If you meet most of your new vocabulary while reading, the hard part is not finding another flashcard app. It is getting a useful word from the page into a review system without breaking the reading session that made the word meaningful in the first place.
That is where Anki, Readwise and Sipword overlap. They can all help you remember things you encountered while reading, but they begin from different assumptions.
- Anki starts with the card and gives you enormous control over review.
- Readwise starts with highlights and helps resurface ideas from a reading library.
- Sipword starts with the unknown word on the page and tries to make vocabulary capture nearly invisible.
None is universally better. The useful question is where you want the friction to live.
Quick comparison
| Anki | Readwise | Sipword | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best fit | Custom flashcards and serious review workflows | Highlights, notes and reading retention | Vocabulary discovered while reading |
| Capture from a web page | Usually manual or add-on based | Highlight/save inside Reader and supported sources | Double-click a word in the browser |
| Original sentence | If you add/import it | Highlight context | Captured with the word |
| Vocabulary-specific lookup | Depends on your card workflow | Not the core product | Core product goal |
| Review model | Spaced repetition; modern Anki supports FSRS | Daily resurfacing/review of saved highlights | FSRS-based vocabulary review |
| Offline use | Strong | Depends on surface and content | Local-first design |
| Mobile | Mature | Mature | Planned after browser beta |
| Pricing | Desktop/Android are free; official iOS app is paid | Subscription after trial | Beta pricing not final |
The table is deliberately about workflow, not a feature-count contest. A feature only matters if it reduces friction in the way you learn.
Anki: best when the review system is the product
Anki is still difficult to beat if you want complete control over flashcards. You can design note types, add fields, use cloze cards, import large datasets, customize scheduling and build a workflow around almost any subject.
Modern Anki also supports FSRS, so it is no longer accurate to describe Anki as simply an “SM-2 app.” You can enable FSRS in Anki’s deck options and optimize scheduling around your review history.
Choose Anki when:
- you already review cards consistently;
- you care about custom card design and detailed settings;
- you are studying a defined corpus, exam list or textbook;
- you are willing to create, import or automate the cards yourself;
- you want one mature review system for many subjects, not only vocabulary.
The tradeoff for readers: capture is not Anki’s central interaction. You can absolutely build a fast browser-to-Anki workflow, but it usually requires an extension, add-on, template or a bit of setup. If the setup is worth it to you, Anki is an excellent destination for vocabulary.
Anki’s manual explains its current FSRS support.
Readwise: best when the unit of memory is a highlight
Readwise is built around highlights, notes and the things you want to remember from reading. Reader adds a full read-it-later environment for articles, newsletters, PDFs and other content.
That makes it a natural fit if the things you save are often sentences, paragraphs, ideas and quotations rather than individual vocabulary items.
Choose Readwise when:
- you already have a large Kindle or article-highlighting habit;
- you want one place for reading, annotations and resurfacing;
- the object you want to remember is usually an idea, not a single word;
- you want integrations with a broader notes/knowledge workflow.
The tradeoff for vocabulary: a highlight system can store words, but it is not necessarily optimized around pronunciation, word-level lookup, morphology, lexical metadata and vocabulary-specific review. If those are your main concern, you may end up maintaining a second workflow anyway.
Readwise currently sells Reader as part of its paid subscription after a trial; its pricing page has the current figures.
Sipword: best when the word on the page is the starting point
Sipword is narrower by design. It is for people who can already read meaningful material in another language and keep running into words they want to retain.
The intended loop is:
- read the article you were going to read anyway;
- double-click a word worth keeping;
- save the word with its source sentence and useful lookup data;
- return to reading;
- review the word later with its original context still attached.
That means Sipword competes less with “all of Anki” or “all of Readwise” than it first appears. Its job is to make vocabulary capture from reading small enough that you actually keep doing it.
Sipword is a good fit when:
- most of your new vocabulary comes from articles, essays, newsletters or documentation;
- switching tabs to create a card is enough friction that you stop doing it;
- you want the sentence and source saved automatically;
- you prefer a small, opinionated workflow over a configurable study system.
It is not the right fit when:
- you are still at the stage where most words on a page are unknown;
- you want a complete language course with grammar, listening and speaking lessons;
- you mainly study prebuilt decks;
- you need a mature mobile-first product today.
Sipword is still in development, with the browser extension first. The homepage has the current build status and beta plan.
So which should you choose?
If you already love Anki, keep Anki. The strongest Sipword workflow may eventually be capture in Sipword and export to Anki, rather than forcing you to abandon a review habit that already works.
If your real problem is “I highlight too much and forget the ideas,” Readwise is closer to the problem you are solving.
If your real problem is “I meet useful words while reading and never turn them into vocabulary I retain,” Sipword is being built around exactly that moment.
The important distinction is not which app has the longest feature list. It is whether the tool begins where your learning actually begins.
For a practical capture workflow, read How to remember vocabulary from articles you actually read. If Sipword sounds like the missing step, join the beta waitlist.