Is Anki still worth it in 2026?
Anki is still the king of medical school and long-term retention, but its time cost for new material has never been higher. Here is when to use it and when to switch.
Hello there! If you are looking at a 400 card review queue and wondering if this is actually the best way to spend your Tuesday, you are asking the right question.
Anki is still worth it if you are using the AnKing deck for medical school, if you need deep custom add-ons, or if you have three years of review history you cannot afford to lose. It is likely not worth it if you are a student trying to turn this week's lecture slides into a studyable queue without spending five hours on manual data entry.
A litle about me first. My name is Daniel. I'm a third year engineering science student at the University of Toronto, specializing in machine intelligence. I also work on Nebulearn. I built it because I loved the logic of spaced repetition but hated how long it took to actually make the cards.
Because I work on a competitor, I have a conflict of interest. I will be honest about where Anki wins, because for certain students, it still does.
The split between maintenance and creation
To decide if Anki is worth it, you have to look at where your time actually goes. Most people think of "studying" as the time spent hitting the Good or Again buttons. That part of Anki is still world-class. It uses the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler (FSRS) now, which is the most efficient way to time your reviews.
The problem is the "hidden" time cost of creation.
| The Job | Anki's Grade | The Reality |
|---|---|---|
| Reviewing | A+ | FSRS is built-in. The mobile app is fast. |
| Setup | D | Syncing, add-ons, and card types take hours to master. |
| Creation | F | Copy-pasting from a PDF is a manual nightmare. |
| Portability | B | Free on desktop/Android. ~$25 on iPhone. |
If you are downloading a pre-made deck like AnKing, you skip the "F" grade entirely. In that case, Anki is the best tool on the planet. But if you have to make your own cards for a niche engineering or law course, you are paying a massive time tax before you even start studying.
When Anki is the obvious winner
I would never tell a medical student to leave Anki if they are already deep into a shared deck.
The community support for Anki is its real feature. If you have a deck that 10,000 other people have already tagged, edited, and refined, you would be crazy to start from scratch elsewhere. The app is also "free" in a way most modern software isn't. The desktop and Android versions cost nothing. The iPhone app is a one-time fee of about $25, which supports the developer and the servers.
If your bottleneck is not "how do I make these cards" but "how do I keep these 10,000 cards in my head for three years," stay with Anki.
Where the 2026 workflow breaks
The reason Anki feels "not worth it" for many students today is that our source material has moved faster than the Anki interface.
In my Engineering Science courses, I get a 60 page PDF of slides on Monday and have a quiz on Friday. If I spend three hours on Monday night formatting those slides into Anki cards, I have lost 25% of my study window just on clerical work. This is the where Anki spends your time trap.
Anki was built for an era of manual entry. It assumes you want to curate every card like a digital gardener. But most of us just need to bridge the gap between a lecture and a due queue as fast as possible. If you find yourself with 20 browser tabs open just to copy-paste definitions into a "Cloze" template, the tool is working against you.
You can see a full breakdown of how this compares to modern alternatives in my study apps that save the most time guide.
The cost of the iPhone app
We have to talk about the $25 fee. For a student on a tight budget, that is not nothing.
It is a fair price for software that has lasted 15 years, but it creates a weird barrier. If you are on Android, you get the full experience for free. If you are on iPhone, you are often stuck using the web version or paying the equivalent of five lattes just to see your cards on the bus.
When I compare Nebulearn vs Anki, I usually point out that our free tier includes 1,000 saved questions and 40 weekly AI credits with no ads. We don't charge you just to have a mobile app that works.
Is it worth switching?
Switching costs are real. If you have a deck you have been building for six months, do not move it unless the creation process is so painful that you are starting to skip your reviews entirely.
However, if you are starting a new semester and you know you won't have time to manually build cards, it is worth looking at tools that automate the "making" part. The goal of spaced repetition is to spend time in your brain, not in a text editor.
I built Nebulearn specifically for the student who has a PDF on one side of the screen and a blank stare on the other. We use a Chrome extension that let's you highlight text on a page and turn it into a card instantly, without switching tabs. It stays on the page you are already reading.
If you decide to move, we have a guide on how to import your Anki decks, but my advice is usually to finish your current decks where they are and start your next course with a faster workflow.
Anki is a legend, but in 2026, it is a tool for curators. If you are a student who just needs to get through this week's slides without losing your Monday night, there are better ways to spend your time.