free study tool
Flashcards per day calculator
Enter how many cards you need to learn and when your exam is. The calculator tells you how many new cards to add each day, how many reviews will come back, how long that takes, and how much you can expect to remember on exam day. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
I made it because most calculators I found assume fixed review gaps, like 1, 3, 7 and 14 days, or multiply your new cards by a flat number. Real schedulers don't work that way. Cards you forget come back sooner, and cards you know drift further out. This one simulates every card with FSRS-6, the scheduler Imprimo uses and Anki offers as an option. It uses FSRS-6's default parameters.
Adjust card speed
New cards a day
13
for 24 days, then reviews only
Reviews a day
32
average, busiest day 48
Study time a day
15 min
average, busiest day 21 min
Recall on exam day
95%
expected share of cards you remember
This fits in a normal study day. Even the busiest day stays under half an hour.
Show the numbers as a table
| Day | New cards | Reviews | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 12 | 0 | 8 min |
| Day 2 | 13 | 4.6 | 9 min |
| Day 3 | 12 | 12 | 11 min |
| Day 4 | 13 | 16 | 13 min |
| Day 5 | 12 | 17 | 12 min |
| Day 6 | 13 | 20 | 14 min |
| Day 7 | 12 | 23 | 14 min |
| Day 8 | 13 | 22 | 14 min |
| Day 9 | 12 | 26 | 15 min |
| Day 10 | 13 | 29 | 16 min |
| Day 11 | 12 | 31 | 16 min |
| Day 12 | 13 | 32 | 17 min |
| Day 13 | 12 | 31 | 16 min |
| Day 14 | 13 | 38 | 19 min |
| Day 15 | 12 | 41 | 19 min |
| Day 16 | 13 | 41 | 19 min |
| Day 17 | 12 | 41 | 19 min |
| Day 18 | 13 | 39 | 19 min |
| Day 19 | 12 | 42 | 20 min |
| Day 20 | 13 | 45 | 21 min |
| Day 21 | 12 | 46 | 20 min |
| Day 22 | 13 | 45 | 21 min |
| Day 23 | 12 | 45 | 20 min |
| Day 24 | 13 | 48 | 21 min |
| Day 25 | 0 | 48 | 13 min |
| Day 26 | 0 | 42 | 11 min |
| Day 27 | 0 | 38 | 10 min |
| Day 28 | 0 | 37 | 10 min |
| Day 29 | 0 | 35 | 9 min |
| Day 30 | 0 | 32 | 9 min |
The same plan at other retention targets
| Target | Average time a day | Busiest day | Recall on exam day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85% | 14 min | 19 min | 92% |
| 90% | 15 min | 21 min | 95% |
| 95% | 19 min | 27 min | 97% |
Quick answers from the calculator
Each row uses 90% target retention, the default card speed, and the suggested review-only days.
| Plan | New cards a day | Reviews, busiest day | Time a day, average / busiest | Recall on exam day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 cards in 2 days | 30 | 11 | 21 / 22 min | 90% |
| 100 cards in 7 days | 16.7 | 30 | 14 / 18 min | 93% |
| 300 cards in 2 days | 150 | 57 | 1.7 / 1.8 h | 90% |
| 300 cards in 7 days | 50 | 89 | 42 / 55 min | 93% |
| 300 cards in 30 days | 12.5 | 48 | 15 / 21 min | 95% |
| 1,000 cards in 60 days | 18.9 | 105 | 30 / 42 min | 95% |
Recall is the model's prediction for an average card. Vague or overloaded cards will do worse.
Is two days enough to memorize 60 flashcards?
Usually, yes. Split them into 30 new cards a day and you're looking at about 21 minutes a day, and the model expects you to remember about 90% of them on exam day. Most of that time goes into the new cards themselves. Each one takes about 38 seconds on its first day, because you see it a few times before it sticks.
300 cards in two days is possible too, but it means 150 new cards a day and about 1.7 hours of study each day. If you have the option, a week makes a big difference: 300 cards over 7 days is about 42 minutes a day.
Why your reviews keep growing
Every new card keeps coming back. With FSRS's default parameters, a card you keep getting right returns after about 2 days, then 11, then 46, then about 5 months. A card you miss on the first try comes back after 1, 2, 7 and 19 days. Stack those up and 20 new cards a day turns into about 133 reviews a day after three months and about 247 after a year, roughly 76 minutes a day.
That's well past the 15 to 30 minutes a day I suggest in my guide to daily flashcard numbers. The guide is written for exam prep, and over a few weeks the two agree: 20 new cards a day reaches about 30 minutes a day after four weeks. The gap opens when you keep adding cards at that rate for months. At 10 new cards a day, the simulation is at about 23 minutes after three months and about 38 after a year.
That's also why the exam mode stops adding new cards a few days before the exam. 300 cards in 30 days becomes 12 or 13 new cards a day for 24 days, then 6 days of reviews only, and averages about 15 minutes a day.
How long does it take to review 100 flashcards?
About 27 minutes if they're reviews, and about 63 minutes if they're new cards. A card you remember takes around 12 seconds in the simulator's default timings. A card you forget takes longer, because you relearn it, so the average review works out to about 16 seconds. New cards take about 38 seconds each on their first day because of the learning steps.
Short one-fact cards go faster than that, and long multi-part cards go slower. If you know your own speed, change it under "Adjust card speed" and the calculator's numbers update.
How the calculator works
For each card, the calculator rolls a first rating, plays out the same-day learning steps, and then schedules reviews at your target retention. On each review the card is remembered with the probability FSRS predicts for that day. A forgotten card goes through relearning and comes back sooner. Small decks are simulated several times with fixed seeds and averaged, so the same inputs always give the same answer.
- Model: FSRS-6, a version of the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler. FSRS is an open-source algorithm that predicts how likely you are to remember each card on a given day and schedules the next review for when that chance drops to your target. The calculator uses its 21 default parameters. These are also the defaults Imprimo starts every deck with, before its optimizer adjusts them to your reviews.
- Rating odds and answer times: the defaults from fsrs-rs, the open-source FSRS library that Anki's own simulator is built on. For example, a new card gets Again 24% of the time and Good 49.5% of the time on first sight.
- Learning steps: two same-day steps for new cards and one for cards you forget.
- Reviews: every due card is reviewed on its due day. There are no daily caps and no skipped days.
I checked my version against fsrs-rs itself in October 2026. Running 20 new cards a day for a year at 85%, 90% and 95% retention, daily reviews and study time came out within about 2% of the original.
What it can't know
- Your memory. After a few weeks of reviews, FSRS fits its parameters to you. Anki and Imprimo both do this, and your real numbers can land well above or below these.
- Your cards. Long or vague cards get forgotten more often and take longer to answer. No schedule fixes a bad card, which is why I wrote a separate guide on writing flashcards that work.
- Your exam date. A normal FSRS schedule doesn't know when your exam is, so a card whose next review falls after exam day isn't shown again before it. The recall figure already accounts for that.
- Missed days. Skip a day and the reviews roll into the next one.
faq
Frequently asked questions
Is two days enough time to memorize 60 flashcards?
Usually, yes. At 30 new cards a day, the simulation puts it at about 21 minutes a day with about 90% expected recall on exam day, using FSRS-6 default parameters. Most of the time goes into learning the new cards. Clear, one-fact cards make that number realistic. Long or vague cards will need more time.
How long does it take to review 100 flashcards?
About 27 minutes for 100 reviews at the simulator's default speed, which averages about 16 seconds per review once forgotten cards are counted. 100 new cards take closer to an hour, because each new card goes through same-day learning steps. Short one-fact cards are faster than these averages.
How much does a higher retention target cost?
For 300 cards over 30 days, going from 90% to 95% retention raises the average from about 15 to 19 minutes a day. Expected exam-day recall goes from 95% to 97%. The gap grows over time: at 20 new cards a day for a year, it's about 76 versus 113 minutes a day by the end.
Is this the same as Anki's FSRS simulator?
It's a port of the same open-source simulator in fsrs-rs, run with FSRS-6 default parameters, and it matched fsrs-rs within about 2% in my tests. Anki's simulator can use your optimized parameters and your real review history, so for an existing Anki deck it will be closer to your actual workload.
related reading
Keep your daily reviews manageable
How many flashcards a day?
My rule of thumb for new cards and reviews, and how to tell when the queue is too big.
Exam review workload
How to keep flashcards from taking over the weeks before an exam.
FSRS vs SM-2
Why the scheduler behind your app changes how many cards you see each day.
Flashcards for exam prep
How Imprimo fits into the weeks before an exam.
where Imprimo fits
See your real review queue
I make Imprimo, so this part is a plug. It's an iPhone and iPad flashcard app that schedules every card with FSRS-6. Its statistics screen shows a 7-day forecast of your due reviews, so you can see your real queue instead of a simulated one. The calculator works the same whether you use Imprimo, Anki or anything else.