linguafolks vs Anki
frlisez n'importe quoi à votre niveau exact
Anki reviews the cards you make. linguafolks finds the words, builds the hook, and draws it.
Anki is the open-source spaced-repetition flashcard program that most serious learners end up using.
Anki is not really a competitor so much as the tool everything else is eventually compared against. It is free, open source, endlessly extensible, and its scheduler is better than anything we will build. If you have the discipline to feed it, it works. That is not in dispute, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
The catch is in the phrase "feed it". All content in Anki is user-supplied: it schedules review, it does not create material. Every card is something you decided to make, typed out, and formatted. The learners for whom Anki works brilliantly are the ones who enjoy that, and the ones for whom it does not are the ones who downloaded a shared deck, reviewed it for eleven days, and never opened it again.
linguafolks front-loads the part Anki leaves to you. The words come from something you actually read, because the text was rewritten to your level and the ones you did not know are known to the system. The memory hook is generated rather than invented by you: an anchor from a language you already speak that sounds like the target word, fused with its meaning into a single scene, and drawn.
Three things Anki doesn't do
- You supply everything
- Anki schedules review; it does not produce material. Every card is one you made. linguafolks starts from a text rewritten to your measured level, so the candidate words are the ones that were actually in your way, already in context.
- The memory hook is your job
- A card is a prompt and an answer. Whether it is memorable is entirely down to how you wrote it. linguafolks generates the hook, a sound-alike anchor fused with the meaning into a drawn scene, which is the step most people skip when making cards by hand.
- No reading, no placement
- Anki is review software, not a place to read. linguafolks measures your vocabulary size, rewrites arbitrary pages to it, and keeps the estimate current as you confirm words.
Words that stick
ptaprenda vocabulário mais rápido
Every word gets an anchor, something you already know that sounds like it, fused with the meaning into a single scene, and then drawn. If it makes you smirk, it is doing its job.
baleine
means whale
French
ballerinaA graceful ballerina twirls on stage, her body morphing into a massive whale mid-leap.
pays
means country
FrenchpayA traveler at a border checkpoint paying gold coins to enter a vast, sprawling country.
raser
means shave
FrenchrazorA gleaming razor blade shaving off a thick beard in one smooth stroke.
Read anything at your exact level.
frlisez n'importe quoi à votre niveau exact
The text is rewritten to sit within reach, hard enough to grow and easy enough to finish, with the original beside it so you can see what changed and check yourself against it. Tap any word to find out what it means and keep it.
FrenchLe café se trouvait quasiment déserté à pareille heure. Des effluves de café chaud imprégnaient la salle. Quelques clients s'entretenaient à mi-voix près de la devanture.
Elle tergiversa longuement avant de passer commande. Le serveur patientait près du comptoir, sans hâte aucune. Elle jeta finalement son dévolu sur un chocolat chaud et une part de tarte.
Il consigna la commande d'un hochement de tête. Au-dehors, la pluie ne faisait que commencer. Elle ouvrit son livre et fit abstraction du reste du monde.
EnglishThe café was almost empty at that hour. A smell of hot coffee filled the room. A few customers were talking quietly by the window.
She hesitated a long time before ordering. The waiter waited by the counter, in no hurry. She finally chose a hot chocolate and a slice of pie.
He noted the order with a nod. Outside, the rain was just beginning. She opened her book and forgot the rest of the world.
FrenchLe café était presque vide à cette heure-là. Une odeur de café chaud remplissait la pièce. Quelques clients parlaient tout bas près de la fenêtre.
Elle a hésité longtemps avant de commander. Le serveur attendait près du comptoir, sans se dépêcher. Elle a enfin choisi un chocolat chaud et une part de tarte.
EnglishThe café was almost empty at that hour. A smell of hot coffee filled the room. A few customers were talking quietly by the window.
She hesitated a long time before ordering. The waiter waited by the counter, in no hurry. She finally chose a hot chocolate and a slice of pie.
One minute, then a real number
estu nivel, medido
Fifty words, forty real and ten invented to catch over-claiming, give an estimated vocabulary size and a CEFR band placed to Lower, Mid or Upper. Everything downstream reads that number. And it keeps moving: each word you confirm you have learned is added, so the level follows you without a retake.
Where Anki wins
No product is better at everything, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is worth nothing to the person reading it.
What Anki does better
- The scheduling algorithm is far better than ours, and it is the core of the product.
- Free, open source, and your data is genuinely yours.
- Add-ons and community decks cover essentially every language and subject.
- Total control over card design, if that is something you want.
Where linguafolks falls short
- Grammar exercises exist in French and English only. The other four languages have reading and vocabulary.
- There is no audio and no speaking practice anywhere in the product.
- We generate texts rather than curate them, so there is no hand-edited library to browse.
- Six languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and English.
- It is a new product, without the years of polish the established apps have.
Anki is free on desktop and on Android via AnkiDroid; the iOS app, AnkiMobile, is a paid purchase that funds the project. Prices change, so check theirs before deciding on it.
Plainly, then
Choose Anki if
- You enjoy making your own cards and want complete control.
- You want the best scheduler available, for free.
- You are studying something outside our six languages.
Choose linguafolks if
- You have abandoned more shared decks than you have finished.
- You want the words to come from what you were reading anyway.
- You want the mnemonic made for you rather than left as an exercise.
Questions
- Can I export to Anki?
- Not today. If that would be useful to you, it is worth telling us. It is a reasonable thing to want.
- Is your spaced repetition as good as Anki's?
- No. Anki's scheduler is the product of many years and a lot of research; ours is simpler, and we would rather say so than imply parity.
- Why not just use shared decks?
- You can, and many people do well with them. The argument for learning from your own reading is that the words arrive with context and a reason to care about them.
Find your level first.
It takes about a minute and needs no account. Whatever you decide afterwards, you will at least know where you actually are.
Claims about Anki were checked in August 2026 against the company's own published material. Either way, check theirs before you decide. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.