Quizlet

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A flash card app with smart features, Quizlet's ability to handle images, diagrams, various languages, and even audio uploads makes it ideal for self-paced learning and studying. You can make your own flash card study sets, as well as access those that instructors or other users create. It also pays attention to the questions you get right and wrong to ensure you work on the most difficult material. We like that there's a free version, too, but you should prepare to pay for the Plus tier if you want all the most advanced features. Quizlet is a worthwhile tool for kids, students, or anyone who wants to to memorize information, so it earns our Editors' Choice award for online learning services.

How Much Does Quizlet Cost?

Quizlet has a free option with limited features and a paid option called Quizlet Plus that costs about $36 per year. The paid version removes ads, lets you study offline, and includes compelling features such as Quizlet Learn and Q-Chat (we discuss these later). You need the Plus account if you intend to study using diagrams, custom images (common among medical students), or custom audio. This level also offers personalized study paths (the app determines how you should study based on a goal that you set), smart grading, the ability to scan documents, and rich text formatting. Although the annual plan comes with a free seven-day trial, the $7.99-per-month option doesn't.

The price of the paid plan has gone up and down quite a bit over the last few years, but it's a good value if you use the app regularly. Groups buying Quizlet Plus accounts get pricing by volume, which results in a 5 to 15% discount, depending on the number of people you have.

Who Should Use Quizlet?

Anyone trying to memorize information can benefit from Quizlet. It's popular among all levels of school learning, from primary students to medical and law students, not to mention adult learners studying for standardized tests and trade exams.

Instructors can use Quizlet to make study sets based on the information they want their students to master. Quizlet even has appeal for private industry. You could use it, for example, to train grocery store cashiers or onboard new employees at a software company.

Getting Started With Quizlet

Quizlet is available as a web app, though you can download apps for Android, iOS, and iPadOS. To get started, you must create an account with an email address, username, and password or authenticate via your Apple, Google, or Facebook account. Quizlet also asks for your date of birth, presumably to collect data on the ages of people using the app. (We'd prefer it ask for only the year for privacy reasons).

Once you have an account, you can create a study set or look for one you want to use from someone else. To organize your study sets, Quizlet lets you make folders. You can also join a class if an instructor gives you a link and then access all the related materials.

Quizlet is essentially a flash card app, so every item in a study set has two pieces: a term and a definition. For example, if you're learning a language—and Quizlet is a fantastic complement to any language learning app—you might have the word in the new language as the term and its meaning in your native language as the definition. Other kinds of learning might contain images. For example, let's say you're studying botany. The terms might be pictures of plants, and the definitions would be their identifications.

Making sets and editing them is straightforward. Quizlet lets you upload spreadsheets to make the process faster if you already have study materials in a compatible format. You can edit study sets that you make, but you can't edit someone else's set unless they allow it. You can, however, use a function called Save and Edit, which essentially makes a copy of a study set to use and edit. Otherwise, you can import extra content, add diagrams, or create content from notes, as well as flip the terms and definitions so you have more content to study.

Quizlet always allows you to keep your sets private if you don't want anyone else to access them.

Quizlet's AI Features

Much like other software these days, Quizlet incorporates artificial intelligence (AI). One of the clearest uses of AI is in the Q-Chat feature, also known as Your AI Tutor. When you start a chat, you can choose to base it on one of your most recently studied topics or skip that part. If you do pick a topic, you have to decide whether you want Q-Chat to quiz you or act as a study coach. The quizzes are straightforward; the AI asks you a question based on your study set, and you have to answer correctly. It even corrects your spelling if it's wrong, which is useful.

One hitch about the AI is that it's available only to users in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. A potential way around that limitation is to use a  with a server in one of those aforementioned countries to . Just keep in mind that Quizlet repeatedly checks that you’re not a bot if you connect via a VPN; you might thus have to mark checkboxes with annoying frequency.

Study Guides (formerly known as Magic Notes) use AI, too. For instance, you can upload class notes or documents and then have the AI outline the main points, create flashcards, and help you practice the material.

AI is also present in other areas of Quizlet, such as Flashcards and Practice Tests. The tool lets you create custom flash cards and tests from your own files, whether you upload them from your computer or paste the text directly.

Although ChatGPT and Google Bard can probably provide you with similar information, Quizlet seems better tuned to select appropriate details and focus on things you’re more likely to actually remember or need to know. The Quizlet summaries are also structured better for learning than what other chatbots create.

Ways to Study With Quizlet

Quizlet gives you five possible ways to study: Flashcards, Learn, Test, Match, and Q-Chat.

Flashcards

Flashcards is a standard digital flash card method of studying where you cycle through your study set and try to memorize the information. You can add a star to any flash card that you have learned and no longer want to study. Quizlet Plus also uses spaced repetition and adaptive learning to help you study more effectively. If you allow notifications, the app alerts you when it thinks you should review something you have already learned, based on how long ago you learned it.

Learn

Learn gives you a prompt, and you select the correct response based on multiple-choice options. All the possible answers come from your study set. When you start a new lesson, you can choose whether you want to have a quick study session or make sure you’re memorizing it all. You also have to tell Quizlet how well you know the material so far so the app can figure out the best way to help you learn everything. You can also choose whether you want to activate Write mode, in which you type in the answers yourself, or Spell Mode, in which you type what you hear.

Test

Test gives you a quiz based on your learning sets. These incorporate a variety of question types, including matching, multiple choice, and so forth. This mode is more for self-testing than formal assessment. The test questions are based strictly on your study set, and you'll learn quickly that you have to be very careful what you enter on each side of the flashcard because you have to match it exactly to get a test question right. That can be difficult if you have to write what's on the flip side of the card. Helpfully, Quizlet lets you select which question types you want to use and exclude before you start any test.

Match

Match shows you a bunch of cards, half terms, and half definitions, and you have to match the correct pairs. A running timer makes it into a game, and you can try to beat your best time or someone else's best time.

Q-Chat

The last mode, Q-Chat, is where you interact with AI, asking questions and answering related prompts. When you launch Q-Chat, Quizlet sets out with an introduction about the subject at hand and starts asking questions. By clicking on the icon near the typing area, you can switch the mode Q-Chat can perform in—Teach me, Quiz me, Apply my knowledge, and Ask a question.

You have to play with these modes to figure out which one works best for your particular study set. Additionally, since generative AI is still in its early days of consumer use, it might not be perfect. For example, with one of our foreign language sets, the AI kept referring to the wrong language (a very closely related language, but the wrong one nonetheless).

Studying a Language With Quizlet

Language learners get some wonderful tools you won't find in many other flashcard apps. For example, once you set the language you're trying to learn, special characters appear when you're typing so that you don't have to frequently switch to a different keyboard. Additionally, the app can speak words aloud with the correct pronunciation. When we tested for English, Romanian, and Spanish, we found the pronunciation surprisingly good, with stresses usually landing on the correct part of the word and proper diphthongs and so forth. The voice doesn't sound overly robotic, either.

Potential Problems With User-Created Study Sets

Although Quizlet typically contains excellent study sets, user-created content may contain errors or intentionally misleading information. They might also be problematic in other ways. It's reasonable to have some worries about content, especially for parents or teachers of young students.

That said, the vast majority of errors we've seen in Quizlet are minor, such as misspellings or slightly outdated information. The app automatically filters content using quality scores drawn from user behavior, so better quality content is likely to rise into view, whereas poor quality content should get buried. Additionally, you can report problematic content.

More importantly, you don't have to use user-created study sets at all. If you only want to study using content that you or your instructor have created, that's perfectly fine.

Even better, you can combine multiple flashcard sets into one big set so you can have a more complex view of a topic. Whether you pick sets created by other people or those in your very own folders, it doesn’t matter much. You can combine the sets into a new one or just run a quick test and see how you do.

Verdict: A Top Choice for Rote Learning

Quizlet is a powerful study aid, one that can support you in traditional schooling or help you master concepts from an online learning service. We like that you can make your own sets, share them, and find sets from others, too. The free tier of service is also good, though it leaves out some of the more advanced features that we think most people using digital flash cards will want. For its effectiveness at modernizing flash cards, Quizlet is an Editors' Choice winner for online learning.