Ace
Disclosure: we make Ace. We've tried to be fair: Anki's details below come from its official manual (docs.ankiweb.net) and the AnkiMobile App Store listing as of October 14, 2026. Features change, so check there before you decide. Ace is not affiliated with Anki.
Short answer: choose Anki if you're happy to write (or download) your own cards and want a deeply customisable spaced repetition system for years of material, such as medical school. Choose Ace if you'd rather not make cards at all: it turns your lecture PDFs, slides, Word files or YouTube lectures into practice questions of several kinds, checks every answer against your own material, and lets you duel a friend on the same set. Plenty of students use both.
What do Ace and Anki have in common?
Both are built on the two study techniques with the strongest research behind them: retrieval practice (answering from memory instead of re-reading) and spacing (coming back to material over days instead of cramming). Neither replaces your lectures; both turn material you already have into practice.
The big difference is where the practice comes from. In Anki, you write the cards or download a deck someone else made. In Ace, you upload your own course material and the questions are written from it.
How do Ace and Anki compare, feature by feature?
| Ace | Anki | |
|---|---|---|
| Where cards come from | Written from your PDF, PowerPoint, Word, ePub or text files, or a YouTube lecture link | You write them, or import shared decks made by other users |
| Question types | Four-option multiple choice, put the steps in order, type the answer, label a diagram from your own file, and interactive simulations for formula topics | Front/back cards, cloze deletions, image occlusion and fully custom card templates |
| Checking | Every answer is checked against your material, and the sentence it comes from is shown under the answer | Cards are as accurate as whoever wrote them |
| Spaced repetition | Streaks and a study calendar for planning sessions | Dedicated schedulers (SM-2, and FSRS since Anki 23.10) with detailed settings |
| Customisation | Choose which chapters to study | Very deep: card templates, deck options, a large add-on ecosystem |
| Studying with friends | Live two-player duels on the same questions | Solo; shared decks are the social part |
| Platforms | Web app and iPhone app | Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone/iPad and the web |
| Price model | Free to try, with paid plans | Free on computer, Android and the web; the iPhone app (AnkiMobile) is a one-time purchase |
Is it better to make your own flashcards?
Making cards has a real benefit: deciding what to ask and how to phrase it makes you process the material. Anki users often say writing the deck is half the learning, and for long-term subjects that reward precise wording, that's a fair point.
The cost is time. A dense lecture can take longer to turn into good cards than it took to sit through, and in exam season that time comes out of actually practising. Cards written in a hurry also tend to test recognition of a phrase rather than understanding, and a wrong card gets rehearsed until it sticks.
Ace takes the opposite trade. It writes the questions so your time goes into answering them, and it spends its effort on two things a hand-made card usually skips: wrong options that are genuinely tempting, and a check that every answer is actually supported by your file. When an answer is shown, the line from your notes it comes from is shown with it, so you can verify it yourself. See how Ace writes and checks questions.
What can Ace ask that a flashcard can't?
A front/back card is good at one thing: a cue and a response. Some material isn't shaped like that:
- Processes: putting the stages of a cycle or a procedure in order tests the sequence, not just the names.
- Diagrams: naming a part of a figure taken from your own slides. Anki's image occlusion does this well too, if you set it up yourself.
- Formulas: for topics with an equation in your material, Ace can build a small simulation where you move the values until the result hits a target. We wrote about why that kind of practice helps.
Which types you get depends on what your material contains: a chapter with no formula gets no simulation.
Which is better for spaced repetition?
Anki, clearly. Spacing is its whole design: every card has its own schedule, and the FSRS scheduler adapts intervals to how you actually remember. If your main goal is retaining thousands of facts over years, that machinery is hard to beat. Ace gives you streaks and a study calendar to plan sessions, which suits revising a course for an upcoming exam rather than lifelong card maintenance. If you want a simple schedule to follow with any tool, see our spaced repetition schedule.
Ace or Anki: which should you choose?
- Choose Anki if you enjoy building decks, want full control over every card and setting, need it on Android or a computer, or your course has excellent shared decks already.
- Choose Ace if your problem is time: you have lecture slides and PDFs and want to be answering questions about them today, with each answer traceable to your own notes, and you'd like to study against a friend.
- Use both if you like: practise a new lecture in Ace while it's fresh, then put the few facts you keep missing into Anki for the long haul.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ace a replacement for Anki?
For some students, yes: if you mainly used Anki to practise lecture content before exams, Ace removes the card-making step. If you rely on Anki's long-term scheduling or its add-ons, Ace works better alongside it than instead of it.
Can Anki make flashcards from a PDF automatically?
Not on its own: Anki is built around cards you write or import. Some third-party add-ons and tools generate cards, but they're separate from Anki itself. Ace is built to start from your files.
Is Anki free?
Anki is free on computers, on Android (AnkiDroid) and on the web (AnkiWeb). The official iPhone and iPad app, AnkiMobile, is a one-time purchase on the App Store.
Are AI-made questions accurate?
Only as accurate as their checking. Ace checks every answer against your own material and shows the sentence it comes from, so you can confirm it. For any AI study tool, read our guide on whether you can trust AI study answers.
Sources
- Anki Manual: Deck Options, including the FSRS scheduler. docs.ankiweb.net/deck-options.html
- AnkiMobile Flashcards, App Store listing. apps.apple.com
- 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, 14(1), 4–58.
