The Five Best Flashcard Apps for Studying

In my full review of Brainscape, I gave it five stars. I really like this one. I’m actually using it actively right now to study for a certification exam I have coming up.

Brainscape gives you the option to make your own flashcards, but also to search for decks made by other learners—and even the option to access decks that have been approved by credentialing bodies for things like standardized tests, entry exams, and certification tests. The free-account option allows you to use text, while the paid version lets you add images and sounds, do more advanced editing, study an unlimited amount, import materials, copy other users’ flashcards into your files, and see learning stats. One month of Brainscape is $19.99, six months cost $59.94, a year is $95.88, and a lifetime membership is $199.99.

Using your phone? Here’s the iOS version and the Android version.

Sometimes, all you need or want is the simplest flashcard deck, with cards that have a front and back and can be used for quizzing. Cram is so easy to use and it works great in its free version (although $29.99 per month gets you access to a few extra features, like customization of your card formatting). Read my full review here, but the basics are these: You get plain, white cards that the site displays either as traditional flashcards, a matching game with drop-down menus, or classic computer games (a jewel-matching game and a space shooting game) that pull your flashcard information into them. Besides the flashy games, there are no unnecessary frills here. Enter the information onto the cards and study. It’s that easy.

Download the apps: iOS is here and Android is here.

There are a number of flashcard generators that let you use pictures, but the pricing on many of them is weirdly opaque. Quizlet, a popular studying platform, allows you to create flashcards (with pictures!), browse other people’s flashcards, and take practice quizzes—and the pricing for getting rid of ads and studying an unlimited amount is straightforward: You pay $35.99 per year or $7.99 per month. You can import existing data, from Word or Excel, too, to create the flashcards even faster. In my review of this one, I did give it five stars because you can also use your account to access practice quizzes and games; plus, it’s been around for so long it’s basically the gold standard for students.

Download for your iPhone here and your Android here.

If you want to make fast flashcards and you use Google’s free suite of productivity apps (namely Google Sheets), you should use Flashcard Lab. As I explain in my full review, it’s not flashy. All it is, really, is a simple way to quickly turn content from Google Sheets into flashcards. Column A is the front of the card, Column B produces the back, and that’s about it—but it’s great if all you need is some fast cards. Available on iOS and Android, as well as through a Chrome extension, you can use it for free to study 600 GRE vocab words, review or print up to 20 flashcards per deck, add up to five images per deck, and manually add cards to a “forgotten” set for re-review. A one-time payment of $10.99 bumps you up to the “Elite” tier, which gives you access to some extra features, like the ability to toggle on spaced repetition or randomized review.

There are two apps I recommend for learning a foreign language, and they are Repeet and DuoCards. In a head-to-head comparison, I did pick DuoCards because its extra features edged out Repeet ever so slightly, but the long and short of it is that both of them have automatic translation features that allow you to quickly generate cards in-app or via Chrome extension. Repeet works on iOS, Android, or Chrome extension. Same for DuoCards: iOS, Android, or Chrome extension. DuoCards has a mini game and an AI chatbot designed to help you immerse yourself in the language more than just using the cards will, whereas Repeet is just flashcard-based, but the features will cost you. Where Repeet is absolutely usable and excellent in its free version, DuoCards’ free version only allows 20 cards in your “to learn” category and just 10 opportunities to ask your chatbot a question. If you pay $33 for three months or $64.90 for the year, you get rid of the ads, access unlimited flashcards, and can chat nonstop with the AI bot. If mini games and immersion are important to you, pick DuoCards. If you just want flashcards or don’t want to spend money, Repeet works well.