Comparison · NotebookLM
NotebookLM is great at understanding and summarising your sources. But a summary is not a study tool. Brainfy takes the same kind of material and turns it into testable, spaced-repetition flashcards you actually drill — not just read.
NotebookLM reads your documents and answers questions about them, which is genuinely useful for getting oriented. But reading a clean summary builds familiarity, not recall — and an exam tests recall. To remember the material you need retrieval practice on a schedule, which is exactly the step NotebookLM leaves out.
| Brainfy | NotebookLM | |
|---|---|---|
| Summarise sources | Brief AI summaries | Excellent |
| Make spaced-repetition flashcards | Yes, the core | No |
| Schedule and review cards | Yes (SM-2 style) | No |
| Study modes | Learn, Test, Match, Cloze | No |
| AI tutor chat | Yes | Yes (about sources) |
| Price | Free (beta) | Free |
Paste notes, upload a text PDF, or snap a photo of a page — Brainfy reads it via OCR.
Question-answer cards are pulled from your source, then you edit or keep them.
Cards enter an SM-2-style queue with a daily cap, so reviews resurface what you are forgetting.
NotebookLM handles a wider range of sources — including audio and longer document sets — and its grounded question-answering across many files is excellent for research and exploration. Brainfy is narrower by design: it turns sources into cards you can study. Many people use NotebookLM to understand a topic, then Brainfy to memorise it.
Not study-ready ones. It can summarise and answer questions about your sources, but it does not build a deck of spaced-repetition flashcards you can drill and schedule.
Paste notes, upload a text-based PDF, or upload a photo (OCR), and the AI drafts question-answer cards grounded in your material. You edit them, then they enter the spaced-repetition queue.
Yes — an SM-2-style algorithm with a four-button rating and a daily new-card cap decides when each card comes back, so you review what is due.
Many people do: NotebookLM to understand and explore a topic, then Brainfy to turn the key facts into flashcards and memorise them.
Yes — free during beta, with AI card generation, the study modes, spaced repetition, and an AI tutor included.
Brainfy is built by Aihan Mifthas · Last updated 2026-05-31. Open Brainfy →