Anki vs Language Reactor

Pick Anki if

You have a source of new language already — a class, a course, a textbook — and what you are losing is retention. Anki is the best tool in existence for that and costs nothing.

Pick Language Reactor if

You can already read or listen a little and need volume. Watching real material with support is how the vocabulary you drill turns into comprehension.

Pick neither if

Most people should use both, and neither earns us anything, which is why you will rarely see them compared. The gap they share is output: neither one will tell you that a sentence you produced was wrong.

The same target, both ways

Hours to C1 at an hour a day, five days a week — the highest level both of these support, so the only one they can honestly be compared at. Method multipliers are 1.25×–1.7× for Anki and 1.25×–1.7× for Language Reactor, rising with the level in both cases.

Identical, because the model treats both as the same study method. Whatever separates these two, it is not efficiency — so the choice is about what you will actually keep doing, and about price.

What each costs over that project

Spanish to C1 at that pace runs about 47 months. Over that stretch:

• Anki — Free, nothing at all over the whole project.
• Language Reactor — Free, nothing at all over the whole project.

Prices were checked on 2026-08-07 and 2026-08-07 and go stale; confirm on each merchant's own site before paying. A one-off and a subscription are also not comparable as headline prices — the break-even is about nineteen months, and most real projects run longer than that.

They do not stop in the same place

Anki supports up to C2 and Language Reactor up to C1. Above C1 the comparison stops being between these two and becomes a question about method — the levels past B1 are made of producing sentences you have not seen and finding out which were wrong.

Why the penalty for studying alone grows with the level.