polished and modern, and it is a notes app, which is either the point or the obstacle.
• Agent Memo is built to the same register as Mochi, sharp, calm and adult, without streaks or badges, and adds the capture side.

What you give up: add-ons, above all. Nothing else has the ecosystem, and if there is an add-on you depend on, that is a reason to stay that outweighs the interface.

Reason 4: you want cards beside your notes

You already take notes, in an outliner or a markdown vault, and you want the cards to live where the notes live rather than in a separate program you have to remember to open.

What fixes it:

• RemNote is the purpose-built answer. A line in your notes becomes a card; the scheduler runs inside the notes app.
• Obsidian with a community spaced repetition plugin gets you most of the way if your notes are already there. It is less integrated than RemNote and more yours.

What you give up: the separation. A notes app with cards in it is a notes app first, and reviewing inside it means opening the thing you take notes in. Some people want exactly that; others find the cards get buried.

Reason 5: you want to review what you read, not what you typed

You read on a Kindle or in a read-later app. You highlight. The highlights go nowhere. What you want is not to write cards from the highlights but to have the highlights come back.

What fixes it:

• Readwise collects highlights from most sources and resurfaces a few each day; its Mastery mode turns highlights you choose into active recall prompts. The prompt is the highlight itself rather than a question written for recall, and choosing which ones to promote is still on you. Compared with its own alternatives here.
• Agent Memo works from the source rather than the highlight: capture the article or the book and the agent proposes the questions, cited to the passage. Better if you want recall of the argument; worse if what you wanted was your own highlights back.

What you give up: on Readwise, the question-writing; on Agent Memo, the highlight-syncing across every reading app you own.

Side by side

Before you leave

Two things to check, whichever direction you go.

Export from Anki first. Its export is complete, in its own format and as plain text. Do it before uninstalling, not after.

Ask whether the destination keeps your history. Several tools import Anki's cards and reset every one to new, which throws away years of scheduling. Agent Memo imports the review history; for any other tool, look for the words "scheduling history" specifically, not just "imports from Anki". A broader comparison covers this per tool.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free Anki alternative? Anki is the free one; most alternatives have a free tier and charge for sync, generation or volume. Mochi's free tier is generous for a single device. Obsidian with a plugin is free. Agent Memo has a free tier.

What is the best Anki alternative for medical school? Probably Anki, with the AnKing deck. No alternative has a shared deck of that scale, and the syllabus is exactly what shared decks are for. The reasons to leave above are about people without a syllabus.

Which alternative can import my Anki decks? Most import the cards. Fewer keep the scheduling history. Check for the second before assuming.

Is there an Anki alternative that makes the cards for you? Yes, and they differ on how many they make and whether you can see where each came from. RemNote and Quizlet draft in volume from notes; Agent Memo proposes a small set from the whole source, each cited to its passage. Which is better depends on whether you want to prune or to trust.

Should I just fix my Anki settings instead? If the backlog is your only complaint, yes: set a daily review cap and turn on the modern scheduler. If the complaint is the card-writing, no setting fixes that.

What to do now

Name the reason. If it is the interface or the notes, the fix is a different app and your cards come with you. If it is the backlog, try the cap first. If it is the card-writing, the honest answer is that no amount of willpower has fixed it so far, and the tools that draft cards from the source are the ones to try; start with the thing you are reading now and see what comes back.