Flashcards for Life
Research
Your second brain, in flashcards

Remember anything.
For life.

Make flashcards for words, questions, formulas and pictures. Sort them into concept groups, track what you know, and study on any device.

Free to use Text and images Syncs everywhere
Word
ephemeral
Tap to reveal
Answer
lasting a very short time
Vocabulary
Learned
Biology · 24 cards
Synced
Features

Everything you need to actually remember

Simple enough for a quick vocab list, flexible enough for a whole degree.

Two sided, text or images

Put a word, question, diagram or photo on either side. Paste screenshots straight in.

Concept groups

Organize cards into categories like Biology, GRE words or Interview prep, and study one group at a time.

Track what you know

Mark cards as Learning, Almost, Learned, Confused or Hard, then focus on the ones that need work.

Spaced repetition

Cards come back right before you would forget them, on a series you choose like 3, 7 and 30 days, with email reminders.

Private by default

Your cards and images are tied to your account. Nobody else can see them.

Every device

Add a card on your laptop, review it on your phone. Everything stays in sync.

The science

Built on 140 years of memory research

Two study techniques come out on top again and again: active recall (testing yourself instead of rereading) and spaced repetition (reviewing over growing gaps of time). Here is the evidence, and how we built it into Flashcards for Life.

The problem

Without review, memory fades fast

In 1885 Hermann Ebbinghaus memorized lists and measured how much easier they were to relearn after a delay. Within a day, most of the benefit of studying was gone. After a month, only about a fifth remained.

Measure: "savings", how much less time relearning took compared with the first time.

Memory retained after learning Ebbinghaus, 1885
View data
Time after learningSavings
20 minutes58%
1 hour44%
9 hours36%
1 day34%
2 days28%
6 days25%
31 days21%
Active recall

Testing yourself beats rereading

Students read short passages, then either reread them or tried to recall them from memory. Five minutes later, rereading looked slightly better. But two days and one week later, the students who tested themselves remembered far more.

Rereading feels productive. Recall is what actually lasts.

Share of the passage recalled Roediger & Karpicke, 2006
RereadTested themselves
View data
Final testRereadTested themselves
5 minutes81%75%
2 days54%68%
1 week42%56%
Retrieval is the key

Keep testing, and you keep it

Students learned 40 Swahili words. Some kept testing themselves on words they already knew. Others dropped those words from testing but kept studying them. One week later the difference was enormous.

Studying more did not help. Retrieving more did.

Words remembered one week later Karpicke & Roediger, 2008, Science
Kept testing themselves
0%
Stopped testing, kept studying
0%
0

experiments reviewed

A major review of spacing research found spaced study beat cramming across 317 experiments.

Cepeda et al., 2006, Psychological Bulletin
0%

learned more with spacing

In a flashcard study, spacing beat cramming for 90% of students...

Kornell, 2009, Applied Cognitive Psychology
0%

believed cramming worked better

...yet most students thought cramming had worked better. Our intuition about learning is often wrong.

Kornell, 2009
g = 0

effect of practice testing

A meta-analysis of 272 effects found testing clearly improves learning, a medium to large effect.

Adesope et al., 2017, Review of Educational Research
What works best

Only two techniques earned the top rating

A landmark review rated ten popular study techniques on how well they work across students, subjects and situations. Just two were rated high utility: practice testing and distributed (spaced) practice. Highlighting and rereading, the most popular habits, were rated low.

Flashcards for Life is built around exactly those two.

Utility rating of 10 study techniques Dunlosky et al., 2013
So we built this

The research, turned into an app

Active recall on every card

You see one side and try to remember the other before flipping. Every review asks you to recall, never just reread.

Your own spacing series

Choose gaps like 3, 7 and 30 days. Again, Hard, Good and Easy move each card along its series.

Reminders at the right time

An email on the days cards are due, so reviews happen when they matter most.

Honest progress tracking

Tags and review counts show what you really know, not what only feels familiar.

How a card travels through a 3, 7, 30 day series
Sources
  1. Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Über das Gedächtnis (Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology).
  2. Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255.
  3. Karpicke, J. D., & Roediger, H. L. (2008). The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science, 319(5865), 966-968.
  4. Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380.
  5. Kornell, N. (2009). Optimising learning using flashcards: Spacing is more effective than cramming. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(9), 1297-1317.
  6. Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). Rethinking the use of tests: A meta-analysis of practice testing. Review of Educational Research, 87(3), 659-701.
  7. Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58.

Figures are taken from the published studies and rounded to whole numbers.

How it works

Three steps. That is it.

1

Create your account

Sign up with your email in a few seconds.

2

Add your cards

Words, questions, pictures. Put them in concept groups.

3

Study and track

Flip, tag, and watch your Learned count grow.

Start your first deck today

It takes less than a minute to make your first card.

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Upcoming reviews

Cards come back on these days. Tap a card to change its schedule.

Add cards to your schedule

Turn on spaced repetition for many cards at once. You can also do it per card in the card editor.

Schedule and reminders

Your review series Days to wait before each review. For example 3, 7, 30 means review after 3 days, then 7 days later, then 30 days later.
When a card finishes the series
Schedule new cards automaticallyNew cards start on your series as soon as you save them.
Email remindersGet one email on days when you have cards due.
Add a new card
Text, images, or both on each side.
1
Front · Word
Add imageTap, drag in, or paste
2
Back · Meaning
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Notes / Example (optional, shown on the back)
Concept groups / Categories
Spaced repetition
Bring this card back for review on a schedule.
Ctrl/Cmd + Enter to save and add another