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An Anki alternative your AI can run

By the Flash team · Published

Most “Anki alternative” articles are written by the alternative and skip the part where Anki is excellent. Anki is free, works offline, has twenty years of decks and add-ons behind it, and offers the same FSRS scheduler Flash uses. If it is working for you, keep using it. This page is for the specific reasons people leave, and an honest account of what Flash does differently and what you would give up.

What Anki does better

  • Price. Free on desktop and Android; a one-time purchase on iPhone. Flash is free with unlimited cards. Or run the open-source server yourself for nothing.
  • Offline, local, forever. Your collection is a file on your disk. Flash is a server, hosted or self-hosted, and the web app needs a connection.
  • Add-ons and card templates. Image occlusion, custom note types, per-field CSS, AnkiConnect scripts. Flash renders imported cards faithfully but does not have an add-on ecosystem or a template editor.
  • Shared decks. AnkiWeb has decks for almost anything. Flash has a young community library.

What people actually leave over

Read the “Anki alternatives” threads and the same three complaints recur, and none of them is the scheduler.

  • Making the cards is the work. Writing three hundred good cards from a pharmacology unit takes longer than studying them. Add-ons that generate cards with an AI exist, but they run inside the desktop app and are their own upkeep.
  • The desktop app is the hub. Sync is reliable, but anything beyond reviewing (importing, restructuring, bulk edits) wants a computer, and automation only works while Anki is open on that computer.
  • Review is a screen activity. Anki has no way to be quizzed out loud while you walk, cook, or ride the train.

How Flash is different

Flash is a flashcard server with a web app on top, and it speaks MCP, the protocol Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Mistral and Gemini use to work with outside tools. That one design choice produces the differences that matter:

  • Your AI writes the cards. Paste notes or a chapter into Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Mistral or Gemini and say “make flashcards”; the cards land in a deck in your account, already scheduled. No export, no import, no add-on. What makes an AI-written card worth keeping is its own guide.
  • Your AI quizzes you by voice. In Claude's or ChatGPT's voice mode, or through Grok's voice connector, say “let's study cardiology” and the assistant asks each due card, listens, grades strictly, and records the review. Nothing to tap.
  • FSRS by default, no settings. Anki ships FSRS as an option you enable and tune. Flash uses it for every card with nothing to configure, and the daily new-card and review limits are the only knobs.
  • Always reachable. The server is up whether your laptop is or not, so the phone, the web app and your AI all see the same queue at the same moment.

Migrating in, and back out

Import

In Anki, File › Export, format Anki Deck Package (.apkg), with “Include media” checked. In Flash, Decks › Import and drop the file in. You get a preview with the card count, the deck tree and rendered samples before anything is committed. What survives: cloze deletions and hints (one card per cloze, as in Anki), images, audio, LaTeX, typed-answer cards with their character diff, nested decks, and your formatting. Cards are unlimited on every plan, so a big collection imports whole and you can judge Flash on your real material. Export with “Include scheduling information” checked and tick “bring my study progress” on the preview: every past review lands in your Flash stats, streaks included, and the scheduler continues where Anki left off. The import page lists every detail.

An image card imported from Anki, rendered in Flash: a labeled diagram of the heart's conduction system
An image card after import: the picture, the cloze answers and the bullet list all came across from the original Anki note. Diagram: Madhero88, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Export

At any time, on any plan, export the whole collection or one deck as .apkg or CSV. There is no lock-in in either direction, which is the only way a comparison like this one can be fair.

Where Flash falls short today

  • No add-ons, no custom note types, no template CSS. Imported cards keep their structure but render in Flash's design.
  • No image occlusion. Cards that use it in Anki import as their underlying image and text.

Frequently asked questions

Is Flash free?

Free, with unlimited cards, the full scheduler, Anki import and export, and study on the web and through ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Mistral or Gemini. The server is AGPL-licensed and free to self-host.

Can I use Flash and Anki together?

Yes, in either direction, by exporting and importing .apkg files. Many people keep Anki as the archive and use Flash for the deck they are actively studying by voice.

Does Flash have an iPhone or Android app?

The web app works on a phone today. Native apps are being built and are not out yet; this page will say so when they are.

Which AI assistants work?

Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Mistral, Gemini, Claude Code, and anything else that speaks MCP. Connecting takes about a minute.

Try it with this week's material.
Free, with unlimited cards. No card required. Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Mistral, Gemini, and any agent that speaks MCP.
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