A free Anki alternative that makes the cards for you

If you’re looking for an Anki alternative, you probably like the idea behind Anki and not the work that comes with it. Spaced repetition does what it promises: a card comes back right before you’d forget it, and the gap grows each time you remember. The work is everything around it: finding or building decks, typing the back of every card, choosing settings and, on an iPhone, paying for the app. This page compares Anki with PocketAnki for one job, learning the vocabulary of a foreign language, and says plainly where each one is the better tool.

Is Anki free on iPhone? What each app costs

Anki is free on computers (Windows, macOS and Linux), free on Android through AnkiDroid, and free on the web through AnkiWeb, which also syncs your cards between devices. The exception is AnkiMobile, the app for iPhone and iPad. On 28 October 2026 the US App Store listed it at $24.99, a one-time purchase with no subscription. The listing explains that sales of the app fund the development of both the computer and the mobile versions.

Outside the US the AnkiMobile price is usually higher. Mindomax, a competing flashcard app, checked 39 App Store storefronts on 8 September 2026 and found that 33 of them charged more than the US price, with a median of about $30.20. So the short answer to “is Anki free on iPhone” is no: the app costs money, although you can study in the browser on AnkiWeb for free.

PocketAnki costs nothing on any device. It’s a Telegram bot, so it runs wherever Telegram does, on a phone or a computer. There’s no paid plan and nothing to unlock. If you’d like to support the project, the /support command lets you send Telegram Stars, but every feature works without them.

How a card gets made

Say you’re learning German and a colleague mentions der Termin. Here the two apps take opposite routes.

In Anki you open the Add window, choose a note type and a deck, type der Termin on the front, look up the meaning and type it on the back. If you want an example sentence or a transcription, you find those too and paste them in. Many people skip the typing and download a shared deck instead. The Anki manual calls that the easiest way to get started, and also says shared decks work best as a supplement to what you learn elsewhere. A shared deck won’t contain the words from your own week, though.

In PocketAnki you send der Termin to the bot as a message. A few seconds later the card arrives with a translation into your language, a transcription and example sentences that use the word. If the card isn’t quite right, the 🪄 button makes a new version. The /format command decides how much goes on new cards: Short (the word, translation, transcription and one example), Standard, or Detailed, which adds grammar, collocations and usage notes. The card demo above shows real cards for English speakers learning German.

The bot also sorts out a few cases on its own. A word typed in your native language gets a card in the language you’re learning. Phrases and short sentences work too, up to 15 words. For anything that isn’t vocabulary, such as a date or a formula, /add_card lets you write both sides yourself.

FSRS in both: the scheduling side

If you’ve been reading about spaced repetition apps, you’ve probably met FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler. Anki added it in version 23.10, and its manual describes FSRS as an alternative to the legacy SM-2 algorithm. You enable it in the FSRS section at the bottom of the deck options page, and the switch applies to your whole collection. After that come the optional parts, such as the desired retention and parameters optimised from your own review history, which Anki users discuss at length.

PocketAnki uses FSRS from the first card, with no settings to touch. When a card comes back, the answer is hidden. You try to recall it, open it and tap one of four buttons: 🔁 Forgot, 😓 Hard to recall, ✅ Remember or ⭐ Easy, the same idea as Anki’s Again, Hard, Good and Easy. After you rate, the bot tells you when the card returns, for example “returns in 3 d”, and the next gap follows from your answers.

So if you’re after an FSRS app, both qualify. Anki gives you the controls and expects you to use them, while PocketAnki makes those choices for you. If you enjoy tuning a retention target, you’ll miss the controls. If you’d rather spend the time on words than on settings, you probably won’t.

A day of reviews in each app

With Anki, studying is something you sit down to do. You open the app, see which decks have cards due and work through them until the counts reach zero. The phone apps can show a badge or a reminder, but the reviewing happens when you open the app. Skip a few days and the due cards are waiting when you come back.

With PocketAnki the cards come to you. A word you send comes back for its first review between about ten minutes and two hours later, as an ordinary Telegram message. After that, each card arrives when its schedule says it’s due, and cards due between 20:00 and 07:00 UTC come without sound. You answer them in a queue or while the kettle boils. If you’d rather do a batch, /practice pulls up to 15 of today’s cards right away.

The bot also paces what’s new. New cards are capped at 20 a day, while reviews of cards you’ve already rated are never held back, and neither are words you send yourself. A card left unanswered for 16 hours counts as Hard to recall and comes back later. If a long run of cards goes unanswered, the bot pauses your reviews and sends one message with a Resume button. When you come back, the waiting cards return about 20 a day, oldest first.

German learners get one extra: Daily Words, 5 words a day from a list of 600 for life in Germany, covering offices and documents, work, housing, money and health. It’s on automatically for new German and English learners, and /daily turns it off. Learners of other languages build their collection from the words they meet.

When Anki is still the right tool

Anki is a mature open-source program, and for some people no alternative comes close.

Stay with Anki if you study without an internet connection. AnkiMobile keeps your cards and media on the device, and syncing is optional. PocketAnki needs a connection, because the cards arrive as Telegram messages. Stay with it, too, if you rely on add-ons; they run on the computer version, and AnkiMobile’s listing says they aren’t supported there. Custom card templates, cloze cards, images and recorded sound on cards are Anki territory. PocketAnki cards are text, with a written transcription.

Anki is also the better choice outside PocketAnki’s 20 learning languages. If you’re learning Japanese, Chinese or Korean, or memorising anatomy or case law, use Anki. PocketAnki is built for language vocabulary only.

One more note, since it comes up in Anki discussions this year: in February 2026 Anki’s creator, Damien Elmes, announced on the Anki forums a gradual handover of the project’s business operations and open-source stewardship to AnkiHub, with provisions for Anki to stay open source. Nothing on this page depends on that change.

Trying PocketAnki as an Anki alternative

You don’t have to delete anything to try it. Keep your Anki decks for what they do well, and send PocketAnki the new words you meet this week.

1. Open the bot in Telegram and press Start.
2. Pick your native language (cards are translated into it), the language you’re learning and your goal.
3. Send your first word. A demo card arrives as well and comes back in about ten minutes, so you see a review on day one.

If you’re learning English yourself, it works the same way, with translations into 26 native languages.

The home page shows how it works day to day as Anki in Telegram. If you’re also weighing a Quizlet alternative or other Telegram flashcard bots, those pages compare them in the same way, and all comparisons are listed together.