An Anki alternative that keeps your decks
Bertopia is a free flashcard app for Android, iOS and macOS that opens your Anki decks and schedules them with FSRS, the same spaced repetition algorithm Anki uses. Import an .apkg, study it with Bert, and export it back to Anki any time with your progress intact. It's not out yet, so join the waitlist to hear when it is.
What happens to your Anki decks
Bertopia reads modern and legacy .apkg files and full .colpkg backups. When a backup holds several decks, you pick which ones to bring in. Scheduling, review history, tags, pictures, sounds and deck presets come along. Import the same deck again later and Bertopia matches cards by their note id, so edited cards update and your progress stays.
Every pack lives on your device as a real Anki collection. That is why export works both ways: share any pack as an .apkg that opens in Anki, AnkiDroid and AnkiMobile, in the modern format or one for Anki versions from before 2023. Turn on "Share without my progress" to leave out your reviews and schedule.
The scheduler
Reviews run on FSRS, ported to Kotlin. Every review and every practice answer writes an Anki review log entry and updates the card's FSRS memory state, so an exported pack carries its schedule. Deck presets from your imports are honoured: new cards per day, reviews per day, learning steps, desired retention and FSRS parameters. In the app you only see two settings per pack, a daily new card goal and how hard to push.
What your cards can contain
Cards render natively: formatted text, lists and simple tables, images with tap to zoom, audio, cloze deletions with hints, type in answers, code with syntax highlighting, image occlusion from Anki 23.10 and later, and LaTeX or MathJax. Deck CSS and JavaScript are ignored, so every pack looks consistent. Anything unsupported falls back to its plain text.
Bertopia and Anki side by side
Anki is the more powerful tool. Bertopia is the friendlier one. Here is the honest comparison.
| Bertopia | Anki | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, including every official pack | Free on desktop, Android and the web. AnkiMobile on iOS is paid |
| Scheduler | FSRS | FSRS or the older SM-2 based scheduler |
| FSRS optimiser | No. Imported FSRS parameters are kept | Yes |
| Deck import | .apkg (modern and legacy) and .colpkg | .apkg, .colpkg, text and more |
| Export | .apkg, modern or legacy, with or without your progress | .apkg, .colpkg, text and more |
| Sync between devices | No. Move packs as Anki files | Yes, with AnkiWeb |
| Account | None | Needed only for AnkiWeb sync |
| Platforms | Android, iOS and macOS on Apple silicon | Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and web |
| Deck CSS and JavaScript | Ignored. Every card gets Bertopia's styling | Fully supported |
| Add-ons | No | Yes |
| Practice rounds and hints | Timed rounds, points, hints, streaks and stamps | Reviews only, unless you add add-ons |
| Ready made packs | Hand made, fact checked packs in the in-app store | Shared decks on AnkiWeb, made by the community |
Who should pick which
Stay with Anki if you rely on sync across many devices, add-ons, custom card styling, or Windows and Linux. Try Bertopia if Anki felt like a chore, if you want ready made packs for geography or coding interviews, or if you want a learning app a kid can use too. Because the files are the same, you can keep both and move decks between them.
