Comparison
MemDecks compared with Anki
Anki is a scheduling engine: you supply the cards, it decides when to show each one, and it does that better than anything else available. MemDecks is not a scheduler at all — it supplies the cards, attaches pictures and audio, and turns them into games. If your goal is to retain thousands of facts on a deadline, use Anki. If your problem is that you never open the flashcard app, MemDecks is aimed at you.
What Anki does better
Stated first, because a comparison that only flatters the author is worthless.
- Scheduling. Anki implements interval-based spaced repetition with decades of refinement behind it. MemDecks has no scheduler at all. For maximising retention per minute of review, this is not close.
- Control. Card templates, note types, filtered decks, custom scheduling, add-ons. Anki can be shaped into almost anything. MemDecks has one card shape and no add-on system.
- Scale. Anki users routinely manage tens of thousands of cards. MemDecks is built around collections in the hundreds.
- Subject range. Anki is not a language app; it works for medicine, law, chess openings, anything. MemDecks does vocabulary in 16 languages and nothing else.
- Offline and ownership. Anki is open source, runs locally, and your collection is a file you own. MemDecks is a hosted web app.
- Shared decks. Anki has an enormous library of community decks for almost any subject.
Anki states that its computer version is free on all major platforms and that AnkiDroid for Android is free; the official iOS app, AnkiMobile, is a paid purchase that funds development. Checked 2 September 2026 at apps.ankiweb.net.
What MemDecks does better
- The cards already exist. A MemDecks card arrives with a translation, a picture, audio and — for non-Latin scripts — a transliteration. In Anki, a good vocabulary card is something you build or download.
- No backlog. Anki's model produces overdue cards when you skip days. MemDecks has nothing that accumulates; a month away costs nothing.
- Practice is a game. Ten games read from your collection, including three you can play against another person. Anki's review screen is a review screen.
- Word supply. The pump proposes the next useful word in difficulty order from 21 curated topic packs. Anki has no opinion about what you should learn next.
- Non-Latin scripts. Purpose-built transliteration and voice profiles for Armenian and Greek, an on-screen keyboard for nine non-Latin languages, and a game for learning an alphabet.
Side by side
| MemDecks | Anki | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A vocabulary app with games | A general-purpose spaced-repetition system |
| Scheduling | None — a per-card practice budget instead | Interval-based, highly refined |
| Card creation | Automatic: translation, image, audio, transliteration | Manual, or a downloaded shared deck |
| Practice format | Ten games, three of them multiplayer | Review screen with self-rated recall |
| Subjects | Vocabulary in 16 languages | Anything |
| Runs | In a browser | Desktop, Android, iOS, and AnkiWeb |
| Offline | No | Yes |
| Price | Free | Free on desktop and Android; the official iOS app is paid |
Can you use both?
Yes, and it is a reasonable setup. MemDecks reads an exported Anki .apkg package and converts its notes into cards, so an existing Anki deck can become a MemDecks collection to play with while Anki keeps doing the scheduling. The import is marked beta because Anki note layouts vary widely.
There is no export from MemDecks back into Anki as of 2 September 2026.
Competitor facts on this page describe what that product states about itself and were checked on 2 September 2026. Products change; check the source before relying on a detail.