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Published: July 25, 2026
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Anki vs Sidetracked Day: Which Should You Use?
Disclosure: Sidetracked Day is made by the team that writes this blog. It is included in this comparison alongside apps from other companies.
Anki is the benchmark every spaced repetition tool gets measured against, and for good reason - its algorithm is well-studied and its scheduling is fully within your control. Sidetracked Day starts from the same underlying science but removes the part most students actually abandon: building and maintaining the deck.
Quick answer
Choose Anki if you want full manual control over cards and scheduling, especially for high-volume vocabulary subjects. Choose Sidetracked Day if you want spaced repetition and active recall built automatically from your own lecture material, with no deck to create or maintain.
Comparison table
| Factor | Anki | Sidetracked Day |
|---|---|---|
| Content source | Cards you write or import | Built automatically from your uploaded material |
| Setup time | Hours to build a working deck | Minutes to upload material and start |
| Scheduling control | Fully manual, tunable settings | Automatic, adjusts to your performance |
| Exam-date awareness | None by default | Prioritises weak topics as the date approaches |
| Learning curve | Steep - many settings to understand | Low - no configuration required |
| Best for | High-volume vocabulary, full manual control | Coursework with a deadline, minimal setup time |
The two review loops
The clearest way to see the difference isn't feature-by-feature - it's the loop each tool puts you through every time you sit down to study.
How Anki works
Anki reviews cards using a spaced repetition algorithm: answer correctly and the interval before you see that card again grows; answer incorrectly and it resets to a short interval. The algorithm is excellent and fully exposed to you - you can see and adjust every setting.
The cost is everything upstream of the algorithm. Before you can review anything, you need to decide what belongs on a card, write it clearly enough to be unambiguous later, and keep the deck from ballooning into an unmanageable backlog. For students with a full course load, that overhead is often where Anki gets abandoned - not because the reviewing part fails, but because the setup never finishes.
How Sidetracked Day works
Sidetracked Day starts from the material itself - lecture slides, notes, or PDFs - and builds a study session directly from it. There's no card-writing step: the system extracts what matters, generates retrieval questions, and tracks how you respond, including whether you needed a hint.
That performance data drives the same underlying spaced repetition logic Anki uses, just without exposing the dial. Get something right without help and the interval grows further out. Get it wrong and it resurfaces sooner and gets logged as a weak spot until you clear it. The scheduling happens automatically, and sessions lean harder on your weakest topics as an exam date gets closer.
Want a study plan that adapts to how you actually learn?
Sidetracked Day turns your material into personalized study sessions with active recall, spaced repetition, and exam-focused practice.
See how it worksWhere Anki still wins
- Full manual control over exactly what's on every card and when it's shown
- A massive ecosystem of shared decks, especially for medicine and language vocabulary
- Works entirely offline once a deck is built
- Free and open-source, with no reliance on any company staying in business
Where Sidetracked Day wins
- No deck-building step - you can start reviewing the same day you upload material
- Review content is built from your own course, not a generic shared deck
- Scheduling adapts automatically based on performance, including hint usage
- Sessions prioritise weak topics as your exam date approaches
Can you use both?
Yes, and plenty of students do. A common split is keeping Anki for one high-volume subject where manual card control genuinely pays off - anatomy terms, a language's vocabulary - and using Sidetracked Day for the rest of a course load, where building a deck by hand for every module isn't worth the time. Neither tool requires abandoning the other.
For a broader look at where each tool fits in a full study system, see Notion vs Anki vs AI study tools, or compare against a wider field in the best study apps guide.
FAQ
Is Sidetracked Day a replacement for Anki?
For most university coursework, yes. For heavy vocabulary work like medicine or language study, some students still prefer Anki's manual card control.
Does Sidetracked Day use the same spaced repetition science as Anki?
Both review material at increasing intervals as it moves into long-term memory. Anki exposes the interval settings directly; Sidetracked Day adjusts them automatically.
Which is faster to start using?
Sidetracked Day - there's no deck to build before you start. Anki requires writing or sourcing cards first.
Can I use Anki and Sidetracked Day together?
Yes. Some students keep Anki for one high-volume subject and use Sidetracked Day for everything else.
Build a study system that adapts as you learn
Sidetracked Day helps students move beyond static study plans by adapting sessions, practice, and reviews based on how they actually perform.
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