It's week three. You watched a YouTube video about RemNote, set up a beautiful hierarchy of documents, learnt what a "Rem" is, made a few templates, and linked your pharmacology notes to your physiology notes. Then the quiz is on Thursday and you've reviewed eleven cards.
If that sounds familiar, the problem isn't you and it isn't really RemNote. RemNote is a note-taking app and a spaced repetition app in one, and it rewards people who enjoy building a system. If you want a RemNote alternative, you probably want one of two things: less setup before you can study, or the cards made for you. For less setup with your own cards, Anki. For cards, quizzes and lessons built from your lectures, The Study Mill (which I build, so weigh that). For notes that you'd rather keep somewhere you already live, Notion or Obsidian.
And if you love writing structured notes and turning lines into cards as you go, stay on RemNote. It's very good at that.
What RemNote gets right
Credit where it's due, because a lot of students switch away and then miss it.
- Notes and flashcards in the same place. You write a line like "Furosemide :: loop diuretic" and it becomes a card. No copying into a second app.
- Real spaced repetition underneath. It's not a gimmick review mode. Cards come back on a proper schedule.
- Links between ideas. If your course keeps coming back to the same concepts (pharmacology and pathophysiology do this constantly), linking them is useful.
- A usable free plan. At the time of writing, free covers unlimited notes and flashcards, with limits on things like PDF annotation and image occlusion. Pro is around US$8 a month billed yearly, and the heavier AI features sit on a higher tier.
Where it gets heavy
The things that make RemNote powerful are the same things that make it slow to start.
- There's a lot to learn before it pays off. Rems, hierarchies, card types, templates, portals, tags. None of it is hard on its own. Together it's a weekend.
- You still write everything. RemNote makes cards from your notes, but someone has to write the notes. For a 60-slide lecture, that someone is you, at 10pm.
- Building feels like studying. This is the big one. Organising a knowledge base is satisfying, and it feels productive. But tidy notes aren't the same as being able to answer the question. I wrote about the same trap with highlighting in active recall vs rereading.
- It assumes you'll come back. A second brain is a long-term project. A lot of uni study is short-term: learn this week, pass this quiz, survive this exam block.
The alternatives
1. The Study Mill: skip the building, keep the studying
I build this one, so read it with that in mind. It's the opposite approach to RemNote. You don't write notes and turn them into cards. You upload the week's slides, PDF, Word doc, photos of your handwritten notes or the lecture recording, and it builds the study session for you, grounded in what you uploaded:
- Short lessons that explain each idea with an analogy and a real-world example
- Flashcards, some illustrated, each linked back to the lesson it came from
- A quiz that mixes multiple choice with written answers marked by AI
- Notes, a tutor you can ask, and Walk & Learn, where two hosts (Milli and me) teach the week as audio and ask you questions you answer out loud
Questions you miss come back in a daily review, and if you set an exam date it plans revision around your timetable. Everything is organised by class and week, which is the only structure most students need.
Where it's weaker than RemNote: you can't link ideas across courses or build a personal wiki, and you can't hand-craft every card. It studies what you give it, nothing more.
Free for 2 classes. Pro is A$7.99 a month or A$49 a year and adds unlimited classes, exam mode and cram sheets. Students with a .edu or .edu.au email get 50% off.
Best for students who want to study the lecture tonight, not design a system for it.
2. Anki: the cards without the notes app
If what you liked about RemNote was the spaced repetition, Anki is the purest version of it. Free on desktop, web and Android (the iPhone app is a one-off purchase), with the most refined scheduler around and a huge library of shared decks, especially for medicine.
You still make the cards, and there's still a learning curve. But there's no knowledge base to maintain, which is exactly the part many RemNote quitters didn't want. Quizlet vs Anki covers the trade-offs, and Anki alternatives with AI covers how to skip the typing.
Best for med and nursing students who'll put in the setup for long-term retention.
3. Knowt: flashcards made from your files
Knowt generates flashcards from PDFs and notes, imports Quizlet sets, and includes spaced repetition on the free plan. AI use is capped on free, with more on the paid plan. It's flashcard-first, so it's good for definitions and weaker for "explain why".
Best for students who mainly want decks and have a Quizlet library to bring over.
4. Notion or Obsidian: if notes were the point
Some people leave RemNote because they want the notes, not the cards. Notion is easy, pretty, and free for students on its education plan with a university email. Obsidian is free, stores plain files on your own computer, and community plugins can add flashcard review.
Neither tests you out of the box. Pair them with something that does.
Best for students whose notes are the product (thesis research, long essays).
5. NotebookLM: understanding without building anything
Free from Google. Upload your readings and ask questions about them. No structure to build, no cards to make. It also doesn't quiz you on a schedule, so it won't help you remember in six weeks. More on that gap.
Best for making sense of a dense reading before you study it.
Quick comparison
| Setup before first study session | Makes material for you | Spaced repetition | Free plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RemNote | High | From your notes | Yes | Generous, some caps |
| The Study Mill | Low (upload) | Lessons, cards, quiz, audio | Daily review | 2 classes |
| Anki | Medium | No | Best in class | Full (iPhone app paid) |
| Knowt | Low | Flashcards | Yes | Yes, AI capped |
| Notion / Obsidian | Medium | No | Plugins only (Obsidian) | Yes |
| NotebookLM | Low | Answers and summaries | No | Yes |
So which one?
- You enjoy building a system and plan to keep it for years: stay on RemNote.
- You want spaced repetition and nothing else: Anki.
- You want to upload the lecture and start studying: The Study Mill.
- You mostly want flashcards from PDFs: Knowt.
- You want great notes and you'll test yourself another way: Notion or Obsidian.
A second brain is a fine idea. But most students don't need a second brain. They need to know this week's content by Friday.
Try it on one lecture
Pick the lecture you were going to turn into RemNote notes this week. Upload it to The Study Mill instead and see what comes back in about a minute. If you'd still rather build it yourself, you've lost nothing.
Other apps' prices and features are as published in October 2026 and change often. Check their own pricing pages.