AnKing is a collaboratively maintained Anki flashcard deck covering USMLE Step 1, 2, and 3, distributed through AnkiHub. AnkiHub offers a free tier with limited community decks, a Core plan at roughly $6/month for full deck access, a Premium plan at roughly $10/month adding AI search, and a one-time lifetime option. It is worth it for most Step-bound students because live updates catch errata and guideline changes that a static downloaded file will not.
If you have searched "AnKing Step 1 deck" or "AnKing step 3," you already know the name comes up constantly in USMLE prep circles. What is less clear from a quick search is what AnKing actually costs today, how it is structured, and whether it is worth adding to an already expensive board prep budget. Here is the current picture.
AnKing is a large, collaboratively maintained Anki deck built for USMLE Step 1, 2, and 3, containing tens of thousands of cards tagged by source (UWorld, Boards and Beyond, Pathoma, Sketchy, and others) and by exam. The deck started as a free, downloadable file shared among medical students. It is now maintained and distributed primarily through AnkiHub, a platform built specifically to keep collaborative decks like AnKing updated in real time rather than as a static download that goes stale.
If you want the fuller picture of how AnKing compares to other Step-specific options, see our guides on the best Anki deck for USMLE Step 1 and the best Anki deck for Step 3, which cover filtering strategy in more depth.
AnKing's move to a subscription model surprises students who remember it as a free file. Here is what AnkiHub currently charges, verified against their pricing page:
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Access to tutorial decks and select community decks, not the full AnKing Step Deck |
| Core | ~$6/month | Full access to AnKing and other AnkiHub decks with live updates |
| Premium | ~$10/month | Everything in Core plus AI-powered smart search and chatbot features |
| Lifetime | One-time payment | All features, no recurring charge |
Pricing on subscription platforms changes, so confirm current rates on AnkiHub's site before you subscribe. AnkiHub also offers scholarships for students who cannot cover the cost, which is worth checking if budget is the main obstacle. If you would rather avoid a subscription entirely, older static snapshots of the AnKing deck still circulate for free, though you lose the errata fixes and guideline updates that justify the subscription in the first place.
For most students actively studying for Step 1, 2, or 3, yes, with a caveat. The subscription earns its cost through live updates: when a guideline changes or a card contains an error, AnkiHub pushes the fix to every subscriber automatically. A downloaded static file cannot do that, and outdated management guidance on a board-relevant topic is a real risk, not a minor inconvenience.
The caveat is that AnKing by itself is not a study plan. It is a card bank. You still need a QBank to identify your weak areas and a strategy for filtering the deck down to what you actually need to review, since unsuspending all 30,000+ cards at once will bury you in reviews within a week. Some students find that supplementing AnKing with UWorld alone is enough for Step 1; others need additional resources depending on their baseline.
The deck is the same underlying card bank across all three exams, but how you filter it changes completely depending on which exam you are studying for.
For Step 1, you are unsuspending cards tagged to your course syllabus and to Pathoma, Sketchy, and Boards and Beyond as you cover the material in school. The goal is broad, foundational coverage. Most students spend six months to a year building up mature cards before dedicated study begins.
For Step 2 and Step 3, the useful filter shifts toward management and "next best step" tags rather than pure pathophysiology recall. In Anki's filtered deck tool, searching a string like tag:#AK_Step3_Clinical_Management isolates management-focused cards so you are not re-reviewing basic science content you already mastered for Step 1. Our Step 3 resident's guide walks through this filtering process and a 4-week sustainment plan in detail.
AnKing is comprehensive by design, which means it is not tailored to your specific school's curriculum, your professor's emphasis, or the exact wording your program uses. It is also enormous. Left unfiltered, it will produce more daily reviews than any student can sustain alongside classes or clinical rotations. The students who get the most out of it treat it as a base layer, not a complete solution, and fill the gaps with cards built from their own lecture material or clinical notes. If you are earlier in your anatomy coursework and headed toward a cadaver lab practical rather than boards, the Comprehensive Cadaver deck is built specifically for that use case instead.
AnKing covers the general board-exam curriculum well, but it cannot know what your specific professor emphasized in lecture or which clinical pearls your attending mentioned on rounds. StudyCards AI lets you turn your own lecture slides and notes into Anki-ready flashcards in minutes, so you can supplement AnKing with cards specific to your own coursework instead of manually typing them out after a long day of classes or rotations.
"AnKing got me through the bulk of Step 1 content, but my school tests some obscure details that just weren't in the deck. I ran my lecture slides through StudyCards AI and added those gap cards to my AnKing deck instead of spending hours writing them by hand."
- Marcus T., Third-year Medical Student
AnkiHub offers a free tier, but full access to the live-updated AnKing Step Deck requires a paid Core plan, currently around $6/month. Older static snapshots of the deck still circulate for free but do not receive updates.
AnkiHub has a free tier, a Core plan around $6/month, a Premium plan around $10/month with AI search features, and a one-time lifetime option. Scholarships are available for students who cannot afford a subscription.
AnKing paired with a QBank like UWorld covers most students' needs, but it should be filtered rather than used in full, and gaps specific to your school's curriculum are worth supplementing with your own cards.
AnKing is the deck itself, created by The AnKing team. AnkiHub is the platform that distributes and keeps the deck updated with live errata fixes and new cards.
Yes. The same deck covers all three exams, but you filter for different tags. Step 1 emphasizes foundational science tags, while Step 2 and 3 emphasize clinical management tags.
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