Turn a PDF into flashcards in seconds

Upload the PDF here and GeniusPal reads it and writes the cards. There is nothing to install, no add-in, and no copying paragraphs into a box: you drop the file in and the deck comes back in seconds. Under the hood it pulls the text layer out of the PDF, works out which definitions, mechanisms, and distinctions a marker would ask about, and writes both sides of a card for each one. You can drop a file in before you sign in, and you create a free account at the point the deck is generated so the set has somewhere to live. The whole flow is three steps: upload the chapter, wait for the deck, start studying. If the same PDF has more in it than one set covers, uploading it again continues into the next section rather than regenerating the pages you have already been tested on.

Up to 10 MB, which comfortably covers a textbook chapter, a full lecture handout, or a set of slides exported to PDF. Split anything larger and upload it in parts. The ceiling is a real enforced limit rather than a suggestion, so a file over it is refused at the point you choose it instead of failing silently halfway through. In practice the limit is generous for text: PDFs get big because of embedded images and scans, and text-heavy course material rarely comes close. If yours does, splitting by chapter is usually the better move anyway, because one set is generated over a bounded slice of the document and a tighter slice produces cards on the section you are actually revising tonight rather than a thin sample of two hundred pages.

Only if the scan carries a real text layer. Many scanners and library systems run OCR as they scan and save the recognised text invisibly behind the image, and those files work exactly like any other PDF. A PDF that is purely images of handwriting or photographs of pages has nothing for GeniusPal to read, and you get a clear message saying so rather than a deck of guesses assembled from a filename and a hopeful assumption. The check is easy to do yourself before uploading: open the PDF and try to select a line of text with your cursor. If the text highlights, GeniusPal can read it. If your cursor draws a box over a picture instead, run the file through an OCR tool first, or work from the original document if you still have it.

No, there is no Anki, Quizlet, or CSV export today. Part of the reason is specific to PDFs. A card drawn from a chapter is anchored to the passage it came from, and where the source supports it GeniusPal shows you the exact line behind the answer so you can check a doubtful card against the original in one glance. An .apkg or a CSV is two columns of text, so that anchor, along with the record of which cards you have been missing, is precisely what would not survive the trip. You would arrive in Anki with a deck stripped of the context that made it trustworthy. Studying here keeps the deck attached to the document it came from, which is what lets it score you and resurface the cards you keep getting wrong.

Nothing, for your first 2 chapters. The Free plan covers 2 study sets with no credit card, enough to put a real chapter through and judge the cards against material you already know well. Those 2 never refill, so they are a sample of the output rather than a term plan. Past them the question becomes how many chapters stand between you and the exam. Student, at $14.99 monthly, allows 100 sets in a month, comfortably a chapter a day through a revision period. Genius, charged $59.99 once for a whole year, lifts that to a fair-use ceiling of 1000 monthly. Long PDFs are where paying shows most: a set stretches from 10 cards to 30 across proportionally more pages, so a dense chapter comes back covered instead of sampled.