Best flashcard apps for readers: Anki vs RemNote vs Quizlet vs GleanNote

Most flashcard app comparisons are written for students cramming for exams or learning a language. Readers have a different problem. You are not trying to memorize five thousand facts by a deadline; you want the ideas from the books you read to still be there in six months.

That changes what matters. Card-making effort matters more than scheduling finesse, because a reader who has to write every card by hand usually stops after the second book. Context matters more than volume, because a card that has lost its book and chapter is trivia. This guide compares five tools through that lens: Anki, RemNote, Quizlet, Readwise’s daily review and GleanNote.

Features and plans change often. What follows describes each product at the time of writing; check the current details before you commit.

What readers need from a flashcard app

• Low effort from note to card. The fewer steps between a highlight and a card you can review, the more likely you keep going.
• Your own material. Cards built from what you underlined, not from a stranger’s shared deck about the same book.
• Book context. Knowing which book and chapter a card came from makes recall richer and helps you find the source again.
• Sensible spacing. Cards you know well should drift further apart; cards you miss should come back soon.
• A light daily habit. Five to ten minutes you can keep up, not a queue that swells into hundreds after a week away.

The options, one by one

Anki

Anki is the reference point for spaced repetition. It is free and open source on desktop and Android, with an official iOS app sold separately at the time of writing. It supports basic and cloze cards, custom card templates, a large ecosystem of add-ons and shared decks, and a scheduler that recent versions can run on FSRS, a modern memory model, as well as the classic algorithm.

The catch for readers is setup and authorship. Anki knows nothing about books. You design the deck structure, write every question yourself, and paste in whatever context you want to keep. People who push through that get a powerful system; many readers stall after a few chapters because making cards starts to feel like homework.

For heavy memorization—vocabulary, medicine, law, anything with thousands of discrete facts—Anki remains the best choice, and nothing else in this list replaces it.

RemNote

RemNote combines a notes app with built-in spaced repetition. You write in an outline, and a short piece of syntax turns a line into a flashcard in place, so your notes and cards live in the same document. It also supports reading and annotating PDFs, and it offers a free tier alongside paid plans.

For readers, RemNote works well if you already take structured, outline-style notes as you read. It asks you to adopt its way of writing, and capturing from a paper page is not its main focus.

Quizlet

Quizlet is built around study sets: lists of terms and definitions you drill with flashcards, practice tests and matching games. It is strongly oriented toward classrooms, with teachers sharing sets and students working from them. There is a free tier, and several study modes and AI features sit behind its subscription at the time of writing.

Quizlet is easy to start and good for term–definition pairs. It is less natural for readers, whose takeaways are usually arguments, examples and ideas rather than vocabulary lists, and it has no notion of a book or a chapter.

Readwise daily review

Readwise is not a flashcard app in the strict sense, and that is its appeal. It collects highlights from sources such as Kindle and read-later apps and resurfaces a handful of them each day. You can adjust how often a highlight comes back, and convert selected highlights into question-and-answer or cloze cards when you want active recall. Its mobile app can also capture highlights from paper books with the camera.

For readers whose highlights already live in ebooks and articles, Readwise is a strong, low-effort default. It runs on a subscription at the time of writing, and its model is resurfacing first, with cards as an extra.

GleanNote

GleanNote starts one step earlier, at capture. You add a book, photograph a page and select the lines you want, or type a highlight, then file the note under a chapter with an optional comment. Flashcards are built from those notes.

• Free: flashcard decks are built on your device from your own notes, with no AI call. You tap Start review, then Reveal answer, then mark each card Got it or Not yet.
• Premium: AI-generated flashcards turn card-worthy notes into short, self-contained questions and answers.
• Every plan: the Daily Digest resurfaces a few of your notes each day with their book and chapter—the low-effort layer for notes that don’t need a card.

Your answers shape when a card comes back, and Restart review runs the deck again when you want another pass. GleanNote is deliberately lighter than Anki: there are no custom card templates or add-ons, and it is not the tool for memorizing a medical syllabus.

Side by side

Which one if…

• You are learning a language, studying medicine or preparing for a licensing exam: Anki. Its scheduling, card types and shared decks are built for volume.
• You already write structured notes and want cards to live inside them: RemNote.
• Your class shares study sets, or you need quick term–definition drills: Quizlet.
• Most of your highlights are in Kindle and articles, and you mainly want them resurfaced: Readwise.
• You read paper books and want capture, a daily resurfacing habit and cards from your own notes in one place: GleanNote.
• You want both depth and ease: use a reading app for capture and daily review, and move only the facts that must be recalled word for word into Anki.

A light routine that holds up

Whichever tool you pick, the routine that survives is small. Capture a few passages at the end of each reading session, each with a one-line comment. Let a daily digest or review bring back a handful every day. Promote a note to a flashcard only when it can be answered in a few seconds: a definition, a named framework, a cause and its effect.

Most of what you read needs to be seen again, not drilled. Spending card-making effort only on the notes that earn it is what keeps the habit going past the third book.

Frequently asked questions

Is Anki good for remembering books?

It can be, if you are willing to write the cards. Its scheduling is excellent; the cost is the time spent writing and organizing cards, which is where most readers drop off.

Do I need flashcards at all to remember what I read?

Not for everything. Rereading your own notes on a spaced schedule covers most takeaways. Flashcards add value for facts and definitions you need to recall on demand.

Can GleanNote replace Anki?

For book takeaways, many readers find it is enough. For large-scale memorization such as languages or medicine, Anki is still the better tool, and the two can sit side by side.

Are AI-generated flashcards reliable?

Treat them as a starting point, not an authority. Good generators keep each question short and tied to one fact from your note; skim new cards and skip any that miss the point.