Leaving Anki
The Anki alternative for people who wanted the scheduling, not the setup
Rayaad runs the same algorithm — FSRS-6 — already tuned, on from your first card. No deck options, no parameter optimisation, no monthly maintenance. Two answers instead of four, pronunciation that works on both sides of a card, and every device on one free account.
It is built for vocabulary specifically, which is why it can be this simple. Here is what reviewing actually feels like.
Didn’t know
in about a minute
It stays in this session, a few cards later.
Knew it
tomorrow
It leaves the session, and the gap grows from there.
Know it a second time and it comes back in 3 days.
Every interval here is computed by the app’s own scheduler.
The fit
Where Rayaad is the obvious answer
You are learning vocabulary
One card shape, built for a language pair, is what lets Rayaad ship with nothing to configure. If your material is words in another language, this is the shape that fits.
Rayaad is built for exactly this
You want FSRS without maintaining it
One tuned parameter set, published and on by default. No optimiser to re-run, no ease bonus to reason about, no scheduler to switch on first.
Nothing to set up
You want it on every device
Web, iOS and Android on one free account, with offline review and sync included. There is no second purchase for a phone.
One account, no extras
What is different
- Cards import from CSV; review history starts fresh.
- One card shape — no note types, cloze deletions or LaTeX.
- No add-ons, because the defaults are the product.
- Hosted rather than local, with an unconditional export.
- A first-party catalog rather than a shared-deck library.
- One tuned parameter set rather than a per-user optimiser.
What you gain
- FSRS on by default, with nothing to configure or optimise.
- Two answers instead of four, and undo that reverses the schedule.
- Pronunciation on both sides, in the correct language, built in.
- A hands-free audio session for a walk or a commute.
- A browser extension that puts your words into pages you already read.
- Every device on one free account, iOS included.
The full dimension-by-dimension table is onthe Anki comparison page.
How to move across in an evening
Do not migrate everything. Export a CSV of the two or three hundred words you are actively working on and import those. Leave the mature material where its history is — there is no rule against running both, and a card that is already scheduled a year out in Anki is not costing you anything there.
Give it two weeks. The first days of any spaced-repetition tool are unrepresentative, because everything is new and everything is due. The shape of a real session only appears once intervals have started to spread.
Judge it on the thing you came for. If it was setup friction, the test is whether you have opened a settings screen since. If it was time per card, the test is how long a session takes. Both are answers you will have within a fortnight.
Anki is a serious tool. So is a narrower one.
Anki has been maintained for two decades and earned its reputation. Rayaad is not a replacement for everything it does — it is the answer to a narrower question: what a spaced-repetition tool looks like when it only has to handle vocabulary, and can therefore arrive already configured. That constraint is what buys the two-answer review, the built-in pronunciation and the empty settings screen.
Read on: Anki vs Rayaad in detail ·how Rayaad implements FSRS ·importing a CSV
Switching questions
Can I import my Anki decks into Rayaad?
Cards, yes — export a CSV with a front and a back column and every row goes through a preview table before anything is written. Review history does not come across, so migrated cards start their scheduling fresh. The efficient move is to bring the few hundred words you are actively working on rather than the whole collection.
Is Rayaad open source like Anki?
Rayaad is a hosted product with an unconditional export: every pair, deck, card and review in one file, on any plan, at any time, plus self-service account deletion. Your material stays portable whether or not the code is.
Does Rayaad have add-ons?
No. Rayaad is built so that the things add-ons are usually installed to fix — scheduling defaults, audio, a review screen worth using — work properly out of the box.
What about the iOS app?
Rayaad’s phone apps are on the same free account as everything else — there is no separate purchase for iOS. They are in closed testing today; the web app is fully usable on a phone in the meantime and installs to the home screen.
Is the scheduling as good?
It is the same algorithm — FSRS-6 — shipped with one tuned parameter set that is published on the FSRS page. You get the scheduling without owning its maintenance: nothing to enable, nothing to re-optimise, and no settings screen standing between you and your first review.
Bring two hundred words
Not the whole collection — the ones you are working on this month. Free plan, no review limit, and everything comes back out in one file whenever you want it.