Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub

by trms on 2/2/2026, 8:48:55 PM

https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610

Comments

by: siva7

It was a fascinating symbiotic between nerdy med students from all over the world and an obscure open source flashcard app that originally targeted language learners. I've been part of that community for many years and would have never foreseen this outcome but in hindsight it seems the best path forward for anki.

2/2/2026, 10:06:17 PM

by: infotainment

On the plus side, the actually good mobile Anki client, AnkiDroid, remains out of the hands of this potentially questionable new entity.(AnkiDroid has always been run independently, which is good, considering the state of the iOS client, which has always been neglected.)

2/2/2026, 10:05:15 PM

by: surrTurr

> What We Don’t Know Yet> Governance and decision-making: How decisions are made, who has final say, and how the community is heard> Roadmap and priorities: What gets built when and how to balance competing needs> The transition itself: How to bring in more support without disrupting what already worksIn other words: they have no clue what to do next (<a href="https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610/2#p-190509-what-we-dont-know-yet-2" rel="nofollow">https://forums.ankiweb.net/t/ankis-growing-up/68610/2#p-1905...</a>)

2/2/2026, 10:33:13 PM

by: greenburger

I've used Flashcards Deluxe for years and been very happy (no affiliation):<a href="https://orangeorapple.com/flashcards/" rel="nofollow">https://orangeorapple.com/flashcards/</a>Easy to import and export my cards, plenty of options for tweaking the algorithms for my use.

2/3/2026, 12:09:08 AM

by: Aachen

I'm an Anki user, on and off since 10 years or so, but was still confused. If I understood correctly, the entities here are:- Anki, as set up by dae aka Damien, is like the brand name and desktop implementation with the spaced repetition algorithm- AnkiWeb is what I thought this hub thing was. It's where you download decks- AnkiHub is a third party (started by "AnKing", now 35 employees) who sells decks as a monthly subscription and has their content on the deep web (you need to create an account and agree to terms to even see a listing of what's there besides a few featured parts). This is who is getting ownership of the former two. Because they write that Anki will remain open source at its "core", I presume that means that things will, at best, stay stable rather than anything (like AnkiWeb the deck sharing platform) becoming open- AnkiDroid is a separate open source project (an Android app). The corporation is hiring the main developer, but it's not yet clear to me whether they're just going to get paid to work more on AnkiDroid or if they're also getting other tasks

2/2/2026, 10:49:30 PM

by: NormenKD

Possible alternative to check out (not affiliated):<a href="https://mochi.cards/" rel="nofollow">https://mochi.cards/</a>

2/2/2026, 10:19:10 PM

by: bingobangobungo

Good on him, 19 years is a long time to carry the flame. Thanks for getting me through school!

2/2/2026, 9:51:02 PM

by: DoctorOetker

At a fundamental level the algorithms predict the probability of a learner to correctly recollect a factoid at a given point in time given a history of sampling that recollection / presentation.It would be interesting to have machine learning predict these probability evolutions instead. Simply recollecting tangential knowledge improves the recollection of a non-sampled factoid, which is hard to model in a strict sense, or perhaps easy for (undiscovered) dedicated analytic models. Having good performing but relatively opaque (high parameter counts) ML models could be helpful because we can treat the high parameter count ML model as surrogate humans for memory recollection experiments and try to find low parameter count models (analytic or ML) that adequately distill the learning patterns, without having to do costly human-hour experiments on actual human brains.

2/2/2026, 10:15:13 PM

by: kyorochan

AnkiHub people seem kind of slimy in my experience (at least their leader, "The AnKing"). I hope they figure out a good leadership situation, and make stronger commitments to openness.Anki is in a very solid position to be forked if anything happens, so even if this is bad news I have faith in the larger community.

2/2/2026, 11:45:08 PM

by: mpawelski

I always though Damien earns well with the iOS mobile version. Does he also pass it to AnkiHub too so they can earn from the app sales?

2/2/2026, 11:42:34 PM

by: embedding-shape

In a nice and controlled manner, so seemingly no reason to panic just yet:> I ended up suggesting to them that we look into gradually transitioning business operations and open source stewardship over, with provisions in place to ensure that Anki remains open source and true to the principles I’ve run it by all these years.> This is a step back for me rather than a goodbye - I will still be involved with the project, albeit at a more sustainable level.From AnkiHub:> No enshittification. We’ve seen what happens when VC-backed companies acquire beloved tools. That’s not what this is. There are no investors involved, and we’re not here to extract value from something the community built together. Building in the right safeguards and processes to handle pressure without stifling necessary improvements is something we’re actively considering.Relieved at that part where they say there are no investors involved, makes the whole thing a whole lot less risky. Good for everyone involved, and here's to many more years with Anki :)

2/2/2026, 9:50:42 PM

by: GaggiX

Even in the worst-case scenario, Anki is already perfect for me as is.

2/2/2026, 10:11:58 PM

by: pityJuke

As someone who has used Anki for a decade, a thank you to dae for everything. Best of luck in your future endeavours.With that out of the way, some thoughts:- Anki is in a really good position to work around enshitification. The app, at least to me, is "complete" - the only additional features that might pique my curiosity is a different scheduler (at the moment, they're integrating a newer one, although I don't follow enough to know the state of it). Additionally, modern Anki is really well architected: the core of it is a Rust library, that is used by all of the platforms [0]. You can write new front ends using that, or just fork the existing FOSS ones. Maybe dae does a gorhill and gives us Anki Origin.- Really the only service-y part of Anki I use is AnkiWeb, which is basically a backup and sync system. Wonder how that'll evolve (if they do end up charging for it, I hope it is "Obsidian" reasonable). EDIT: Ooo, Anki has public server software for running your own version. Awesome! [1]- The idea outcome in my opinion would have been some form of charitable organisation (Linux Foundation?), with people donating to support Anki.- So, AnkiHub is a company that produces Anki flashcards, and they've scaled that quickly? Jeez. Obviously Quizlet proved there was a market for flashcards, but I didn't realise this was possible for Anki.- No outside investment is... hopeful. Not quite sure what indicates that this company has the technical know-how to maintain it.- I've heard too many stories of a maintainer or creative being "hopeful" about their new acquirers, only to regret it years down the line.[0]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299897">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299897</a>[1]: <a href="https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html</a>

2/2/2026, 11:27:13 PM

by: hermanzegerman

Oh for fucks sakes. No please no.AnkiHub was already annoying with shoving AI into their Add-On without anyone asking for it.I don't think this will go well

2/2/2026, 10:49:52 PM

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2/2/2026, 10:31:46 PM

by: maximgeorge

[dead]

2/2/2026, 10:38:09 PM

by: jaco6