Anki vs Chinese flashcard apps: which one should you use?

Spaced repetition is the part everyone agrees on

Every app in this guide does the same basic job: it shows you a word again just before you'd forget it. That's spaced repetition, one of the best-tested ideas in learning research.

A large review of spacing studies found that spreading practice out beats cramming the same practice together. Flashcard apps simply do the spreading for you.

We drew the curve from FSRS's memory model, the one Anki's option uses. Here's how quickly you'd forget a new word, and how much more slowly after two good reviews:

Take know, 认识(rènshi). Learn it today and the chance you'd still recall it slides each day. Review it on time twice, and a month away from it barely dents it. That's the whole trick: the app's job is to catch each word on the slope, before it slides too far.

Anki is powerful, but you build it

Anki is the free, open-source flashcard program most serious learners end up trying. It's free on computers, on the web and on Android. The official iPhone app, AnkiMobile, costs $24.99 once.

Anki knows nothing about Chinese. Out of the box it's a blank card with a front and a back, so you assemble the Chinese parts yourself:

• A deck. You can download a shared HSK deck from AnkiWeb or make your own. Many of the best-rated HSK decks date from the old HSK 2.0 lists.
• Audio and tone colours. The Chinese Support 3 add-on fills in pinyin, colours each tone and fetches audio from Google or Baidu. It runs on the computer version, and its author says it's still in beta.
• The scheduler. Anki still schedules with its old SM-2 algorithm until you switch on FSRS in the deck options.

None of this is hard, but it's an evening of work before your first review, and more if you make your own cards.

The payoff is control. You can add sentence cards, images, your own recordings, or a card for every word from your textbook. Nothing else in this guide lets you build exactly the deck you want.

If you enjoy setting up your tools, I'd start with Anki: it's the best free option there is. If you'd rather just study, read on.

Chinese apps do the Chinese parts for you

Pleco, Skritter and Hack Chinese were built for Chinese, so the parts Anki makes you assemble come ready. You get HSK lists, audio and tone help on day one.

We read each app's own pages, manuals and store listings. Here's what each one gives you before you change a single setting:

The real difference, as we see it, is what each one is built around. Pleco is a dictionary first, Skritter a handwriting tutor, and Hack Chinese a vocabulary manager.

Pleco: flashcards from your dictionary

Pleco is the dictionary many Chinese learners already use, and its flashcards grow straight out of it. One tap on any dictionary entry makes a card, and premade lists cover the HSK, including the 2026 HSK 3.0 lists added in August.

The flashcards worth using are paid. The free version shows cards at random; spaced repetition, tone drills and handwriting tests come in the $29.99 Basic Bundle, which you buy once. Characters and pinyin can show in tone colours, so buy, 买(mǎi), and sell, 卖(mài), differ in colour as well as shape.

I'd pick Pleco's flashcards if you look words up in Pleco anyway. An administrator on Chinese Forums put it simply: Pleco lets you "create flashcards with zero effort".

Skritter: flashcards you write

Skritter makes you write each character on the screen and grades every stroke as you go. Its tone cards ask you to draw or tap the tone mark, so you practise tones as well as meanings.

Its decks cover the HSK levels, including HSK 3.0 decks built on the 2021 standard, and its audio for HSK 1 to 4 was recorded by a native speaker. It costs $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Free guest accounts get a few decks, but reviews need Premium.

In our view, Skritter is the only app here that trains handwriting properly. If you don't need to write, it's an expensive way to review words.

Hack Chinese: HSK vocabulary with no setup

Hack Chinese runs in your browser and does one job: it gets words into your memory and keeps them there. It starts by estimating the words you already know, then teaches the HSK words you don't.

Its lists include the new HSK 3.0 exam vocabulary. Every word has computer-generated audio, tones show in colour, and words you've remembered long enough stop coming back.

It costs $18 a month, or $12 a month paid yearly. You can try it for three weeks first, with no card.

There's no app to install and no handwriting, and Hack Chinese says plainly that you can't become fluent with it alone. For HSK word lists without any setup, we found nothing as smooth.

Quizlet and Memrise: fine for other jobs

Quizlet is a general study app where many classes share their word lists. You make sets or use other people's, and it adds spaced repetition and practice tests, but nothing is built for tones or characters. Use it when your teacher's list lives there.

Memrise is now mostly a phrase course with native-speaker videos. It reviews what its course teaches, so it's a course first, not a deck you build.

What a review looks like on a phone

You'll open your flashcard app every day, so its review screen matters more than its feature list. We collected one screen from each app:

Notice how much each screen asks of you. Anki shows when the card will come back, Pleco and SayMei ask whether you were right, and Skritter makes you draw. None is better for everyone. I'd pick the one you'll want to open tomorrow.

FSRS predicts your memory far better

Every app has to guess when you're about to forget a word. FSRS, the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, makes that guess from a model of memory fitted to hundreds of millions of real reviews.

The older SM-2 algorithm, which Anki has used for years, grows each interval by a multiplier, the card's ease. FSRS instead tracks how hard each word is for you, how stable its memory is and how likely you are to recall it today.

The difference shows when you test the guesses against real reviews, which the FSRS team does in public. Here's how far each algorithm's predictions were from what Anki users actually remembered:

Source: Expertium's write-up of the open-spaced-repetition benchmark, RMSE in bins. SM-2 doesn't predict recall on its own, so the benchmark converts its intervals into a prediction.

Fitting matters too. Anki's Optimize button fits FSRS to your own reviews, and the fitted version beat the default settings for 84% of users in the same benchmark.

Here's which scheduler each app uses, and what it costs:

Sources: each app's website, help pages or US App Store listing, checked 8 October 2026.

Only Anki lets FSRS learn your memory, as far as we could find. Pleco, Skritter and Hack Chinese use their own rules, and SayMei uses FSRS-6 with the default settings for everyone.

New words a day decide your workload

A better algorithm saves you some reviews. How many new words you add decides how many reviews you'll have, and the difference is far bigger.

We built a model to show it. A simulated learner forgets the way FSRS's memory model says an average Anki user does, and each scheduler decides when every word comes back. Set your pace and see your next three months:

Two things stood out when we ran it. The lines for FSRS and SM-2 stay close, and both keep climbing for the whole three months. Each new word you add today brings reviews for months, so the pile keeps growing long after your daily pace stays the same.

Your recall goal, called desired retention in Anki, moves the workload far more than the algorithm. Here's what changes at 10 new words a day:

Source: our model, described under How we compared. Minutes include learning the 10 new words.

Pushing from 90% to 95% costs more extra reviews than switching algorithms saves. So I'd keep the default unless the workload is too much, and then lower your new words before you lower the goal.

How many new words is right? Hack Chinese suggests no more than about 200 a month unless you study full-time. That's six or seven a day, which our model puts at under a quarter of an hour a day by the third month.

The best pick for each learner

There's no single best flashcard app, but there's a best one for each goal. Here's where we'd start:

Prices and features checked 8 October 2026.

Most learners need only one of these. Our guide to the best apps to learn Chinese shows where a flashcard app fits next to a course, a dictionary and speaking practice.

Where SayMei fits, and where it doesn't

Our flashcards are built for SayMei learners. Words you meet in lessons with Mei Lin, in the lesson songs and in listening dialogues save to your cards in one tap, so you review the words you've actually used.

Each card has audio and tone colours, and reviews take two taps: say whether you think you know the word, then whether you were right. They're scheduled with FSRS, the same algorithm as Anki's option, and you set your recall goal anywhere from 70% to 99%.

You can also load HSK lists in one tap. SayMei's built-in HSK 1 to 9 decks follow the HSK 3.0 exam syllabus published in November 2025, the same syllabus as its free HSK word lists, and TOCFL and the HSK Standard Course books are there too.

Where we lose:

• The free plan is small. It covers 10 words a day, reviews included, which our model says sustains only one or two new words a day. Premium removes the limit for $5.99 a month.
• It's browser-only. There's no app to install and no offline mode.
• It can't learn your memory yet. Everyone gets FSRS-6's default settings, which Anki beats once you fit FSRS to your reviews.
• It's words only. You can't write your own sentence cards, and there's no handwriting practice.

What to do next

• Decide how much setup you'll put up with. Build Anki if you enjoy it; pick a Chinese app if you don't.
• Run your pace through the simulator. Choose the number of new words you could still manage on a busy day.
• Switch on FSRS if you use Anki. Press Optimize once you've done a few hundred reviews.
• Keep your recall goal near the default. Lower your new words first when reviews pile up.
• Use your words out loud. Flashcards keep words in memory; speaking and reading make them yours.

If you're choosing your whole set of apps, start with our guide to the best apps to learn Chinese.