RecallKit vs Mäx
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
RecallKit
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Flashcards that stick. Modern spaced repetition, seven curated language courses — nearly 20,000 cards — or bring your own decks via CSV / TSV / .apkg. No account, no tracking. iCloud sync. CURATED LANGUAGE COURSES Each course is structured around real proficiency frameworks. Cards include audio, example sentences, and grammatical gender / tone where relevant. • French (CEFR) — A1 to C2, 3,899 cards • Spanish (CEFR) — A1 to C2, 3,958 cards • Italian (CEFR) — A1 to C2, 4,237 cards • German (CEFR) — A1 to C2, 4,133 cards • Japanese (JLPT) — N5 to N1, 2,338 cards • Korean (TOPIK) — A1 to B1, 1,165 cards • French Street Speak — 274 cards of colloquial vocabulary native speakers actually use The French course also includes a listening-comprehension beta: audio-first cards born from the words you already know, so your ears catch up with your eyes. BRING YOUR OWN Already have a flashcard library? Import from: • CSV / TSV files — including tab-separated files like those exported from popular study tools, or anything you can paste from a spreadsheet. Map columns to Front, Back, Tags. Map a header row if you have one. • .apkg files — with media, sub-decks, and review history preserved. Drop the file from Files, iCloud Drive, or any document provider. Imports run on a background thread so a 5,000-card deck doesn't lock the app. Failed rows (malformed quoting, missing fields) are reported with a downloadable CSV you can fix and re-import. HOW STUDYING WORKS FSRS-5 is a modern spaced-repetition algorithm that schedules each card based on your actual recall, not arbitrary intervals. Forgetting curves shorten over time. The algorithm has 19 parameters that adapt to your specific learning history, and you can re-optimise them from your own reviews after a few weeks of use. Each language course pairs recognition (see the word, recall the meaning) with production (read the example sentence, produce the target word with full grammatical context). Production cards unlock once a word has been seen a few times — so you're not blindly guessing on day one. Native-quality TTS reads cards in the target language using your installed iOS voices. Settings includes a voice setup helper that links straight into the iOS pronunciation download for each language. OCR and voice dictation are built in for card authoring — point the camera at a textbook page or speak the word, and the recognised text drops into the field. SYNCS ACROSS YOUR DEVICES Decks, cards, review history, streak, achievements — everything syncs through your private iCloud account. Same Apple ID, same state on iPhone and iPad. No third-party servers see your study data. A pull-to-refresh on the home screen forces a sync if you ever need it. PRIVACY No account. No sign-up. No third-party login. No tracking pixels. No selling data. We never could even if we wanted to — there's nothing to sell. The aggregate product-health signals we do collect (app launch, import succeeded, review submitted) are bucketed, anonymous, and never include card content, deck names, or review ratings. You can turn them off entirely from Settings. Your decks, your reviews, your progress — they live on your device and in your private iCloud database. That's it. --- Open the App Store, install, study. Built by one person who wanted spaced repetition to feel less like a chore and more like a tool.
Mäx
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Mäx teaches the parts of a language that word lists never fix: which article a noun takes, which case or preposition it wants, where the verb goes, and when one past tense beats another. Everything happens in whole sentences. You pick the missing word, and the app tells you why it was that one — not just that you got it wrong. FOUR COURSES, A1 TO C1 German — der, die, das, Dativ and Akkusativ, Perfekt and Präteritum. Spanish — ser and estar, indefinido against imperfecto, the subjunctive. French — le and la, passé composé against imparfait, the subjonctif. English — American English, following the British Council–EAQUALS Core Inventory and the Oxford 3000. Read the explanations in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French or German, and choose how much translation you want: always, only after you answer, or never, for full immersion. No course is ever explained in its own language. Switch course in Settings; each one keeps its own progress. WHAT'S IN EACH COURSE • More than 1,100 nouns, each with its article, plural and topic • Around 600 verbs with their key tenses, and about 270 adjectives • 40 grammar rules from A1 to C1 (45 in French), each with a table, worked examples and its own drill • 150 read-along stories, 30 per level, highlighted as natural voices read them • 15 reading passages where any word can be tapped for its meaning • 50 listening and 50 speaking exercises; the speaking drill checks what you actually said WAYS TO PRACTISE Daily mix · Articles · Cases and prepositions · Verb forms · Grammar in a sentence · Flashcards · Hangman · Listening · Speaking · Spaced review The review queue brings a word back just before you would forget it, and drops it once it sticks. Build your own flashcard decks by topic, word type and level, or describe the deck you want to Mäx AI. Progress shows your streak, the week at a glance and six months of practice. MÄX AI Stuck on a rule? Ask Mäx AI, the built-in tutor, about the exact question you just missed. It answers only about the language you are learning. PRIVACY No account, no sign-up, no ads, no analytics, no tracking, no subscription. Every exercise works offline. Only two things use the internet. Mäx AI sends what you type, along with the two languages and your level, to our server and on to DeepSeek to write the answer. The app asks you before the first time, and saying no leaves everything else working. The natural voices also download in the background, and until they arrive the device voice reads instead. Your progress stays on your phone and is deleted with the app. The microphone is used only in the speaking drill, and only to check what you said. Declining leaves the rest of the app working normally.
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Verdict
RecallKit and Mäx are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
RecallKit ships an update fortnightly, Mäx every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on October 28, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | RecallKit | Mäx |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 10 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 9 MB | 54 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Sami Mandeel | Angel Osoria |
In-app purchases
RecallKit
No in-app purchases
Mäx
No in-app purchases









