How many new flashcards a day? Picking a limit you can sustain

A new card doesn't cost you anything today. It costs you a handful of reviews spread over the next few weeks, and then a smaller trickle forever after. The new-cards-per-day setting is really a dial on how much future work you're signing up for right now.

Why a limit exists at all

Nothing stops you from adding — or importing — a thousand cards in one sitting. The new cards per day setting (20 by default in a new R3CK0N deck) is what stops all thousand from becoming due at once. It caps how many brand-new cards enter your queue each study day; the rest wait their turn, oldest first.

The number that actually matters for your schedule isn't how many cards exist — it's how many are due on a given day. New cards are the only knob that adds to that number under your control, because reviews are scheduled by the algorithm, not chosen by you.

The review-load math

Every new card needs several graded answers before it's "mature" — FSRS lengthens the interval each time you answer Good or Easy, but a fresh card still comes back after a day, then a few days, then a week or two, before it settles into a multi-week or multi-month rhythm. Roughly:

daily review load (steady state) ≈ new cards per day × average reviews each card needs before it matures

That multiplier isn't fixed — it depends on your desired retention (see the guide to desired retention), how forgiving your learning steps are, and how well the material sticks for you personally. As a rough, commonly-observed range, expect somewhere around 7 to 10 reviews per card by the time it's mature at the default 90% retention. That's an estimate to plan around, not a promise — your own numbers will drift from it.

What that looks like at different limits

Using that 7–10× range, here's the steady-state daily review load you're likely settling into a few weeks after starting at each new-cards-per-day setting — and roughly how long that takes at a relaxed pace of about 8 seconds per review:

Notice that 40 new cards a day already brushes against R3CK0N's default reviews per day cap of 200 — the setting that limits how many review cards (not new ones) are shown in a single session. If your steady-state load regularly exceeds that cap, reviews start queuing up rather than disappearing, which quietly undoes the point of raising new cards in the first place. Raise the reviews-per-day cap to match, or lower new cards per day — not both at once.

Picking a number that fits your day

• Start low. 10–20 a day is enough to work through most decks in a reasonable time, and it's far easier to raise a comfortable limit than to dig out from under an uncomfortable one.
• Judge it after a few weeks, not a few days. The review load from today's new cards mostly lands in week two and three, not tomorrow. A limit that feels easy on day three can feel heavy on day twenty.
• Watch the daily counts, not the deck total. R3CK0N's deck list shows new / learning / due for each deck. If "due" is consistently bigger than you can clear in one sitting, that's the signal to lower new cards per day before anything else.
• A big one-time import is a special case. Importing 500 cards from Anki doesn't mean 500 are due tomorrow — they still queue behind your daily new-card limit, oldest first, same as cards you type in by hand.
• Different decks can carry different limits. A deck you're cramming for an exam next week can run a higher new-cards-per-day than one you're building for the long term.

New cards you type versus new cards you import

The daily limit treats every new card the same way regardless of where it came from. Typing five cards by hand and importing five hundred from an Anki deck both add to the same pool of "new, not yet introduced" cards — the difference is only how many are waiting behind the limit. A big import is a good moment to double-check your new-cards-per-day setting before your first study session, rather than being surprised by how slowly a large deck seems to "start."

If a deck came from Anki with its scheduling and history kept, most of its cards likely already left the "new" state — only cards that were genuinely new in Anki, or that you chose to reset, are subject to the daily limit at all. Cards already in learning or review go straight into your queue on their own schedule, unaffected by this setting.

Raising the limit later

Once a deck's daily due count is comfortably smaller than the time you're willing to spend, that's the signal to raise new cards per day rather than a fixed number of weeks. Raise it in small steps — five or ten at a time — and give it a couple of weeks before judging the new steady state, for the same reason a lower limit takes a couple of weeks to fully show its effect: today's new cards mostly turn into tomorrow's-and-next-week's reviews, not today's.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I change new cards per day?

In the deck's settings, from the deck editor — it's saved per deck, so different decks can run different paces.

What happens to cards over the daily limit?

They simply wait. They stay new and untouched until a future day has room for them; nothing is lost or skipped permanently.

Does lowering the limit affect cards I've already studied?

No — it only controls how many brand-new cards are introduced each day. Cards already in learning or review keep their own schedule regardless of this setting.

Is there a "right" number?

No single number fits everyone — it depends on how much daily review time you're willing to commit to, weeks from now, not just today.