What study apps are actually good? The truth about corporate business apps, enshittification, and which study apps are worth your time

Hello there! If you are searching for a new study app, you have likely noticed a pattern. You find an app that looks slick, you upload your notes, and three days later you are being interrupted by "Plus" popups, ads during your review sessions, or features that worked yesterday but are now behind a paywall.

My name is Daniel. I'm a third year engineering science student at UofT. I spend a lot of my time looking at how we learn, and I also work on Nebulearn. Because I built a study tool, I have a massive conflict of interest here. But I also have a front row seat to why the apps we used to love are getting worse.

The short answer to which apps are "actually good" depends on your bottleneck. If you want a giant library of pre-made cards and do not mind a session-based "Learn" mode, Quizlet is still the giant. If you want total control and a 10 year review history, Anki is the gold standard. If you need to turn this week's 50 page PDF into a due queue without seeing ads while you think, that is why I built Nebulearn.

The enshittification of study tools

Before we look at specific apps, we have to talk about why they feel different than they did five years ago. There is a term for this coined by Cory Doctorow: enshittification.

It describes a specific cycle. First, a platform is good to its users to get them to join. Then, it squeezes those users to serve business customers (like advertisers or schools). Finally, it squeezes those business customers to extract every cent for the owners.

In the world of study apps, your focus is the inventory. When an app is small, it wants you to learn. When it gets big and takes on venture capital, it needs to show growth. That is when the "Long-Term Learning" features get retired, the "Memory Score" becomes a paid add-on, and ads start appearing right as you are trying to recall a difficult concept at 12:40 a.m.

A study app is "actually good" if the review session is the product, not the ad slot. If the app treats your data like a hostage, it is probably not built for you.

Quizlet is the king of the group chat

Quizlet won the market because it made sharing easy. If you have a vocab quiz on Friday, there is a 90% chance someone in your class already made a set. You can just search for it and start.

However, Quizlet has moved away from being a long-term memory tool. They retired their "Long-Term Learning" mode years ago. Today, the free "Learn" mode is session-based. It helps you master a set of cards in one sitting, but it does not tell you when to review them again in three weeks. To get actual spacing, you have to pay for Plus to see a "Memory Score."

I still tell people to use Quizlet if they are in a rush and need a pre-made set for a minor quiz. But if you are trying to build a foundation for a whole semester, Quizlet is not spaced repetition in the way you actually need it to be.

Knowt and the ad-supported trade-off

Knowt appeared as a popular alternative when Quizlet started charging for basic features. It has a great PDF-to-flashcard workflow and imports Quizlet sets easily.

The catch is how they pay the bills. If you use Knowt, you will see ads. For many students, this is a fair trade. You get "Plus" features for free in exchange for looking at banners. Personally, I found the ads during my active recall sessions too distracting. When I am trying to remember the steps of the Krebs cycle, I do not want a video ad for a different app playing in the corner of my eye.

If you have zero budget and do not mind the visual noise, Knowt is a functional tool. But it is a corporate app that relies on your attention being sold to someone else.

Anki is the immortal power tool

Anki is the opposite of the corporate cycle. It is open source, it has no ads, and it has no "growth team" trying to trick you into a subscription.

The trade-off with Anki is the "iPhone tax" and the steep learning curve. The desktop app and AnkiDroid are free, but the AnkiMobile app for iPhone is about $25. This is a one-time fee that supports the developer, and I think it is worth it, but it is a barrier for many.

More importantly, Anki is not "slick." You pay in hours spent watching YouTube tutorials on how to set up your intervals or install add-ons. If you are a medical student with a 10,000 card deck like AnKing, Anki is the only choice. But for a first-year student who just wants to upload a lecture PDF and start studying, Anki feels like a second job. You can read more about this in my Nebulearn vs Anki comparison.

RemNote and the notes-first approach

RemNote is a "networked thought" tool that happens to have a built-in flashcard scheduler. It is great if your primary goal is writing long, interconnected notes and you want cards to be generated automatically from your bullet points.

It is less of a "study app" and more of a "thinking app." If you just want to get through your biology slides, the overhead of learning a new note-taking system might be too much. But if you already use Notion or Obsidian and wish they had a real due queue, RemNote is worth a look.

Why I built Nebulearn

As I mentioned, I work on Nebulearn because I was tired of the apps listed above. I wanted a tool that had the power of Anki's scheduling but the speed of modern AI.

I built it specifically for the "weekly PDF" bottleneck. In engineering, I get a massive slide deck every Tuesday. I don't have time to manually type out 50 cards, but I also don't want a "session" that I'll forget by next month.

Nebulearn uses FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler) by default, which is the most modern algorithm available. We don't put ads in your study sessions, even on the free tier. Our free tier gives you 1000 saved questions and 40 weekly AI credits, which is usually enough for a full course load.

It is not the right tool for everyone. If you already have a massive Anki deck that is working for you, stay on Anki. If your whole study group is on a single Quizlet set and you just need to cram for 20 minutes, stay on Quizlet. But if you are tired of the ads and the "Plus" walls, we built this for you.

App	Best For	The Catch
Quizlet	Finding pre-made sets from your school.	No free spaced repetition; session-based.
Anki	Long-term mastery (years) and medical school.	High learning curve; $25 iPhone app.
Knowt	Free features if you don't mind ads.	Distracting ads during study sessions.
Nebulearn	Turning PDFs into a real due queue quickly.	Newer ecosystem; fewer pre-made sets.

How to choose your next app

Don't pick an app based on how pretty the landing page is. Pick it based on what you are actually doing on a Tuesday night.

If you are looking for a deep dive into which apps save the most actual clock time, check out my post on study apps that save the most time. It breaks down the difference between the time you spend creating cards and the time you spend reviewing them.

The "actually good" apps are the ones that respect your time. They let you get in, see what you are about to forget, and get out so you can go live your life. If an app makes it hard to leave or hard to focus, it isn't a study tool anymore,it's just another distraction.