Blog · Study systems
Best Spaced Repetition App for College in 2026: Anki, RemNote, Availa
Spaced repetition apps compared for college students: Anki, RemNote, Quizlet and Availa. The real difference is who writes the cards. Which fits which class.
Spaced repetition is the one study technique that almost nobody argues about. Review something right before you would forget it and the memory lasts longer each time. The apps that do it differ mostly in one place: who writes the cards. Here is how Anki, RemNote, Quizlet and Availa compare for a college student, and which one fits which kind of class.
Why spacing works
Studying the same material in two short sessions days apart beats one long session of the same total time, and the effect is large and reliable. Cepeda and colleagues (2006) pulled together hundreds of comparisons and found spaced practice ahead in nearly all of them. The reason is that forgetting a little and then retrieving is what strengthens the memory. A spaced repetition app is just a scheduler that times the retrieval for you.
The apps
| App | Who writes the cards | Scheduler | Best for | Weak spot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anki | You | FSRS or SM-2, fully tunable | Students who will write cards and want total control | Writing good cards from a lecture is slow; setup is dated |
| RemNote | You, inside your notes | Built in | Outline note-takers who want cards to fall out of notes | You still write everything; can become a second job |
| Quizlet | You, or someone else's set | Learn mode | Fast vocabulary and definitions | Shared sets drift from your class; recognition creeps in |
| Availa | The app, from your slides and lectures | FSRS across the semester | College classes where you have slides or a recording | Not a general card deck; assumes a class |
Anki
The standard, and deservedly. The scheduler is the best studied, FSRS is built in, and medical students have run whole degrees on it. The cost is time: a lecture turns into forty good cards only if you sit down and write forty good cards, and most people stop by week four. If you will do the writing, nothing beats it.
RemNote
If you already take notes in an outline, RemNote lets you mark a line as a card and review it later without leaving your notes. Good fit for people who like one tool for everything. Same catch as Anki: the cards are yours to write.
Quizlet
Easiest to start and easiest to misuse. Writing your own set and using the learn mode is real spaced practice. Searching for someone else's set the night before is flipping through flashcards for a different class. The longer comparison is in Quizlet alternatives.
Availa
Mine, so weigh this. The difference is that you do not write the cards. You upload the deck or record the lecture, and the questions are written from what the professor actually covered, filed to the class. The ones you miss come back on an FSRS schedule across the semester, so the review for a midterm has been running since week one. The weak spot is the mirror of Anki's: you give up control of the cards, and it assumes you have class material to give it.
Everybody agrees spacing works. The whole fight is over who writes the questions.
How to pick
If you enjoy writing cards and want to own everything, Anki. If you already live in an outliner, RemNote. If your classes are vocabulary heavy and you will write your own sets, Quizlet. If you have slides or recordings and the card writing is what has stopped you before, Availa. Whichever you pick, the method around it is in active recall, done properly.
Common questions
What is the best free spaced repetition app?
Anki on desktop and Android. It has every feature the paid tools have if you are willing to write the cards and learn the settings.
Is spaced repetition good for college exams?
It is the best thing there is for a cumulative exam, because the material from week two is still there in week fourteen. It is less of a fit for a paper class, where the grade is the argument.
What is FSRS?
An open scheduling algorithm that predicts when you are about to forget each item from your own review history, and schedules the review just before. It is in Anki and in Availa, and it outperforms the older SM-2 schedule on most people's data.
From Availa
Skip writing the cards
Your first week is free.
Try it on my next lecture