Anki Review
Ugly, free, and unbeatable
Not a course, an engine. Every learner heading for an exam or a large vocabulary should be running it in the background of whatever else they use.
Where Anki shines
- The most effective retention tool in existence, at any price
- Free on Android, desktop and web; shared decks for every language
- Fully offline and syncs across devices
- Endlessly customisable, including AI-generated cards
- Interface is genuinely unfriendly
- You must build or curate decks yourself
- No lessons, grammar, speaking or listening practice
- Easy to over-invest in deck tinkering instead of studying
Anki is the least app-like thing on this list and the one most likely to still be on your phone in three years. It does one thing: shows you a card at the moment you are about to forget it. That is the entire product, and decades of retention research say it is the right one.
Because it is content-agnostic, it goes anywhere the polished apps cannot: JLPT kanji, medical Spanish, Icelandic noun declensions, the two hundred words from the novel you are reading. Shared decks cover most common needs, and AI now makes generating custom cards from your own material trivial.
The costs are the interface, which is unapologetically utilitarian, and the discipline required — nobody sends you a notification with a cartoon owl. Pair it with a course app or a tutor and it quietly does the memory work neither of them does well.
Version reviewed: 2.24.0 (AnkiDroid) · July 31, 2026
Screenshots below were captured by our automated test rig on a real Android phone (Moto G Power 2021, Android 11) — no account, no trial, nothing to buy.
It starts with an empty box — literally
This is what greets you after install: a cardboard box with cobwebs and 'Collection is empty.' No mascot, no placement test, no card request, no account. AnkiDroid is free, open-source, volunteer-built software, and it assumes something no commercial app dares to: that you'll bring your own motivation. Everything about it follows from that.
Thousands of free decks, shared by learners
You don't have to build everything yourself. The shared-deck library — a plain, fast, gloriously unfashionable web page — has thousands of community decks. Searching Spanish turns up classics like the 5,000-word frequency dictionary, 9,000 sentences with native audio, and full conjugation courses, each with honest user reviews attached. Free, all of it.
Or make your own cards in seconds
The note editor is the heart of the do-it-yourself workflow: front, back, done — here 'el mercado de pescado' / 'the fish market'. Making your own cards sounds like homework, and it is; it's also famously effective, because deciding what goes on the card is itself studying. This is the app's real learning curve: not the software, the habit.
The four buttons that run the whole system
Flip a card and grade yourself: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy — each showing exactly when you'll see the card next (<1 minute to 5 days, stretching to months as you succeed). This is spaced repetition laid bare: cards you know retreat into the future, cards you miss come back immediately. Every serious language learner ends up here eventually; medical students memorize entire degrees with these four buttons.
The catch: it's a tool, not a coach
Finish your reviews and you get a gray snackbar: 'Congratulations! You have finished for today.' Plus one quietly useful stat — cards studied, seconds per card. No chest, no gems, no guilt-flame. That's the whole trade: AnkiDroid is free on Android and the web (the $24.99 iPhone app is how the project funds itself), endlessly powerful, and completely indifferent to whether you show up tomorrow. Bring your own streak.
Is Anki free?
Yes on Android, desktop and AnkiWeb. The iOS app is a one-off purchase that funds development.
Do I have to make my own cards?
No — thousands of shared decks exist — but cards you make from your own material work best.
Is Anki a language course?
No. It handles memory only; you need something else for grammar, speaking and listening.
See how Anki stacks up
vs Duolingo
vs Babbel
vs Rosetta StoneTechnology behind Anki
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