Studley AI vs. Skolight vs. Quizlet vs. Gemini Notebook: which AI study tool is best?

AI study tools all make a similar promise: upload your lecture slides or notes, and get flashcards and practice questions in seconds. What separates them is everything after that first deck. Does the tool help you focus, rehearse the real exam, study with classmates and stay on schedule until test day?

At a glance

Prices and features as published by each company in October 2026. A dash means we found no such feature in the company’s published materials.

Our pick: Skolight

Skolight is an all-in-one AI study app built around your own course materials. Each course gets a Space that keeps its sources, notes, flashcards, quizzes, exams, podcasts and study sessions together, so revision is never spread across five apps. It has the widest feature set of the four tools here.

Study sessions built for focus

This is where Skolight stands apart. A study session turns a sitting at your desk into a dedicated workspace:

• Everything for the sitting in one place. Your PDFs, Word documents, slides, notes and mind maps open in tabs. Next to them sit an AI assistant, notes tied to the document you’re reading, a plan for the session and a timer.
• An assistant that reads along with you. Ask Skolar about the page you’re on, and it finds and highlights the passage in your document. Clicking any citation jumps straight to the source. Select text to highlight it in six colors, attach a note or ask about it, and save any answer as a note.
• Focus mode. One click hides every panel and leaves just your document, with the Pomodoro timer still running.
• A Pomodoro timer you control. Set your focus, short-break and long-break lengths, auto-start the next phase and get a chime when it’s time to switch. Your completed rounds count toward the session.
• Practice without leaving. Generate a quiz, mock exam, flashcards, tutorial, mind map, summary or study notes from the documents in front of you. Review flashcards right there.
• Honest time tracking. Skolight counts only the time you’re actively studying and pauses when you step away. When you finish, you get a recap of time studied, rounds completed and what you covered.
• Goals and streaks. Set goals for minutes studied, flashcards known, quizzes passed or focus sessions, daily or weekly. Keep a daily streak and see your year as an activity heatmap.

Mock exams, not just quizzes

Skolight treats a quiz as a quick graded check: up to 30 questions with an optional time limit. A mock exam is a full rehearsal you configure like the real thing:

• Exam style. Choose a preset such as GRE, SAT, AP, IB, JEE, NEET, MCAT or NCERT, or describe your own, such as a course code or “final-year level”.
• Length and mix. Run it from a one-minute drill to a ten-hour paper. Include up to 50 questions each of multiple choice, multi-answer, true or false and fill in the blank, at the difficulty you choose.
• Real exam conditions. A running clock, a question navigator, flagging, pause and resume, and autosave as you go.
• Results that tell you what to do next. Every question is explained, and an AI performance analysis lists your strengths, weak points and recommendations. One click builds a study plan from your mistakes, and you can retake the exam and compare attempts.

Skolar, an AI agent that does the work

Skolar is more than a chatbot. It answers from your own library with numbered citations, in modes for explaining, solving step by step, researching, quizzing you or planning. You can focus it on a subject or a single Space and attach photos or documents, such as a problem sheet or handwritten notes. It draws interactive 2D and 3D graphs.

Then it acts on your behalf. Ask, and Skolar will:

• Build study material: quizzes, mock exams, flashcards, notes, mind maps and study plans
• Organize your work: create Spaces and study sessions
• Manage your schedule: add tasks and calendar events, and set goals
• Report on your progress: check your stats

When it needs more detail, it asks you a few quick multiple-choice questions instead of guessing.

Study together in groups

Skolight’s study groups are a full shared workspace:

• Chat in real time. Messages support formatting, math and code, with file and image attachments, reactions, replies, @mentions, read receipts and search.
• Plan as a group. A shared calendar holds group events, and members are notified when one is added. A task board has To do, In progress and Done columns, with assignees, due dates, priorities and labels.
• Share everything. Link a Space to the group, and its notes, flashcard decks, quizzes, exams, mind maps, study plans and podcasts become shared resources, with editor or viewer access. Group members can join study sessions in shared Spaces and see who’s studying.

Planning and reminders

The study planner puts your exams, assignments, events and to-dos on a calendar and on a zoomable roadmap of the whole term. Exams count down within their course, and repeating items are supported. Generated study plans work back from your deadline around the minutes you can study each day, skipping days off and busy days. Reminders arrive in the app and by email: for exams a week before, a day or two before and on the day, and for deadlines, milestones and group tasks. You can also choose a morning digest or a weekly summary.

Podcasts you can talk to

Turn a Space’s materials into a two-host AI podcast in four formats: a deep dive, a short brief, a critique or a debate. Each comes in a shorter or longer version, with an optional focus. Episodes have chapters, a transcript that follows along, speeds from 0.75x to 2x and downloadable audio, and they keep playing as you move around the app. On the top plan, you can join the episode by voice, interrupt the hosts and ask questions, and the rest of the episode adapts to your conversation.

Notes, flashcards and mind maps

• Library. Upload PDFs (including scanned ones, read with text recognition), Word documents, PowerPoint slides, and text and Markdown files. Or add a captioned YouTube video, a web page or audio. You can also record a lecture and watch it transcribe live.
• Notes. Concise or detailed notes, summaries at three lengths or step-by-step tutorials, in a full editor with AI writing help.
• Flashcards. Decks of up to 50 cards that you can edit, reviewed with spaced repetition. Study only the cards that are due, the whole deck or just the ones you missed.
• Mind maps. Interactive maps that you can expand, edit and export as PNG or PDF.

Made for your phone, too

On a phone, Skolight switches to a dedicated mobile interface, not a shrunken desktop site:

• a bottom tab bar
• flashcards you tap to flip and swipe to grade
• exams with one question per screen
• study sessions with your document full-screen and Skolar in a swipe-up sheet
• podcasts in a player that follows you around the app

You can install it on your home screen straight from the browser.

Plans. Skolight has a free plan with no credit card required, and paid plans that raise the daily limits and unlock the planner, reminders, podcasts and starting your own groups.

Studley AI

Studley AI turns PDFs, slides, photos, videos, audio, YouTube links and web pages into study sets. These can include flashcards with spaced repetition, quizzes, fill-in-the-blank questions, written-answer tests, an AI tutor and a podcast, and it has apps for iPhone and Android.

Where it falls short. The free plan allows a single study set, which makes it closer to a trial. Skolight’s free plan, by contrast, renews every day. Studley’s one paid plan, Unlimited, is advertised in weekly amounts: $3.74 a week billed monthly or $1.88 a week billed annually. That’s about $16 a month or about $98 a year, so check the full amount at checkout. Its published features don’t include focused study sessions, a study planner, mind maps or study groups.

Quizlet

Quizlet is a flashcard platform with study modes such as Learn and Test and a large library of sets made by other users. Its AI tool, Magic Notes, turns uploaded notes into flashcards, practice tests and outlines. Its AI chatbot tutor, Q-Chat, was discontinued in June 2025.

Where it falls short. User-made sets vary in accuracy and may not match what your course actually covers. The free plan carries ads and limits Learn rounds and practice tests. Even Quizlet Plus ($35.99 a year) caps practice tests at three a month, and removing the caps takes Plus Unlimited ($44.99 a year).

Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)

Google renamed NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook in July 2026. It’s a research notebook: you add sources, ask questions with cited answers, and generate study guides, audio overviews, mind maps, flashcards and quizzes.

Where it falls short. It’s a research tool adapted for studying, not a study app. Flashcards only record whether you got each card right. There’s no spaced-repetition schedule, so to review cards over time you have to export them as a CSV file into a separate flashcard app. There’s no study planner and no focused study sessions, and Google has changed the free usage limits several times.

Which should you choose?

For most students, Skolight. It’s the only tool of the four whose published features cover the whole run-up to an exam:

• focused study sessions that keep you on task and track your time
• notes and flashcards made from your own lectures
• mock exams in the style of your real exam, with a plan built from your mistakes
• an AI agent that builds and schedules your work
• podcasts for revising on the go
• a group workspace for studying with classmates

You can start on the free plan.

The others suit narrower needs. Quizlet works if a good ready-made set for your course already exists. Studley AI works if you only ever study on a phone app. Gemini Notebook works if you mainly need to research across sources.

Whichever you use, the habits matter more than the app: answer questions from memory before checking, take at least one practice test under exam conditions and come back to your mistakes a few days later.