← CompareRecall vs Anki
The gold standard for flashcards — if you're willing to write them.
Anki is free, open source, endlessly configurable, and backed by one of the best-studied spaced repetition schedulers available (SM-2, with FSRS now an option). Medical students and language learners build astonishing decks with it and review them for years. The catch is the same thing that makes it powerful: you have to author every card yourself, and most people never finish a deck.
Anki
Best for
Medical students, language learners, and anyone with the discipline to author and maintain decks by hand.
Free (desktop, Android) · $25 one-time (iOS)
Recall
Best for
Readers who want the benefits of active recall without writing a single card.
$2.99/month
Feature
Anki
Recall
Primary purposeWhat the product is built for
Drill flashcards you write
Test comprehension of what you read
Card / question creationManual effort to set up
All manual — you write every card
Automatic, generated from your highlights
Question type
Recognition (front/back, cloze)
Open-ended, free-text answer
Answer evaluation
Self-graded ("Again / Hard / Good / Easy")
AI-graded free-text answer with follow-ups
Spaced repetition algorithm
SM-2 or FSRS, both mature and tunable
SM-2 with confidence weighting
Configurability
Deep — custom intervals, card types, hundreds of add-ons
Opinionated, few knobs by design
Offline use
Fully offline, no account needed
Needs network access (the tutor is cloud-hosted)
Cost
Free forever, open source
$2.99/month
Where Recall is weaker
Honest list of things Anki does better.
We update this when reality changes.
- Configurability.Custom intervals, image occlusion, dozens of cloze types, and a plugin ecosystem for anything you can imagine. Recall is opinionated by design — if you want infinite control over your review mechanics, Anki wins outright.
- Offline.Anki works entirely offline, with no account and no server dependency. Recall's tutor needs network access, since the grading and follow-up questions come from an LLM in the cloud.
- Free.Anki is free forever and open source, full stop. Recall is $2.99/month — not expensive, but it's not free, and for some use cases (huge decks, zero budget) that alone settles it.
Still curious?
Try Recall with one book for two weeks. If it doesn't stick, you keep what you've planted, and walk away.