This is a web and mobile education platform that allows you to learn without restrictions on any subject. Teachers can track learner progress, and serial knowledge seekers can flex their brain muscles on this platform. Brainscape personalizes learning for the individual using individual characteristics to make learning more efficient.

Website: https://www.brainscape.com/

What Users Love About the App

“I have tried a ton of methods for learning foreign languages over the years — audio-only, grammar intensive, books, audiobooks, videos, computer apps, etc. They all have their little gimmick — no studying, guided situations, games, etc. And at the end of the day, the simple flashcard method (with audio) works the best at having things to say at the moment you need it and at the tip of your tongue. Brainscape takes it further by offering curated professional flashcards courses for Spanish and French, plus smaller subsets of offerings (like verbs only or nouns only) for other languages like Mandarin or Italian. I wish they had entire courses in all the popular languages because their method works best. It really does. Their method of progressive training, interval recall, and 5-level self-scoring do quite well at getting you to recall words and phrases. Plus, I can create my own sets of flashcards and hook audio or picture content to them. All in all, there is no better method for learning a foreign language.”

“I downloaded several flashcards apps to see which one had the best diversity of study options, and though it costs to acquire the options I wanted, this seems worth it to me. Being able to reverse or shuffle the deck, having deck categories, and being able to study them together or alone is all great. Most free apps just don’t make the cut for what I need to really study effectively. I was looking for an app that was ideal for making my own flashcards, and not only did I like this one the best for flashcard creating, but it also has a pretty wide variety of already made decks that can be downloaded and studied that I like to utilize for the fun of it sometimes.”

“I first found out about Brainscape my senior year of high school. My friend recommended it and I absolutely LOVED it! I got it when everything was free, but I liked it so much that when they came up with the “Pro” version, I chose to buy the one-year subscription (thinking I wouldn’t use it after high school). However, I continued to use it through college and STILL love it! So much so that when the year was over I upgraded to the lifetime subscription. This app got me through some of my toughest classes. It also helped me study for HOSA State—I then qualified for HOSA nationals and went even further! I couldn’t have done it without this app! I will do anything for my grades and success in life, and Brainscape proved that I’m even willing to pay for a subscription to help me study! I definitely recommend, even if you’re not planning on buying the “Pro” version.”

“I have used Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Babel, Duolingo, and others. This app is about “learning” Spanish, not “studying.” With this app, you quickly see your weak/strong and know what you need to work on. Support is better than I have seen in a while. I had a problem after paying for the app when I upgraded from the trial version within the app. The upgrade did not take effect. One email later, I had a response within an hour. They fixed the problem within minutes. This happened on a weekend—I wasn’t expecting a response until Monday. Great Support!”

“I’ve been using Brainscape since 2013. It’s a great app to increase memorization and learning. Their flashcard algorithm maximizes fast and easy memorization. They also have a wide range of card collections: Latin, GRE vocabulary, Geography, Music Theory (including Ear Trainers!), Spanish, French, and many more. It’s a great way to learn the basic vocabulary for a language. It is also good to use to study for exams such as the MCAT and CPA. They are also an excellent company with good practices. I recently had an issue with them and it was resolved quickly and easily with excellent communication. Highly recommended.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“The one thing I really wish was available would be the ability to put a gif, an animated photo, or even a video on a flashcard. I haven’t found a flashcard app that has this option available but it would be so helpful! I am studying sign language and an animated photo or video option would be perfect. Brainscape would be the ultimate flashcard app if they added a feature like that!”

“This app has great potential. It allows me to go over words that I don’t know over and over again until it becomes solidified in my head. I almost considered buying the premium version of the app. However, as much as Brainscape is a great app for its flashcards, it is extremely buggy. First, it relies heavily on its internet connection. If you try to study these flashcards while in the middle of a commute and the mobile network becomes spotty, it crashes when you finish. If you want to double-check meaning on a card and you quickly switch apps and come back, the app freezes. It somehow saves progress, which I assume is due to its constant connection to the internet, but my inability to switch between apps while memorizing is hindering my learning process. I even tried to find a way to contact someone from Brainscape to talk about these things, but for some reason, it says that there’s no email attached to the app—even though when I go to my account, my email information is in there. There was even a Brainscape representative that emailed me to promote the premium version, so they do have my contact information. Why doesn’t the app reflect that?”

“Great for studying, but the app does not have some of the beloved features that the website has and I do not understand why. I cannot edit the cards I have made within the app, but somehow can make new ones. I cannot select decks within a class to study together. It only allows either one deck at a time or the ENTIRE class to be studied. The website allows certain decks to be selected. I would like to be able to zoom in on the pictures posted within flashcards. The reason that I use the iPad app is that the website does not automatically resize photos to match a screen size, but the app does. This makes large images on the website either look distorted/grainy or cut off half the picture when you select a full image size. The iPad app does not do this. Second, the website has been crashing lately, and I’m afraid that Brainscape will shut down or something without notice and I’ll lose my study material.”

“As I said, it’s pretty. I love the interface. It’s also nice that you can have multiple decks within one course. It keeps track of your mastery level which is great. However, it’s missing several basics: 1) It is difficult to import cards from Excel and Word. This should be a basic function. You have to jump through a bunch of hoops to import the right file type, encoding, and format. It’s not fun. 2) Once you create a deck, you can’t change the order of the cards in the deck. If you want to add a card, it goes to the bottom of the deck. This is terrible when you want to organize an outline and you forget to add a card. You would have to copy cards, create a new deck, delete the cards in the original deck, paste cards from the new deck into the original deck. Ugh! That’s just if you forget once. Imagine wanting to add several new cards. 3) The PC version does not allow you to browse the cards in order. You are forced to use their spaced repetition algorithm. You can browse on your mobile device but not your PC. That’s annoying, especially when studying a subject that contains many layers, like law: rule, elements, exceptions, examples. I paid for the full lifetime membership assuming these basic functions were included. Silly me.”

“I wouldn’t mind paying $2.99 a month for 12 months if it only charged the $2.99 each month rather than $36.00 at once. It’s hard to let go of $36.00 as a broke college student. Whereas I can skip a coffee a month to pay for the upgrade. Maybe the app locks you into a contract where it charges every month, and you can’t cancel. I think a lot of people would agree with this. You’d gain a TON of subscribers if you implemented this. You could only gain money this way, and more people would be able to learn using this app.”