The Anki review time calculator estimates your daily review workload based on deck size, new cards per day, and target retention rate. Use it to find a sustainable new-card pace before your review pile becomes overwhelming.
Deck Settings
Pace Comparison
| New Cards/Day | Reviews/Day | Daily Time | Weeks to Finish |
|---|
How to Use the Anki Review Time Calculator
Anki's spaced repetition system is powerful, but it's easy to overwhelm yourself by adding too many new cards per day. This calculator shows you the downstream review load before you commit to a pace.
Step 1: Enter Your Deck Size
A typical language vocabulary deck for B2 proficiency contains 4,000–8,000 cards. A professional medical or legal vocabulary deck might be 10,000+. Enter the total number of cards you plan to learn.
Step 2: Set New Cards Per Day
Start conservatively — 10–20 new cards per day is sustainable for most learners. The review load from new cards takes 2–4 weeks to fully materialize as cards mature through their intervals. What feels light in week 1 can become overwhelming by week 4 if you add too aggressively.
Step 3: Choose Target Retention
85% is the Anki default and the most researched target. It means you'll correctly recall roughly 85% of mature cards. Higher retention requires reviewing more frequently, which increases daily workload. Lower retention saves time but means you'll forget more cards between reviews.
Understanding the Steady-State Model
The calculator estimates steady-state daily reviews — the number of reviews you'll be doing once all new cards have had time to mature through early intervals. The formula is: daily reviews ≈ new cards × (1 / forgetting rate) × interval_factor. At 85% retention with 8-second cards, expect about 8–10 minutes of reviews per 10 new cards added per day.
FAQ
Is this Anki calculator free?
Yes, completely free with no signup required. All calculations run locally in your browser.
How does Anki's review system work?
Anki uses spaced repetition — cards you know well are shown less often; cards you struggle with are shown more frequently. New cards added daily gradually mature into review cards that cycle on longer intervals based on your retention.
Why do reviews pile up over time?
When you add new cards daily, reviews accumulate as those cards mature through intervals of 1, 10, 30, 90+ days. The daily review count stabilizes once your deck reaches a steady-state balance. This calculator estimates that steady-state load.
What retention rate should I aim for?
85–90% is the standard recommendation. Higher retention (95%) means more reviews per card; lower retention (80%) means less review time but you forget more. For language vocabulary, 85% is a practical target.
How many new cards per day should I add?
10–20 new cards/day is manageable for most learners. At 20 cards/day, expect 150–200 reviews/day at 85% retention once the deck matures. More than 30 cards/day often leads to review pile-up and burnout.
What's the average seconds per Anki card?
The default is 8 seconds — a good average for vocabulary cards where you're recognizing a word. Reading-heavy cards or cards with audio may take 10–15 seconds each. Shorter cards (2–5 sec) work well if you're just recognizing characters.