PDF to flashcards: turn a chapter into a deck you will actually review
Upload a PDF and QuerySpark writes flashcards from what is actually in it, so you can drill the key terms on exactly what your course covers. PDF files up to 100 MB and 120 pages.
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- Free plan after the trial
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Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn a PDF into flashcards?
Upload the PDF (or just the chapter you need), choose flashcards, and QuerySpark reads the text, running OCR on scanned pages, then writes definition cards and why-and-how cards from what the pages actually say. You study them with spaced repetition in the app, or export the deck as CSV for Anki or Quizlet. It is free to start: a 3-day Pro trial with no card, then a free plan with 20 flashcards and 10 PDF pages a month.
- Text PDFs and scanned PDFs, up to 120 pages per upload
- Definition, question and fill-in-the-blank cards
- CSV export that Anki and Quizlet both import
- Free plan: 20 flashcards and 10 PDF pages a month
How it works
How to turn a PDF into flashcards
- 01
Cut the PDF down to what you are tested on
A deck built from a whole textbook is too broad to study. Save just this week's chapter as its own file (most PDF viewers can print a page range to PDF). On the free plan's 10 pages a month, pick the densest pages.
- 02
Upload it and choose Flashcards
Scanned pages are detected and run through OCR, so a phone scan of a library book works as well as a publisher's PDF. Pick your level so the cards are pitched at your course.
- 03
Prune the deck before you study it
Delete cards for things you already know cold and reword anything you would phrase differently. A deck you trust gets reviewed; a deck full of noise gets abandoned after two days.
- 04
Review with ratings, or take it to Anki
Rate each card Didn't know, Still learning or Know it, and hard cards come back sooner. If you already live in Anki or Quizlet, export the deck as CSV instead.
Example
Flashcards from Cell Biology, Chapter 7
A sample of what you get from a PDF on biology. Yours is written from your own file.
Final electron acceptor in aerobic respiration
Oxygen, which combines with protons to form water
Net ATP from glycolysis per glucose
2 ATP (plus 2 NADH)
Chemiosmosis
ATP synthase using the proton gradient across the inner membrane to make ATP
What your flashcards include
- Term and definition cards for every key concept
- Concept cards that ask why and how, not only what
- Cards sized to your material: a short reading gets a short deck
- Spaced repetition built in: no deck settings to configure
How you study them
Flip, rate how well you knew it, and move on. Cards you find hard return sooner; cards you know well fade out until just before you would forget them.
Best for: vocabulary and definitions, formulas and dates, daily ten-minute review.
How we read PDFs
We split long PDFs into page batches and read them with Google Document AI, which keeps headings, paragraphs and tables in reading order. Scanned pages are run through OCR automatically, and every item keeps a page reference so you can check the passage it came from.
Get the best results
- Trim to the chapters your exam covers.
- Keep the figure captions. Many good questions come from them.
- If your lecturer posts slides as PDF, upload those too: they show what was emphasized.
Anki flashcards from a PDF
Anki on its own does not turn a PDF into cards, so the usual route is to write the cards somewhere else and import them. Make the deck here, export it as CSV, then in Anki choose File, Import, pick the file and check that the first column maps to Front and the second to Back. Anki's own scheduler takes over from there.
One thing Anki does better: labelled diagrams. If your PDF is an anatomy atlas or a page of labelled structures, Anki's Image Occlusion, which hides the labels on a picture and asks you to recall them, beats text cards. QuerySpark writes text cards, so use them for the prose and use Image Occlusion for the figures.
PDF to Quizlet flashcards
Quizlet's Import option builds a set from pasted text, so the dependable route is to get your cards into term and definition pairs first. Export the deck as CSV, open it in Google Sheets or Excel, select the two columns and copy them. Copied cells paste as tab-separated text, so choose Tab as the separator between term and definition and the set builds itself.
Why not paste the raw CSV? Definitions often contain commas, and with a comma separator a card like "Oxygen, which combines with protons to form water" splits into two pieces. Copying from a spreadsheet avoids that.
How many flashcards should a chapter make?
As many as there are things you could be asked, and no more. A sensible floor is the chapter's bolded key terms plus whatever its end-of-chapter review questions ask about. A sensible ceiling is one card per idea, not one per sentence.
Two signs a deck is too big: cards that test trivia nobody would examine, such as the names of minor researchers, and several cards asking the same thing in different words. Two signs it is too small: a key process with no card about why it happens, and a definition with no card that asks you to apply it.
Long chapters study better as two or three decks by section. The free plan's 20 flashcards a month covers roughly one focused section; paid plans raise that limit for a full course.
Can ChatGPT make flashcards from a PDF?
Yes. Upload the PDF to ChatGPT, ask for flashcards and it lists question and answer pairs in the chat. For a short document you want to skim, or a card you want to talk through, that is perfectly good.
The work starts afterwards: the cards are text in a conversation, so you copy them out, format them for import and schedule your own reviews. If you go that way, ask for a strict "front; back" format so the import is clean. QuerySpark skips those steps: the cards land in a deck with spaced repetition already running, stored next to the PDF they came from.
PDFs that make poor flashcard decks
Some PDFs are better used another way. Check yours against this list before you upload.
- Past exam papers: questions without the teaching text give cards about the wording of old questions. Sit the paper as practice and upload the chapters it covers.
- Handouts printed six slides to a page: the tiny text reads badly. Ask for the one-slide-per-page version or the original deck.
- Solution manuals: they make good answer checks but poor flashcards, because the cards end up memorising specific numbers.
- Reference lists and appendices: trim them so no cards are spent on citations.
Things that trip people up with PDFs
Scanned textbooks with skewed pages can drop a few words. OCR handles most of it, but a clean scan gives cleaner questions.
Two-column journal layouts sometimes interleave columns in cheaper tools. We keep layout order, so questions stay coherent.
Huge PDFs dilute focus. Upload the chapters on your exam rather than the whole 600-page book.
Questions about pdf to flashcards
Yes. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial without a card, and the free plan after it gives 20 flashcards and 10 PDF pages a month. That covers one short chapter section each month; whole chapters need the trial or a paid plan.
Yes, several, including QuerySpark. Upload the PDF and the cards are written from its text, with scanned pages read by OCR first. Skim the deck before studying it, as you would with any generated material.
Generate the deck here, export it as CSV, then in Anki use File, Import and map the two columns to Front and Back. Anki then schedules the cards with its own algorithm.
Export the deck as CSV, open it in a spreadsheet, copy the two columns and paste them into Quizlet's Import box with Tab as the separator. Quizlet builds the set from the pasted pairs.
Yes. Save those pages as their own PDF first; most viewers can print a page range to PDF. A smaller upload also gives a tighter, more relevant deck.
Decks export as CSV, so you can print from a spreadsheet or mail merge them onto card-sized labels in Word. Most people find the app easier because the review schedule is handled for them.
No. Cards follow the ideas in the PDF, not its page count. A dense page may give several cards and a page of figures or references may give none.
Yes. Scanned pages are detected and run through OCR before questions are written. Clean, straight scans give the best results.
Up to 100 MB and 120 pages per upload. For a long textbook, upload the chapters your exam covers so every question is relevant.
Yes. Export any deck as CSV, which both Anki and Quizlet import.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make flashcards from your PDFs
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
