Anki

What hackers pick instead

• AnkiDroidFree open-source flashcard app for Android; people praise its reliability and custom sync support, with notification problems and worries about the Anki ownership change as caveats.23recommend
• HashcardsPlain-text, offline, open-source spaced repetition app keeping cards in markdown under git, with few settings. Caveat: reviews follow a fixed scheduler.13recommend
• Mochi flashcard appPeople recommend it as a flexible alternative to Anki, with powerful templating and notebook mode. Caveat: it is Electron-based, a dealbreaker for some.9recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 232 comments. Each links to the original.

1. I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “The Whole App is a Blob”

2. For a long time, Anki was really useful for me, it pushed my Spanish and German forward, but now I plan to decrease the number of reviews significantly.

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “I did 301,432 flashcard reviews in 2025”

3. When I was doing rote memorization and flashcards frequently (some years ago now) I observed that remembering things became a lot easier for me.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “A Love Letter to Flashcards”

4. Flashcard programs like Anki are really great because it identifies where you need more work and drills you on your weak points

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “A Love Letter to Flashcards”

5. This is an open source flashcards app, with minimalistic (one could say primitive) UI and no gamification whatsoever

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?”

6. once I learned to edit and update the cards and add my own, I really began to understand how to boil concepts down

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

7. You can customise note types with CSS and Javascript, which means that you can make cards look however you want.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system”

8. all the time spent in Anki laid a rock-solid foundation that merely needed activation in the right environment

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “What's the best way to learn a new language?”

9. Anki solves this problem: all words you learn via flashcards have a (roughly) equal chance of being remembered

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Show HN: Anki-LLM – Bulk process and generate Anki flashcards with LLMs”

10. I can really appreciate the way Anki uses notes, models, and templates to essentially create "virtual cards"

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system”

11. Learn to use Anki to leverage spaced repetition to intentionally put things into your long term memory.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Ask HN: Advice for first-year CS students?”

12. it has nearly every feature of the desktop client, including full scripting support for card contents

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

13. I bought iOS Anki app for myself many years ago. What I found hard is to recommend it to others

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

14. Anki is and was truly a blessing. Not sure I would have gotten through my studies without it.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

15. Spaced repetition software like Anki for vocabulary learning is a huge improvement I think.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy”

16. I think it is too expensive especially since I can easily afford that having a job and all

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

17. You can edit the structure of the card templates so they're the 'right way around' for you

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

18. Considering that anki can always be forked if development goes being hostile towards users

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

19. I've personally both had and seen great success with the Anki approach for specific terms

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12”

20. Free open source software like Anki & xiehanzi can save you from using all those tokens.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “中文 Literacy Speedrun II: Character Cyclotron”

21. I find spaced repetition Anki flash cards surpisingly effective for this kind of thing.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)”

22. It improved my grades so much in college that I spent the 25 bucks as a broke student

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

23. I've found Spaced Repetition (via Anki etc) to be great for remembering these things.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Small programming tricks”

24. Anki is finally usable after they ditched the hot garbage algorithm they were using.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “A Love Letter to Flashcards”

25. There are regular updates and a big community contributing knowledge, add-ins, etc.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

26. I've tried several times before to install syncserver using those pip instructions, on multiple platforms, without success.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

27. Anki, conversely, is designed for efficiency, which means it's designed to be as painful and unrewarding as possible

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “AI Isn't Outthinking Mathematicians. It's Out-Remembering Them”

28. the software I used to remember things tells me "this thing is hard for you to remember so you should just give up."

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “AI Isn't Outthinking Mathematicians. It's Out-Remembering Them”

29. It ended up being easier to Vibe code a bespoke one that took the input in a format that was easier to provide.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?”

30. The pip instructions are bad. Typical Python things: Non-reproducible, not involving a proper lock file.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

31. all claiming the default settings are terrible and you have to set up an elaborate bunch of settings

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “A Love Letter to Flashcards”

32. I've been vibe coding my own SRS software that is vastly superior to my learning style than Anki

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics”

33. in current Anki versions you need to manually update the parameters to optimize your learning

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

34. Anki never worked out for me (too hard to use, too hard to sync, everything too complicated)

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system”

35. very hard to recommend mobile app to people if you need to add these kind of "workarounds"

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

36. vibe coding my own SRS software that is vastly superior to my learning style than Anki

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics”

37. getting the llm to ingest high quality posts/books about the subject and use those to generate anki cards has helped a lot

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Two kinds of vibe coding”

38. Relieved at that part where they say there are no investors involved, makes the whole thing a whole lot less risky.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ownership of open source flashcard app Anki transferred to for-profit AnkiHub”

39. I find that I get good-enough grades by just feeding ChatGPT the test reviews and having it create Anki flashcards

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating”

40. Anki is inefficient compared to better methods, but more efficient than haphazardly trying to memorize things

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “A Love Letter to Flashcards”