How to Import an Anki Deck (.apkg) into StudyCards — What Transfers, What Doesn’t

The biggest reason people stay with Anki isn't love — it's inventory. Three years of decks, thousands of carefully written cards, cloze deletions tuned to exactly the facts you kept forgetting. Switching apps feels like abandoning all of it, so the dated interface wins by default.

It shouldn't have to. Anki's .apkg format is well understood, and StudyCards imports it directly — cloze cards, math and all. This post walks through the import, and is honest about the two things that don't come across.

The import, step by step

You'll need a StudyCards account (the free plan is enough to test with) and a .apkg file.

Export from Anki. In Anki Desktop: select the deck, File → Export, choose "Anki Deck Package (.apkg)". If you're on a recent Anki version, tick "Support older Anki versions" — Anki's newest package variant isn't readable yet, and the import will tell you exactly that if you forget.
Import in StudyCards. Open (or create) the deck that should receive the cards and click Import from Anki, then pick the file. The package is parsed entirely on your device — it's read in your browser, nothing is uploaded — with a 100 MB size cap.
Review the preview. You'll see how many cards were found and a preview of the first ones, plus warnings for anything that needed attention (more on those below). Confirm, and the cards land in your deck, ready to study.

That's the whole process. No intermediate CSV, no add-on, no retyping.

What survives the trip

The import is built to preserve the card types Anki users actually rely on:

Basic notes become regular front/back cards.
Cloze notes keep their deletions. Anki's {{c1::…}} syntax is first-class in StudyCards too — a card with three deletions is still reviewed as three separate blanks, not flattened into one.
Math survives. Anki's MathJax notation is converted to the math syntax StudyCards renders (KaTeX), so formula-heavy decks stay readable.
Formatting is translated, not stripped: card HTML becomes Markdown, which is what StudyCards cards are made of anyway.

There's a limit of 2,000 notes per file. Bigger collections work fine — export them as a few separate decks rather than one monolith, which is how you'd probably want them organized anyway.

What doesn't (yet), honestly

Two real limitations, so you can decide with open eyes:

Bundled media doesn't come across. Images and audio files packed inside the .apkg are removed, and the import tells you how many. (Images hosted on the web survive as regular image links.) If your deck is mostly image occlusion, this import isn't for you yet.
Your review history stays in Anki. Imported cards arrive as new cards — the scheduler starts fresh. That sounds worse than it usually is: mature cards that you genuinely know get answered correctly a few times and race back to long intervals quickly.

On that second point, the scheduling you land on is worth knowing about: StudyCards schedules reviews with FSRS, the same modern algorithm that recent Anki versions offer as an upgrade over SM-2. You're not trading Anki's scheduler for something cruder — it's the algorithm serious Anki users switch to, with none of the configuration homework. If you want the background, we've explained how spaced repetition algorithms work.

Why Anki power users switch at all

Anki with add-ons can do almost anything, so the reasons to move are usually about friction, not capability. The ones we hear most:

A modern interface that works the same on every device, with nothing to install or sync manually.
Markdown and math as the native card format — no HTML editing, no LaTeX add-on setup.
AI that talks to your decks. If you've ever rigged up AnkiConnect so a script could touch your collection, StudyCards' MCP server is that idea done properly: connect your own Claude and it can create decks, add cards, and read what's due — no local HTTP add-on, no glue code. The full setup is in how to make flashcards with Claude, and because it's your Claude, there's no generation limit on any plan.

And if you're still weighing options more broadly, our rundown of Anki alternatives compares the field without pretending Anki is bad — it isn't.

No lock-in, in either direction

A fair worry when leaving one tool: are you just entering a new cage? Two things keep the door open. Your cards are plain Markdown, readable and exportable through an open REST API — the same one the MCP server uses. And conversion in the other direction is a free tool we ship for anyone to use: the Anki converter turns Quizlet exports, CSV or Markdown into .apkg files, no account required — the full routes are in how to convert your flashcards to Anki.

We'd rather you stay because the reviews feel better, not because leaving is hard.

Try it with one deck

Don't migrate your life's work on day one. Export a single mid-sized deck from Anki, create a free account — the free plan fits 10 decks and 1,000 cards, no card ever locked behind a study-mode paywall — and import it. Study it for a week. If the FSRS schedule and the cleaner reviews win you over, the rest of your collection is a few exports away. If not, your Anki collection never moved, and you've lost ten minutes.

Details on the paid tiers — which only ever buy capacity, never AI — are on the pricing page.