Study smarter with Brainscape, the AI-powered flashcard study app built around spaced repetition and active recall. Create flashcards instantly from notes, PDFs, images, and text, or study millions of expert-created flashcards for exams, languages, certifications, and more.
Brainscape’s intelligent study system is designed around proven cognitive science principles that help you learn faster and remember longer. By combining active recall, metacognition, and spaced repetition, Brainscape helps serious learners spend less time studying and retain more of what they learn.
How Brainscape works.
Study any subject using smart flashcards designed to maximize retention:
- Actively recall answers instead of passively rereading notes
- Rate your confidence from 1–5 after each card
- Let Brainscape automatically optimize review timing using spaced repetition
- Focus more time on difficult concepts and less on material you've already mastered
This unique combination of active recall, self-assessment (metacognition), and spaced repetition is designed to help you learn more efficiently.
Where do all of Brainscape’s awesome flashcards come from? Three places:
1. Exper-created flashcards: Study professionally designed collections covering:
- Foreign languages
- MBE (Bar Exam)
- NCLEX
- MCAT
- AP courses
- Series 7
- GRE
- And many more
2. Community-created flashcards: Search millions of flashcards created by students, teachers, professionals, and organizations around the world.
3. Create your own flashcards: Instantly create multimedia flashcards from:
- Notes
- PDFs
- Images
- Documents
- Text input
Add images, audio, and collaborate with classmates or colleagues.
Why learners all over the world use Brainscape
- AI-powered flashcard creation
- Scientifically designed spaced repetition
- Active recall learning techniques
- Progress tracking and study insights
- Millions of existing flashcards ready to study
- Available across web and mobile devices
How much does it cost? Creating and sharing great text flashcards is FREE. (Woohoo! And sorry, we do have to charge for image creation for security reasons.) And for unlimited access to ALL of Brainscape's user-generated and premium, expert-curated content, as well as optional features, like bookmarks and card reversibility--or to me your content private, you can upgrade to Pro for $19.99 (monthly), $59.99 (every 6 months), or $95.99 (annually). Alternatively, you can unlock a LIFETIME of learning with Brainscape for a one-time cost of only $199.99 American dolla billz.
The fine print: The 3 recurring subscriptions (monthly, semiannual, and annual) will renew automatically within 24 hours before the end of the current period, unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the period. You can cancel auto-renewal any time by going to Account Settings, and the cancellation will apply after the active subscription period is complete. Go ahead and learn more about our Terms and Privacy Policy at brainscape.com/terms.
What’s on the horizon? It’s our vision to empower everyone, everywhere to rise to the challenge of personalized forever-learning. And for this reason, we love hearing from our user community: it’s through your feedback that we can continue to innovate our platform to be more convenient, efficient, and even fun and social to use!
I have tried a ton of methods for learning foreign languages over the years — audio only, grammar intensive, books, audiobooks, videos, computer apps, etc. They all have their little gimmick — no studying, guided situations, games, etc. And at the end of the day, the simple flashcard method (with audio) works the best at having something to say in the moment you need it and on the tip of your tongue. Brainscape takes it further by offering curated professional flash cards courses for Spanish and French, plus smaller subsets of offerings (like verbs only or nouns only) for other languages like Mandarin or Italian. I wish they had entire courses in all the popular languages, because their method works best, it really does. Their method of progressive training, interval recall, and 5-level self scoring works quite well at getting you to recall words and phrases you need to learn while moving past the stuff you already know. Plus I can create my own sets of flash cards and hook audio or picture content to them and then share them with others. All in all, there is no better method for learning a foreign language.
Developer Response
Kringle777, please accept this virtual high five! You get us :) And yes, we do hope to add more and more Brainscape certified classes for additional languages (and beyond). Happy studying! -- Courtney@Brainscape
It’s okay, but…
Discord gamer
It hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s too bad, Apple forced a bunch of apps to consolidate if they had multiple apps for one concept. In this case, it’s language learning. Many companies that had Spanish, French, German, etc, language apps sold separately, had to consolidate all languages into one app. During this switch to the new format many apps offered a way to restore purchases. I will admit, many of my language app purchases and the app upgrades were purchased at discounts or during a free unconditional purchase, but I have lost some of the old in app purchases that I had previously. Some of my previous unlocks were for a full set (complete course) or all decks of study cards, and now I seem to only have the first or first few decks. It’s not really a big deal as I have been using other language learning apps in place of Brainscape. I will say,, the spoken content is clear compared to other apps, but it really is simply a digital study card application. I’m not really sure what I’d get for the $200 per year PRO upgrade, but $200 per year gets you a lot of upgrades with a bunch of your language apps compared to just this one, and other apps have tests/quizzes and study material that utilizes voice recognition to analyze your speech when determining if you answered correctly. I consider speaking the language more important than memorizing flash cards
Developer Response
Hi Discord gamer, Sorry for any confusion if you have receipts for purchases made before our rollout of Brainscape Pro so pre December 2015 we'd be happy to honor these purchases and grandfather you into Brainscape Pro just reach out to our team via support@brainscape.zendesk.com include a copy of your receipt and the email address associated with your Brainscape account and they can get you all set up! Courtney@Brainscape
Still one important feature is missing
911toM3to911
Update after 9 months: The text to speech feature was promised for 2025, but it is still not here. I am starting to look for an alternative app. Very disappointing. Update after 6 months: I am still waiting for the text to speech functionality. Not sure why it’s taking so long, there are so many other apps that have this built-in. I am taking away one star and will switch to another app if this is not added soon. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I have tried many flashcard apps over the years and this one truly stands out for the ease with which one can create and review cards. What I really like is the seamless synchronization between the browser version and the app version. I use the browser version to create the cards by copying and pasting material from various sources. Then I switch to the app version for the actual learning. I am using the free version and I am not missing much in terms of functionality. The one feature for which I will be very happy to pay a lifetime subscription for is “text to speech.” This will be especially helpful when learning foreign languages as you can have one side of the card being read out in English and the other one in the foreign language, for example German. I hope to see this feature soon.
Developer Response
We’re buzzing over your detailed feedback, 911toM3to911! Thrilled you find Brainscape seamless and valuable, even the free version! Text-to-speech is on our roadmap – thanks for highlighting its value. Thanks again for your 5-star review and for sharing your suggestions. We’re always looking for ways to make Brainscape even better.Chuckee@Brainscape
Better than Anki! Mastery metric on point!
KristenMLV
I LOVE this app!!! I’ve used it for the MCAT, throughout my first 2 years of medical school and am now using the pre-made USMLE deck for my board exam prep. I love the percent mastery metric. It is ALWAYS within 3% of my exam scores (including the MCAT)! I only wish there was a plug in or connection with Picmonic that allowed quick search of Picmonics. 100% prefer the spaced repetition algorithm over Anki! I don’t need to fiddle with settings. Brainscape shows me what I need to see when I need to see it. The search function for terms is ok, but I wish I could search and it would leave the list of results up instead of having to search the term again after looking at the first one. Also, I preferred the browse mode from the older version. When I do a quick review for exams I just want to flip through them. But this new version only shows a preview and you only have the option to study the deck from that card. Please allow for quick edits in the app. Overall, I am very happy with the new version!! It is much quicker!
Developer Response
Ahh thanks for studying with us through the years, Teamka04! We actually have a new version of the app available for beta testing if that's something you're interested in please reach out to our team at support@brainscape.zendesk.com. Exciting new features include the ability to add images right in the app and rate your cards in Browse mode again!!! Good luck with your board exam prep, you got this!!!Courtney@Brainscape
What do we want? App updates! When do we want them! Now! Here they are:
- Introducing ‘Study Copilot’ – Tap the new AI icon during study to get Added Context to help you remember.
- Great for when you need a sample sentence or for when you just need more info!
Version 4.20260511
The developer, Brainscape, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
Contact Info
Identifiers
Usage Data
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
