Last checked: October 2026
The main Anki deck for med school is the AnKing Step Deck: a large Step 1 and Step 2 deck tagged by First Aid, Boards and Beyond and other resources, and kept up to date through AnkiHub. Zanki, which AnKing was built from, and Lightyear, which follows the Boards and Beyond videos, are older alternatives. Whichever you use, suspend the whole deck and unsuspend cards as you cover each topic in class.
Pick the deck that matches the resources you already use, then add cards only as you cover each topic. For survey data on how med students use these decks, see our medical student Anki statistics. If you are still picking an app, see our guide to the best flashcard apps for medical students.
At Wright State University's Boonshoft School of Medicine, Gilbert et al. (2023) followed 130 first-year students in 2021 to 2022. 78 of them used Anki for at least one exam. On each of three course exams, Anki users scored 6.2 to 7.0 percentage points higher than non-users, after adjusting for MCAT scores. This was an observational study, so students who chose Anki may have differed in other ways too.
In a smaller study in India, Vagha et al. (Frontiers in Medicine, 2025) gave 45 final-year MBBS students paediatrics flashcards to review after 1, 3, 7, 14 and 28 days, alongside normal teaching. Their scores on a 20-question test rose from 11.4 to 16.2, while a control group of 45 stayed at about 11.9. To get the most from Anki, you should integrate these tools into broader study techniques for medical students.
Some pre-made cards are too wordy or ask several things at once. These tend to become "leeches": cards you have forgotten 8 times, which Anki then tags and suspends (Anki manual).
A bloated card asks a complex question. For example, "What are the symptoms, risk factors, and first-line treatment for Heart Failure?" This is a bad card because you might remember the symptoms but forget the treatment, forcing you to mark the whole card as wrong.
An atomic card breaks this into three separate pieces of information. One card for symptoms, one for risk factors, and one for treatment. This is the "minimum information principle" from Piotr Woźniak's 20 rules of formulating knowledge.
If you find yourself struggling with a pre-made card, do not just keep hitting "Again." Rewrite the card to ask one thing. See the Anki workflow for Step 1.
Most well-known med school decks come from the same few sources, so you only need one.
The AnKing Step Deck (once called the AnKing Overhaul) combined the Zanki and Lolnotacop decks and retagged them. It is now maintained through AnkiHub, where the current version needs a paid plan; our AnkiHub guide has the prices.
Zanki is the older deck that AnKing was built from. It is very detailed. Some students still prefer its original structure, but AnKing is the version that keeps getting corrections.
Lightyear follows the Boards & Beyond video series and is smaller than Zanki or AnKing.
For a full list of where to find these and other niche decks, see our guide on finding the best pre-made decks. If you are specifically targeting the boards, you should also compare these against the best Anki decks for USMLE Step 1, and if psych is your weak subject, our Anki deck for psychiatry guide covers building atomic DSM-5 cards.
Don't import a big deck and start studying all of it. Instead, select every card in the browser and suspend them. Suspended cards stay in your collection but never appear in your reviews. Then unsuspend cards as you learn each topic in class.
That way you only see cards for material you have already been taught. To handle the new cards each day, set up your Anki settings for med school to handle the influx of new cards.
If you are starting from zero:
Install Anki on your computer and create an AnkiWeb account for syncing. Download the AnKing Overhaul deck. Do not attempt to study any cards today. Your only goal is to ensure the software is installed and the deck is imported correctly. You should also look into the best Anki add-ons to improve your interface.
Turn on FSRS (Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler) in deck options. Anki uses the older SM-2 scheduler unless you switch. FSRS schedules each card from your own review history. See the complete optimization guide.
Pick one small topic from your current lecture (e.g., "Mechanism of Action of ACE Inhibitors"). Use the Browser to find and unsuspend only the cards related to that specific topic. Aim for 50 cards. Study them. Do not add more cards until you have successfully completed your reviews for three consecutive days.
You can use both. Pre-made decks cover the standard knowledge tested on the USMLE. However, they cannot cover the specific nuances your professors emphasize in your university lectures.
A common approach is to use AnKing for the foundation and make your own cards only for points from class that AnKing doesn't cover. That saves you writing cards that already exist.
If your custom cards currently live in RemNote or Notion, our RemNote to Anki converter and Notion to Anki converter move them into Anki alongside AnKing.
If you are unsure which tool to use for creating these custom cards, check out our comparison of the best flashcard apps for medical students. The less time you spend making cards, the more you have for reviewing them.
Each guide below compares the pre-made decks for one subject or exam and shows how to set them up.
Making your own cards for lecture material takes the most time. StudyCards AI turns your lecture PDFs and notes into flashcards that you can export to Anki and study alongside AnKing. Check each card before you study it.
Try StudyCards AI FreeThe AnKing Step Deck. It is tagged by First Aid, Boards and Beyond and other resources, and it is the one still being updated, through AnkiHub. Suspend the whole deck and unsuspend cards as you cover each topic, rather than studying it all at once.
Yes. While AnKing covers the boards, it does not cover your specific university's lecture nuances. A hybrid approach using pre-made decks for the foundation and custom cards for lecture-specific details is most effective.
A leech is a card you have forgotten 8 times. Anki then tags and suspends it. It usually happens because the card asks too much at once or is confusing. Rewrite it as one or more cards that each ask one fact.
Pick a number you can keep up every day. The Anki manual's rule of thumb is about 10 daily reviews for each new card a day, so 20 new cards a day means roughly 200 reviews a day. Finishing your reviews every day matters more than adding new cards.
Generate Anki flashcards from PDFs