Study & writing
Flashcards per day calculator
Enter how many new cards you need to learn and by when; see how many new cards to add each day, the reviews that follow and the daily study time.
A review factor of about 10 is a common rule of thumb for spaced repetition apps; lower it if your cards are easy, raise it for hard material.
How the daily flashcard load is worked out
Spreading a deck over a deadline is simple division: new cards per day = cards to learn ÷ days available, rounded up. The hidden cost is the reviews. In a spaced repetition system every new card comes back several times over the following days and weeks, so once the schedule settles, daily reviews are roughly a fixed multiple of your daily new cards. Many Anki users plan with a factor of about 10. Daily time is then (new cards + reviews) × seconds per card ÷ 60.
Worked example: 1,000 cards in 30 days is 1,000 ÷ 30 = 33.3, so 34 new cards a day. With a factor of 10 that becomes about 340 reviews a day once the load has built up, 374 cards in total. At 8 seconds each that is 374 × 8 = 2,992 seconds, or about 50 minutes a day.
| New cards per day | Reviews per day (×10) | Cards per day | Time at 8 s per card |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 100 | 110 | about 15 min |
| 20 | 200 | 220 | about 29 min |
| 30 | 300 | 330 | 44 min |
| 50 | 500 | 550 | about 1 h 13 min |
| 100 | 1,000 | 1,100 | about 2 h 27 min |
Choosing a pace you can keep
Anki's default setting is 20 new cards a day, which by the rule above means roughly half an hour of daily study once reviews accumulate. That is a sensible starting point if you have no fixed date. With an exam deadline, check the time per day first: a pace that looks easy in week one can feel very different in week three, when the reviews from everything you added earlier arrive together.
The review factor depends on the material and your settings. Cards you find easy are pushed out to long intervals and come back rarely; cards you keep failing return every day or two. If your app shows a review forecast, compare it with this estimate after two weeks and adjust the factor to match what you actually see. Eight seconds is a typical time for a short vocabulary card; definitions, formulas or cards with images often take 15 seconds or more.
Skipping days is the most common way a plan breaks. Missed reviews do not disappear, they pile up for the next session. If you know you will miss weekends, enter fewer days so the daily target covers only the days you will study, and keep the daily new-card number steady rather than catching up in bursts.
Frequently asked questions
How many new flashcards should I learn per day?
Divide the deck by the days you have and check the resulting daily time. Without a deadline, 10–20 new cards a day is a common, sustainable pace that leads to roughly 15–30 minutes of daily study.
Why do my reviews keep growing after I add new cards?
Each new card is shown again after increasing intervals. While you keep adding cards, cards from earlier days are still in their early, short intervals, so the daily review count rises for several weeks before it levels off.
How long does it take to review 100 flashcards?
At about 8 seconds per card, 100 cards take roughly 13 minutes. Harder cards that need 15 seconds take about 25 minutes.