Anki vs Peek: Which Should You Choose?

Anki is the most powerful flashcard app ever shipped. For some learners, that is exactly the problem. This post puts Anki and Peek side by side on the dimensions that actually decide which one you will keep opening: setup tax, platforms and pricing, scheduler quality, and the shared-deck ecosystem.

Anki versus Peek at a glance. Anki wins on breadth and customisation; Peek wins on setup tax and language focus.

What Anki is

Anki has shipped on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS since 2006. The current stable release is 25.09.4 from May 2026 (Anki on Wikipedia). The desktop client is free and open source under AGPLv3; AnkiDroid is free under GPLv3 on Android; AnkiMobile is a one-time $24.99 on iOS.

The strengths are real: a plugin ecosystem, a vast shared-deck library, deep customisation of every scheduler knob, free AnkiWeb sync across devices, and the option to switch from the legacy SM-2 scheduler to FSRS, a modern scheduler that fits memory parameters from your own review history. We’ll get to scheduler details in a later section. For now: if you want the most configurable flashcard tool in existence and you’re willing to spend a weekend setting it up, Anki is it.

What Peek is

We built Peek for the language learner who tried Anki and bounced off the setup. Peek is mobile-first on Android today, with iOS in the pipeline. It is free, requires no sign-up to start, and is scoped to language learning — the Play Store listing puts that in the title: Peek: Learn Any Language.

What we deliberately did not build, and what Anki has, is the long tail: no add-on marketplace, no shared-deck library you can pull pre-built JLPT N5 cards from, no image occlusion, no PDF annotation. You type a word you want to learn; we schedule it. That is the whole product on day one.

Setup, platforms, and pricing

Anki’s first-time setup goes roughly like this: install the desktop client, learn the deck and note-type model, decide whether to keep the SM-2 scheduler or enable FSRS, optionally install add-ons, sync to AnkiWeb, install AnkiDroid or pay for AnkiMobile, then import or build your first deck. The official manual is thorough and long. For power users this is a feature; for beginners it is the reason they give up.

On platforms and pricing:

Anki Desktop — Windows, macOS, Linux. Free, AGPLv3 (apps.ankiweb.net).
AnkiDroid — Android. Free, GPLv3. 10M+ downloads, 4.8★ across 162K reviews.
AnkiMobile — iOS. One-time $24.99 USD. A discussion on the Anki forums frames why: AnkiMobile revenue is what funds development of the rest of the project.
AnkiWeb sync — free across all clients.

Peek’s setup is: open the app, type your first word. The app is free on Android today and there is no sign-up. iOS users have to wait.

AnkiDroid deck list on Android: a single-column list with deck names and three small counters per row for new, learning, and due cards. Header reads AnkiDroid, 51 cards due in 18 minutes. Decks include Chess, Deutsch mit Farben, Geography, People, and Japanese kanji decks. — The same starting screen: AnkiDroid shows a single-column deck library with new / learning / due counters and a default to general-purpose subjects. Peek shows a coloured deck grid focused on languages.

Peek deck list on Android: a 2-column grid of coloured deck cards with the deck name and a small counter of cards due for review. — The same starting screen: AnkiDroid shows a single-column deck library with new / learning / due counters and a default to general-purpose subjects. Peek shows a coloured deck grid focused on languages.

Scheduler quality

Both apps are real spaced-repetition systems. The interesting question is which scheduler each one runs.

Anki’s default is SM-2, the algorithm Piotr Woźniak published in 1987 for SuperMemo and the basis for most modern flashcard apps (SuperMemo on Wikipedia). Since Anki 23.10 (October 2023) you can switch to FSRS — the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler, which models difficulty, stability, and retrievability per card and is fit on millions of real review logs (Wikipedia: spaced repetition).

FSRS is opt-in, not the default. The Anki manual describes it as “an alternative to Anki’s legacy SuperMemo 2 (SM-2) algorithm” and only exposes its options “when you turn on FSRS” (Anki manual).

Peek runs spaced repetition out of the box with no scheduler picker. We pick the schedule; you rate the recall. If you want the deeper story on how SRS schedules work, our explainer on spaced repetition walks through SM-2 and FSRS in plain English.

Honest framing: a well-configured Anki with FSRS enabled is the highest-ceiling SRS available to consumers right now. If picking your own algorithm matters to you, Peek is not your tool.

AnkiDroid review screen on an Anime deck for Japanese learning. The card shows a still from an anime, the Japanese sentence 籠のそれ何 with furigana, an audio button, and the English translation 'What's in your basket?'. Below sit three coloured grade buttons: Again less than one minute, Good less than ten minutes, Easy four days. — Both apps ask the same question — do you remember this card? AnkiDroid surfaces the grade buttons (Again / Good / Easy) right after revealing the answer, with the next interval printed on each. Peek hides the rating until you tap to reveal, then asks once with binary recall.

Peek study session: the prompt word butterfly with an audio playback button, a Tap to reveal hint, and an Already know shortcut below the card. — Both apps ask the same question — do you remember this card? AnkiDroid surfaces the grade buttons (Again / Good / Easy) right after revealing the answer, with the next interval printed on each. Peek hides the rating until you tap to reveal, then asks once with binary recall.

Interface and day-to-day feel

The two apps look different on screen, and the difference is intentional. AnkiDroid is information-dense: every review surfaces the deck name, time remaining, learn / review / new counters, and after the answer a row of grade buttons with the next interval printed on each. Settings live deep — note types, FSRS parameters, ease modifiers — and the deck options page runs for several screens. The Material chrome is older because the project prioritises new features over redesign cycles. For someone who already understands SRS, every control is one tap away.

Peek goes the other direction. The session screen shows one card, one audio button, and a “Tap to reveal” hint. After the answer you get binary recall — either you knew it or you did not — plus an “Already know” shortcut for mastered cards. No scheduler picker, no plugins, no settings panel deep enough to get lost in. The trade-off is real: power users have less to configure. (We describe how Peek schedules cards on the home page.)

AnkiDroid Edit note screen for a Chess card. Several typed fields are visible: Type (Chess, HTMLTTC), Deck (Chess), Front position with a FEN chess notation string, Problem text describing a mate-in-five puzzle, Solution position with a multi-line FEN, and an Explanation field. Each text field has an attachment paperclip icon on the right. — Adding a card to each app. AnkiDroid surfaces note types, custom fields, attachments, and per-field metadata — useful if you need image occlusion or chess notation, expensive to learn. Peek's editor is a two-field bottom sheet over the deck you are in.

Peek Create card bottom sheet. Two text fields — Question filled with 'What is the capital of France?' and Answer filled with 'Paris' — a Keep creating checkbox, and a single blue Create button. The rest of the screen behind the sheet is dimmed. — Adding a card to each app. AnkiDroid surfaces note types, custom fields, attachments, and per-field metadata — useful if you need image occlusion or chess notation, expensive to learn. Peek's editor is a two-field bottom sheet over the deck you are in.

Honest framing: these are different optimisation targets. Anki tunes the ceiling for users who will spend a weekend learning the tool; Peek tunes the floor for users who will not. For medics and law students the depth wins more retention; for language learners with no SRS habit, the lower setup wins more open sessions.

Shared decks and content ecosystem

This is Anki’s biggest single advantage. AnkiWeb hosts a public shared-decks library reachable from any desktop client via the “Get Shared” button (Anki manual: Getting Started). For Japanese specifically, the Core 2k/6k family of decks is the de-facto starter set, with multiple actively maintained variants (Optimized, Remastered Parts 1 and 2, with pitch graphs and audio).

Worth noting: Anki’s own manual cautions against treating shared decks as a complete solution. It argues that downloaded word lists will not teach a language by themselves, and recommends shared decks as supplements to textbooks, classes, and real exposure rather than replacements (Anki manual). The library is huge; the right use of it is narrower than “install and study.”

Peek has no shared-deck marketplace. If your study plan starts with “download someone’s pre-built deck,” Anki wins this comparison outright.

AnkiDroid statistics screen for All decks. A Review Time chart with daily blue bars across the last 30 days and a cumulative-minutes line. Tabs across the top include Review Time, Intervals, and Hourly Breakdown. A legend lists card categories: Learn, Mature, Cram, Young, and Relearn. — End of a session. AnkiDroid gives you a long-tail dashboard — 30-day review time, intervals, card maturity, hourly breakdown. Peek shows the result of the session you just finished and gets out of the way.

Peek session success screen: a celebratory illustration with the count of cards just studied and a Continue button to return to the deck list. — End of a session. AnkiDroid gives you a long-tail dashboard — 30-day review time, intervals, card maturity, hourly breakdown. Peek shows the result of the session you just finished and gets out of the way.

Who should pick which

Use case beats feature count.

Pick Anki if you want maximum customisation, you study a non-language subject (medicine, law, anatomy), you want a pre-built deck like Core 2k/6k that someone has already curated, you need image occlusion or PDF integration, you are on iOS and willing to pay $24.99 once, or you already know SRS well and want the highest-quality scheduler available with FSRS enabled.

Pick Peek if you are a language learner, you want zero setup, you want a free app on Android with no sign-up, and you do not need shared decks because you are typing the words you actually encounter day-to-day. Get Peek on Google Play and you can be reviewing your first card in under a minute.

Use both if you have a curated Anki deck for one subject and want a separate, lighter tool for ad-hoc vocabulary capture. The two do not conflict.

The honest answer to “Anki or Peek?” is “the one you will actually open tomorrow morning.” For power users with the patience to configure their tools, that is Anki. For language learners who want spaced repetition without the setup tax, that is Peek.

AnkiDroid screenshots above are from the official AnkiDroid repository, used under the GPLv3 licence.