Comparison
The best flashcard app for you: Flashside, Anki and Brainscape compared
The best flashcard app is the one that schedules your reviews well, runs where you study and opens the cards you already have. Anki is a desktop program with phone apps, add-ons and FSRS. Brainscape rates cards by confidence and makes cards with AI. Flashside uses FSRS on iPhone, Android and the web, imports Anki and Excel, and is free to learn.
Side by side
What each flashcard app does
Features only, each taken from the product’s own site on 18 October 2026. Prices change too often to print here; check them on each site.
| Feature | Flashside | Anki | Brainscape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | iPhone, Android and the web browser | Windows, macOS and Linux; AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiDroid on Android | Web, iOS and Android |
| How reviews are scheduled | FSRS, from four grades, with a target retention you can set How it works, weight by weight → | Its own scheduler, or FSRS with a desired retention, set in the deck options | Confidence-Based Repetition: you rate each card from 1 to 5 |
| Import | CSV, Excel (.xlsx, .xls), Anki packages (.apkg, .colpkg) and pasted lists; from 1.51, photos and PDFs read by AI (Plus, in the app) | Anki packages (.apkg) with notes, note types and cards | Vocab lists and question banks; AI turns PDF, Word, slides, Excel, photos and video into cards |
| What a card can hold | Rich text, images and audio on either side | Audio, images, video and scientific markup, in layouts you can change | Text formatting, images, sounds and animated GIFs |
| Sharing | A public link and QR code per collection; podcast mode keeps copies up to date | Shared decks on AnkiWeb, as .apkg files | Decks edited together with set permissions; a library of certified decks |
| Sync and extras | Sync with an account; a study plan from your minutes a day and an exam date | AnkiWeb sync between devices; add-ons extend it | AI that finds or makes cards from your material |
Free and Plus
What Flashside Plus adds, and what a free learner gets of it
| Feature | Free / Plus learner |
|---|---|
| ✦ Natural voices | — / ✓ |
| ✦ Translation while you write | — / ✓ |
| ✦ AI quizzes | 1 a month / ✓ |
| ✦ Card doctor | 3 a month / ✓ |
| ✦ Weekly coach note | 1 a month / ✓ |
| ✦ “Why did I miss this?” | — / ✓ |
| ✦ Cards from a picture | 1 a month / ✓ |
| ✦ Memory hooks | 20 a month shown on new cards, then one a day / ✓ |
| ✦ Look-alikes told apart | — / ✓ |
And Quizlet?
What Quizlet’s own site says it does
Quizlet builds a set from terms and definitions, with pictures from its own image library, and its Import turns your notes into flashcards. You can star the cards you want to drill, search sets other students and teachers made, and study in four modes beyond flipping cards, or on its mobile app by swiping right for a card you know and left for one you do not. It is not in the table because we could not check on its site how it schedules reviews, the row that matters most here.
Which one
It depends on how you study
Pick Anki if
you want a desktop program you can extend with add-ons, and to tune card layouts and review timing yourself.
Pick Brainscape if
you want a library of certified decks, cards made from your material by AI, or decks edited together with a class.
Pick Flashside if
you want FSRS without setup on iPhone, Android and the web, to bring Anki or Excel cards with you, and to learn for free.
Try it on your own cards
Import an Anki package or a spreadsheet and see how the reviews land. It is free, and you can start without an account.
