Quizlet is a study aid in app form. In essence, it's a flashcard app with smart features and it can handle images, diagrams, various languages, and even audio uploads, so it's ideal for self-paced learning and studying. You can make your own flash-card study sets, get access to study sets created by instructors, or browse for sets created by other users. It has built-in adaptive learning, meaning it pays attention to the questions you get right and wrong and makes sure you work on the most difficult material. There's a decent free account and plenty of advanced features in the Plus version (which is the one we recommend). For all of these reasons, Quizlet is an excellent tool for students or anyone looking to learn and an Editors' Choice winner among online learning services. It's also one of our top-rated online learning services for kids.
What's New in Quizlet?
Much like other software these days, Quizlet has incorporated artificial intelligence (AI). One of the clearest uses of AI is in the Q-Chat feature, also known as “your AI tutor.” When you start a chat, you can choose to base it on one of your most recently studied topics or skip that part. If you do pick a topic, you have to decide whether you want Q-Chat to quiz you or act as a study coach. The quizzes are straightforward; the AI asks you a question based on your study set, and you have to answer correctly. It even corrects your spelling if it's wrong, which is useful.
When acting as a study coach, the AI asks what your goals are and then interacts with you appropriately. For example, it might drill you with questions about your topics if your goal is to study material you've already been working on, whereas if you're learning something new, it might answer questions you have. During our testing, we found it works pretty well overall.
(Credit: Quizlet)One hitch about the AI is that it's only available to users in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, France, Germany, and New Zealand. If you have a VPN, however, that will easily solve the problem for you, as long as the VPN you choose hosts a server in one of the aforementioned countries so you can spoof your location.
A Magic Notes feature uses AI, too. With it, you can upload class notes or documents and have the AI outline the main points, create flashcards, and help you practice the material.
Another cool use of AI in Quizlet is the Quick Summary feature, where you paste text, input specific topics, or upload documents to get a synopsis. The feature can create bulleted lists or write full paragraphs, and create detailed or simple structures. If you choose detailed structures, be prepared to get extra information the AI pulls from the internet—and be prepared to check its accuracy. Even the best AI chatbots are not yet completely reliable.
While it’s true that ChatGPT or Google Bard can probably provide you with similar information, Quizlet seems better tuned to selecting appropriate details and focusing on things you’re more likely to actually remember or need to know. The Quizlet summaries are also better structured for learning than the other chatbots we've seen.
(Credit: Quizlet)How Much Does Quizlet Cost?
Quizlet has a free option with limited features and a paid option called Quizlet Plus for about $36 per year. The paid version removes ads, lets you study offline, and includes the best features, including Quizlet Learn and Q-Chat. While the yearly plan comes with a free seven-day trial, the monthly plan ($7.99) doesn't.
To get the seven-day free trial, you have to provide payment details, though if you get it through Google Play or the Apple App Store, it's easy to track, manage, and cancel the subscription before you get charged.
You need the Plus account if you intend to study using diagrams, custom images (common among medical students), or custom audio. The Plus level also offers personalized study paths, meaning the app determines how you should study based on a goal that you set. Plus, members also get smart grading, the ability to scan documents, and rich text formatting.
Over the past few years, the price of the paid plan has gone up and down quite a bit but has settled at a reasonable place in October of 2023 (especially for the yearly plan). Quizlet Plus offers good value if you use the app regularly, especially since a lot of its most useful features have been removed from the free plan. Groups buying Quizlet Plus accounts get pricing by volume, which results in a 5 to 15% discount, depending on the number of people you have.
Who Uses Quizlet?
Anyone trying to memorize information can benefit from using Quizlet. It's popular among all levels of school learning, from primary students all the way through to medical students and law students—not to mention adult learners studying for standardized tests and trade exams.
Teachers also can use Quizlet to make study sets for their students. Instructors can upload and organize information that they want their students to master. Then, they can invite their classes to access their custom study sets.
Quizlet has even been used in private industry, for example, to train grocery store cashiers and for onboarding new employees at a software company.
Getting Started With Quizlet
Quizlet is available as a web app, as well as an Android app and iPad or iPhone app. To get started, you must create an account with an email address, username, and password or by authenticating through Apple, Google, or Facebook. Quizlet also asks for your date of birth, presumably to collect data on the ages of people using the app (we'd prefer it ask for only the year for privacy reasons).
Once you have an account, you can start creating your own study sets or looking for ones you want to use. To organize your study sets, Quizlet allows you to make folders. You can also join a class if an instructor gives you a link and then access all the materials for that class.
(Credit: Quizlet)Quizlet is essentially a flashcard app, so every item in a study set has two pieces: a term and a definition. For example, if you're learning a language—and Quizlet is a fantastic complement to any language learning app—you'd have the word in the new language as the term and its meaning in your native language as the definition. Other kinds of learning might contain images. For example, let's say you're studying botany. The terms might be pictures of plants, and the definitions would be their identifications.
Making sets and editing them is straightforward. Quizlet supports uploading spreadsheets to make the process faster if you already have study materials laid out in a compatible format. You can edit study sets that you make, but you can't edit someone else's set unless they allow it. You can, however, use a function called Save and Edit, which essentially makes a copy of a study set to use and edit. You can import extra content, add diagrams, or create content from notes. You can even flip the terms and definitions so you can have more content to study.
Quizlet always gives you the option to keep your sets private if you don't want anyone else to access them.
Ways to Study With Quizlet
Quizlet gives you five possible ways to study: Flashcards, Learn, Test, Match, and Q-Chat.
Flashcards
Flashcards is a standard digital flashcard method of studying where you cycle through your study set and try to memorize the information. You can add a star to any flashcard that you have learned and no longer want to study. Quizlet Plus also uses spaced repetition and adaptive learning to help you study more effectively. If you allow notifications, the app alerts you when it thinks you should review something you already learned, based on how long ago you learned it.
Learn
Learn gives you a prompt, and you select the correct response based on multiple-choice options, with all the possible answers coming from your study set. When you start a new lesson, you can go into Options and choose whether you want to activate Write Mode, where you type in the answers yourself, or Spell Mode, where you type what you hear. There are also extra features to fiddle with, like the question format and error-checking options. These features used to be separate modes before being incorporated under Learn.
(Credit: Quizlet/PCMag)Test
Test gives you a quiz based on your learning sets, made with a variety of question types, including matching, multiple choice, and so forth. This mode isn't designed for formal assessment but is more for self-testing. The test questions are based strictly on your study set, and you'll learn quickly that you have to be very careful what you enter on each side of the flashcard because you have to match it exactly to get a test question right. That can be hard if you have to write what's on the flip side of the card. Helpfully, Quizlet lets you select which question types you want to use and exclude before you start any test.
Match
Match shows you a bunch of cards, half terms, and half definitions, and you have to match the correct pairs. A timer is running that makes it into a game, and you can try to beat your best time or someone else's best time.
Q-Chat
The last mode, Q-Chat, is where you interact with AI, asking questions and answering related prompts. When you launch Q-Chat, Quizlet asks if you which of these three things you want to do: Teach me, Quiz me, Apply my knowledge. You have to play with these modes to figure out which one works best for your particular study set. Additionally, since generative AI is still in its early days of consumer use, it may not be perfect. For example, with one of our foreign language sets, the AI kept referring to the wrong language (a very closely related language, but the wrong one nonetheless). As with the Test mode, you also have to write exactly the same as what's on your flashcard. Entering the correct answer in all lowercase is marked wrong if the flashcard has the word in all uppercase, for example.
Studying a Language With Quizlet
Language learners get some wonderful tools you won't find in many other flashcard apps. For example, once you set the language you're trying to learn, special characters appear when you're typing so that you don't have to frequently switch to a different keyboard. Additionally, the app can speak words aloud with the correct pronunciation. We've tested for Romanian, Spanish, and English and found the pronunciation surprisingly good, with stresses usually landing on the correct part of the word and proper diphthongs and so forth. The voice doesn't sound overly robotic, either.
The Problem of User-Created Study Sets
Although Quizlet typically contains excellent study sets, there's always the problem that user-created content may contain errors or intentionally misleading information or be problematic in other ways. It's reasonable to have some worries about content, especially for parents or teachers of young students.
That said, the vast majority of errors we've seen in Quizlet are minor, such as misspellings or slightly outdated information. The app automatically filters content using quality scores drawn from user behavior, so better quality content is likely to rise into view, whereas poor quality content should get buried. Additionally, you can report problematic content.
More importantly, you don't have to use user-created study sets at all. If you only want to study using content that you or your instructor have created, that's perfectly fine.
Excellent for Rote Learning
Quizlet is a powerful study aid, one that works well in a variety of settings, from supporting you in traditional schooling to helping you master concepts from an online learning service. We like that you can make your own sets, share them, and find sets that others have created. The free tier of service is very good, though it leaves out some of the more advanced features that we think anyone using digital flashcards will want, making the annual Plus account worth paying for. Quizlet is an excellent tool for learners and a PCMag Editors' Choice winner.
