Cards.Fast vs Anki

Anki works. If you already review there every day, stay.

I didn’t. I opened it, stared at an empty collection, and closed it. For years. The science was never the problem. The empty deck was.

I built Cards.Fast so an agent would write the cards and a human would still get a say. Inbox, then Today. I want my kids to study that way, not the way I failed at.

You sign up on app.cards.fast. Free is one deck and a hundred cards. Paid is $5 a month or $36 a year.

Who Anki is for

Anki is for people who want control. Note types. Templates. Add-ons. You can run it on your computer without an account. Sync through AnkiWeb if you want. The iPhone app is a paid download from Damien. Desktop and Android are free.

The scheduler is the reason people stay. Modern Anki can use FSRS. That is a real spaced-repetition engine, not a cram button. If you will sit in the editor and maintain a collection for years, Anki is still the deepest tool in this list.

The cost is the empty collection. A new Anki profile is a blank window and a card editor. The habit dies there more often than it dies on a review day.

Shared decks help some people. They are someone else’s facts, someone else’s wording, someone else’s mess. Fine for a standardized exam if you trust the source. Not the same as cards from your own notes.

Who Cards.Fast is for

Cards.Fast is for people whose agent already reads the PDF, the conversation, or the notes. You point ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Cursor, or Claude Code at https://app.cards.fast/mcp. Cards land in Inbox. You keep the ones that are true. You throw out the rest.

You need an account. Free is one deck and one hundred cards. Paid is $5 a month or $36 a year. There is no trial. Pricing is the cap.

The study surface is quiet. Reveal. Again, Hard, Good, Easy. FSRS-5, the same family of scheduler Anki people already trust. We did not invent our own.

We do not have Anki’s add-on ecosystem. We do not have twenty note types. We do not pretend the desktop editor is here.

Give a PDF to the agent. There is no separate PDF upload. Start with an agent.

The empty deck

This is the whole difference.

Anki assumes you will become a card author. That is honest. Some people will. Most people who “should use Anki” never fill the first deck.

Cards.Fast assumes the author is an agent, and that a human should still see the cards before they become due. Inbox is that pause. Nothing enters Today until you say so. That is not a feature Anki is missing so much as a different job.

If you already write excellent Anki cards and you like the editor, stay. Export still works the other way if you try us and want to leave.

Moving cards

You can export a Cards.Fast deck to Anki (.apkg), and also to Mochi, CSV, or Markdown.

You can import Anki into Cards.Fast on /import. We take .apkg, .colpkg, and .anki2, including pictures. CSV and Markdown work there too. The old Anki schedule does not come over. Imported cards land in Inbox, held. Nothing is due until you accept.

Do not expect a huge shared collection to arrive as a living Anki profile. That is not the product.

Hosted MCP

Anki’s agent story is whatever you build around a local collection. Cards.Fast’s agent story is one hosted server: https://app.cards.fast/mcp. How to connect ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok is on Start with an agent.

What we will not claim

We will not say Cards.Fast is “Anki, but easier,” and stop there. Anki is deeper. Cards.Fast is narrower on purpose.

We will not say you should abandon a collection you already review. If Today is already full in Anki, you have already beaten the empty deck.

We will not say hosted MCP makes the cards better. It only makes them exist. You still rate them.

When to pick which

Pick Anki if you want the deepest desktop SRS, add-ons, and a collection you will maintain for years.

Pick Cards.Fast if the empty deck is why you never started, and you want an agent to write into an inbox you study on the web.

You can use both. Write here. Export there. Or stay in Anki and ignore us.

The other two essays: vs Mochi, vs Quizlet. The index is the short map. Questions: support@cards.fast.