Toly vs Anki.
Both are spaced-repetition flashcard apps. They disagree about one thing: whether writing the card should be your job.
Choose Anki if…
You want cloze deletions, custom note types and add-ons; you study across desktop and Android as well as iOS; you already have decks you do not want to rebuild; or you enjoy tuning the scheduler.
Choose Toly if…
Your decks keep dying at the card-writing step; you study on an iPhone; you want a card to exist thirty seconds after you meet the word; and you would rather have no settings than good settings.
Feature by feature.
| Feature | Anki | Toly |
|---|---|---|
| Writing the back of a card | You write it, or you find a shared deck | AI writes it in about a second, then you edit |
| Making a card from a photo | Not built in | Scan: photograph a page, tap the words |
| Spaced repetition | Yes, with tunable parameters | Yes, with nothing to tune |
| Setup before your first card | Choose a note type and card template | Type one line |
| Platforms | Desktop, Android, iOS, web | iPhone |
| Sync | AnkiWeb account | iCloud with Sign in with Apple |
| Customisation | Deep — note types, templates, add-ons | One card format, on purpose |
| Importing existing decks | Yes | No |
| Price | Free (paid iOS app) | Free plan; PRO from $2.50/mo billed yearly |
Anki is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with Toly. Details above reflect Anki's standard behaviour without community add-ons.
One assumes you have the content. One writes it.
Anki is a superb scheduling engine wrapped in an editor built for people who want control over every field. That control is real, and for a medical student with a 20,000-card deck it is worth every hour spent learning it.
Toly makes the opposite bet: that most people quit before the scheduler ever gets a chance, because writing card backs is tedious. So it writes them, gives you one format, and gets out of the way. Everything Toly leaves out is left out to protect that bet.
Toly vs Anki, answered.
Which is better, Toly or Anki?
They optimise for different things. Anki gives you total control over card structure and scheduling, and expects you to bring the content. Toly gives you no control over either and writes the content for you. If your bottleneck is making cards, Toly wins; if it is fine-grained control, Anki does.
Can I import my Anki decks into Toly?
No. Toly does not import Anki decks, so a switch means rebuilding the cards you still care about — which is fast when the AI writes each back, but it is a genuine cost worth knowing about up front.
Does Toly use the same algorithm as Anki?
Not the same implementation. Both schedule each card individually and lengthen the interval after successful recalls; Toly simply does not expose the parameters, and there is no scheduler version to choose between.
Is Anki free and Toly paid?
Anki is free on desktop and Android and paid on iOS. Toly has a free plan — 3 AI generations a day and 3 decks — with PRO as a subscription. Neither is really about the money; it is about whether you want to write card backs.
Can I use both?
Plenty of people do: Anki on the desktop for a big structured deck, Toly on the phone for the words they run into during the day. They do not sync with each other.
Try the version where cards write themselves.
Free to start. If it turns out you wanted the levers after all, Anki will still be there.
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