Paper flashcards vs Anki vs AI flashcards
Three ways to use flashcards, what each one is good at, and how to choose.
Flashcards work because they make you recall an answer, not just read it. But how you make and review them changes how much you actually remember, and how long you keep doing it.
What makes any flashcard work
Two things do the work, whatever the tool. The first is retrieval: answering from memory. In a well-known 2008 study, Karpicke and Roediger had students learn word pairs in a foreign language. Students who kept testing themselves remembered about 80% a week later; students who kept rereading remembered about a third. The second is spacing: reviewing just before you forget. Any method that gives you both will work. The real differences are how long the cards take to make and whether you keep going.
Paper flashcards
Writing a card by hand is a small act of learning in itself, and paper needs no battery. The problem is timing. A stack of paper cards doesn’t know which ones you’re about to forget, so most people review everything or review whatever is on top. Big stacks quickly become hard to manage.
Best for: a short list for a test this week, or young learners.
Paper with a schedule: the Leitner box
Paper cards don’t have to be unscheduled. The Leitner system uses a few boxes: cards you get right move forward to a box you review less often, and cards you miss go back to the first box. It is spaced repetition by hand. The catch is the upkeep: sorting, carrying and remembering which box is due.
Anki
Anki is a free, open-source app that brought spaced repetition to millions. It schedules every card for you and can be customised in almost any way: templates, fields, add-ons, and scheduling options. Thousands of shared decks exist.
The cost is time. You write both sides of every card, and learning the app takes a while. Many people love the method and give up on the card-making.
Best for: learners who want full control and are happy to invest in setup. See our Toly vs Anki comparison.
Anki keeps improving, too. Since 2023 it can use FSRS, a newer scheduler that fits the timing to your own review history. If you already have years of cards in Anki, that alone is a good reason to stay.
AI flashcards
AI flashcard apps write the back of the card for you. In Toly, you type one word, concept, or question and get a finished card (meaning, example, pronunciation, synonyms) scheduled with spaced repetition right away.
The trade-off is control: you edit cards rather than design them. And because AI can make mistakes, it’s worth checking cards for anything that must be exact.
Best for: learners who want the benefits of spaced repetition without the card-making.
Writing good cards, whatever you use
- One idea per card. “Mitochondria make ATP” is a card; a whole paragraph about cells is not.
- Keep the context. A word with an example sentence is easier to recall than the word alone.
- Make it yours. Cards from your own reading and your own mistakes stick better than a list someone else chose.
- Check what matters. AI gets common words right almost every time, but rare words, medical terms and legal terms deserve a quick check against a trusted source.
The time cost, in numbers
Say you add 15 new words a day. Writing a good card by hand, with a meaning, an example and a note on pronunciation, takes about a minute, so that is a quarter of an hour of making before any reviewing starts. Over a month, that is more than seven hours spent building cards. With an AI flashcard app the same cards take seconds each, and the time goes into the part that actually builds memory: the reviews.
Quick comparison
| Paper | Anki | AI (Toly) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to make a card | A minute | A minute or more | A second |
| Review scheduling | None | Automatic | Automatic |
| Customisation | Total | Very high | Edit any card |
| Setup | None | Takes time | A minute |
How to choose
If you’ll only study a few cards once, paper is fine. If you love tuning your tools, Anki rewards the effort. If you want to type what you’re learning and simply remember it, an AI flashcard app like Toly gets you there fastest.
Sources
- Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science. doi:10.1126/science.1152408
- Leitner, S. (1972). So lernt man lernen. Freiburg: Herder.
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266
Type your first word.
Toly writes the card. You just remember it.