Each new card in Anki comes back several times in its first weeks before the gaps between reviews grow, so every card you add brings more reviews. Anki's manual gives a rule of thumb: adding 20 new cards a day leads to about 200 reviews a day.
Four Settings That Lower Your Reviews
You'll find all four in Anki's deck options.
| Setting | What to change | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| New Cards/Day | Lower it, or set it to 0 for a while | Fewer new cards means fewer reviews a few days later |
| Maximum Reviews/Day | Set a limit you can finish | Anki holds the rest until later, which helps after a week away |
| Desired Retention (only with FSRS turned on) | If you raised it, bring it back to the default 90% | Above 90%, the number of reviews grows very quickly |
| Easy Days | Mark a day of the week as Reduced | From now on, Anki moves some due dates slightly so that day gets fewer reviews |
Move Some Words Out of Anki
On Reddit (r/languagelearning), a B1 learner was doing 150 to 250 reviews a day and found it a bit boring. One reply suggested cutting new cards hard and keeping reviews to 30 to 50. It also said that if a word never shows up in your books, it probably didn't need a card.
Common words come back on their own when you read a lot. In Bubblegum, Poppy, your AI tutor, writes lessons at your level and works the words you save into new ones where they fit. Bubblegum calls this Regenerative Review™. You can paste a list of words into Bubblegum, and if you change your mind, you can export your saved words back to Anki.
Bubblegum
Bubblegum is the best app for serious learners. You learn from text and audio you can mostly understand, which is called comprehensible input.
- Words you bring over from Anki can come back in lessons about topics you pick.
- Clear, expressive AI voices read every lesson aloud, with a different voice for each speaker.
- Bubblegum can't open an Anki deck file, so you paste the words in or take a photo.
- A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn.
- Regenerative Review™
Mobile
For other flashcard apps, see Anki alternatives, and to decide whether Anki suits you at all, see is Anki good for language learning.
Common Questions
What happens if I skip Anki for a week?
The reviews wait for you, so the pile is bigger when you come back. Anki's manual says adding new cards while you're behind makes the backlog worse, so pause them until you've caught up.
What if Anki starts to feel like burnout?
Read something you enjoy in the language while your Anki pile shrinks, so the common words stay fresh.
Is Bubblegum free?
Yes. The lesson library is free for everyone, because we believe everyone should be able to learn. It holds lessons that other learners asked Poppy for. A new custom lesson costs us real money to make, so your first one is free, and Bubblegum Pro gives you unlimited custom lessons.
Sources
- Anki Manual: Deck options (New Cards/Day, Maximum Reviews/Day, Desired Retention, Easy Days)
- r/languagelearning: Can reading/input be a good alternative for flashcards?
- Bubblegum
Checked on October 16, 2026 against each app's own pages.
