Anki and Paced: Anki tells you which card, Paced tells you which hour
Published · Updated · by the Paced team
What Anki does, in its own words
The Anki manual describes a program built on two principles: active recall testing (you try to remember the answer before turning the card) and spaced repetition (you only study a card when you are about to forget it, and the easier the card, the longer the interval). It is open source, content-agnostic, and it uses the FSRS scheduling algorithm (Anki manual, Background). Its examples include studying for medical and law exams, which is where most of its users are.
The evidence behind the two principles is solid: on tests a week later, practising recall beat rereading (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006); with flashcards, spacing beat cramming for 90% of participants (Kornell, 2009); and a review of ten study techniques rated practice testing and distributed practice as the two of high utility (Dunlosky et al., 2013). In a survey of 72 medical students at one school, the number of unique Anki cards seen was associated with licensing-exam scores, an association rather than a proof (Deng et al., 2015).
What a card scheduler cannot see
- The lecture. A card is a fact. The lecture it came from, the chapter, the problem set, the block of questions: none of these is a card, and none of them is on Anki's calendar. Users plan them on paper, in a spreadsheet or not at all.
- The hours. Anki tells you how many cards are due; it does not know that Tuesday has a lab, that the weekend is a shift, or that the week only holds twelve hours. The due count grows, the hours do not.
- The week that goes wrong. Miss three days and the cards pile up as a backlog; the only tools are to grind through it or to reset. Nothing is rescheduled around the time you actually have.
None of this is a flaw of Anki: scheduling cards is a different job from scheduling a week. The gap is between the two tools, and it is where students lose their plan.
What Paced does, and does not do
| Anki | Paced | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | A card (one fact) | A topic (a lecture, a chapter, a block of questions) |
| Intervals | Adaptive per card (FSRS) | Fixed, growing gaps per topic you choose (Standard: D0, D+1, D+3, D+7, D+15, D+30, D+60, D+120, D+240), custom days possible |
| Knows your hours | No | Yes: classes, shifts, days off, a budget per day |
| Missed day | Cards accumulate as due | Reviews moved into the next free time, with an Undo |
| Content | Your cards and shared decks | None: you bring your own material |
| Import / sync between the two | — | None |
| Platforms | Desktop, Android, iOS, web | iPhone, iPad, web (one account in sync) |
Using both: a day that works
- Anki stays a fixed block. Twenty to forty minutes, same time every day, for the cards that are due. Treat it like brushing your teeth; it is not planned in Paced.
- Everything else becomes a topic in Paced. One topic per lecture, chapter or question block, with a first-study estimate. Name it the way you name the matching Anki tag so the two line up.
- A topic review in Paced is a recall of the whole, not of a card. On the Standard pace a 2 h 30 topic comes back 8 times, for 45 min first and down to 15 min: a block of questions, a diagram from memory, a blank-page summary, then the cards of that topic if you want them.
- Let Paced count the hours. New topics, topic reviews and the Anki block together have to fit the day; when they do not, Paced says so before the week starts, and moves the topic reviews rather than dropping them.
- When the week goes wrong, reschedule the topics and let Anki catch up on its own. See how to catch up without starting over.
The gaps Paced uses are practical choices consistent with the spacing research, not values prescribed by a study: in Cepeda and colleagues' 2008 study of more than 1,350 learners, the best gap depended on how far the test was, which is why Paced has three paces and custom days rather than one. See which intervals, and how to plan them.
Paced plans every topic that is not a card, inside the hours left by your classes, shifts and days off, moves what does not fit, and tells you when a plan will not fit, up to 90 days ahead. Medical students can start from the Step 1 template; see the medical school schedule.
Anki is developed by Ankitects Pty Ltd. Paced is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ankitects or Anki. What Anki does is quoted from its manual as read on 7 October 2026; the comparison table is Paced's own description of the two tools on that date.
Questions
Is Paced an Anki alternative?
Not for flashcards. Anki schedules cards and does it well; Paced has no cards, no question bank and no deck import. Paced is an alternative to the paper calendar or the spreadsheet in which Anki users try to plan everything that is not a card: lectures, chapters, question blocks, and the hours they fit in.
Can Paced import my Anki decks or sync with Anki?
No. There is no import, no export to Anki and no sync between the two. You name a topic in Paced the way you name a deck or a tag in Anki, and Paced schedules when you sit down with it.
Does Paced use the same algorithm as Anki (SM-2 or FSRS)?
No. Anki's scheduler adapts the interval of each card to how you rated it. Paced places whole topics on fixed, growing gaps you choose (for example D+1, D+3, D+7, D+15, D+30), fits them into your available hours, and lets the Debrief add an extra pass to a topic that felt shaky. Two different jobs, two different tools.
Should I stop using Anki if I use Paced?
No. If cards work for you, keep the daily Anki reviews as a fixed block in your day; put the rest of your studying (first studies, question blocks, topic-level recalls) in Paced. The two do not overlap.
What does the research say about Anki?
In a survey of 72 students at one medical school, the number of unique Anki flashcards seen, like the number of practice questions completed, was associated with licensing-exam scores. It is an association at one school, not proof that cards cause the scores; and the same survey found every student also used practice questions.
Sources
- Ankitects (Anki manual) (2026). Background — the Anki manual. docs.ankiweb.net. How Anki describes itself: active recall testing and spaced repetition on flashcards, with the FSRS scheduling algorithm.
- Deng, F., Gluckstein, J. A., & Larsen, D. P. (2015). Student-directed retrieval practice is a predictor of medical licensing examination performance. Perspectives on Medical Education, 4(6), 308–313. Survey of 72 students at one school: practice questions completed and unique Anki flashcards seen predicted Step 1 scores (an association, not proof of cause).
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. Review of 10 techniques: practice testing and distributed practice rated high utility; rereading and highlighting low.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. On tests two days and one week later, practising recall beat restudying the same text.
- Cepeda, N. J., Vul, E., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., & Pashler, H. (2008). Spacing effects in learning: A temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1095–1102. More than 1,350 learners, review gaps up to 3.5 months, final tests up to a year later.
- Kornell, N. (2009). Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(9), 1297–1317. Three experiments with flashcards: spacing beat massing for 90% of participants, yet 72% believed massing had worked better.