Compare
Mento vs Readwise
Readwise solved a real problem beautifully: everything you highlight — Kindle, articles, newsletters — flows into one place and resurfaces daily. If reading is your input, nothing else comes close. Mento aims at a different memory: your own material. Notes you wrote, lectures you sat through, PDFs you studied — turned into real flashcards, scheduled reviews and practice tests. Highlights from books, or mastery of your courses: that's the actual split.
Updated September 2026
The short answer
Which one is right for you?
Choose Mento if…
- ✓What you need to remember is your own material — courses, lectures, notes, exams
- ✓You want real flashcards and study modes, not just resurfaced highlights
- ✓You take notes — typed or handwritten — and want them to become the review
- ✓You want a free plan, a student price, and tasks and a calendar in the same app
Choose Readwise if…
- ✓Books, articles and newsletters are your main input — Reader is the best read-later app there is
- ✓Kindle highlight sync is the feature you can't live without
- ✓You feed highlights into Notion or Obsidian and want the best pipeline for it
- ✓A daily drip of past highlights is exactly the level of review you want
Side by side
What's built in
Readwise with Reader included — that's how it's sold — against Mento today.
ReadwiseBuilt-in features as of September 2026. Readwise has no permanent free tier; the full plan includes Reader.
Where Mento pulls ahead
Resurfacing isn't studying
Your material, not just your highlights
Readwise remembers what other people wrote and you underlined. Mento's input is what you produce: lecture notes, handwritten pages, annotated course PDFs, recorded classes. For a student, that's where the exam actually lives — and it's the material Readwise's pipeline never touches.
How card generation works →A card is more than a re-read
Daily Review shows you a highlight; recognizing it feels like remembering. Mento's cards demand recall — question first, answer hidden — then grade it and schedule accordingly, with Learn, Match and timed Test runs on top. Different muscle, and it's the one exams test.
All the study modes →Free to start, built to a date
Readwise is a subscription from day 31, and its review has no deadline concept. Mento starts free, and its whole scheduling engine points at dates that matter: the exam topic, the daily queue, the final-week practice tests.
Study scheduling →Cost
Compare the cost
ReadwiseUS prices as of September 2026. Readwise's plan includes Reader; both apps are cheaper than the two-subscription stack they replace.
Fair is fair
When Readwise is the better choice
For serious readers, Readwise isn't really competing with a study app — it's competing with forgetting everything you read, and it wins.
- →Kindle sync alone justifies it for heavy book readers — no one else does this well
- →Reader is arguably the best read-later app ever built: articles, newsletters, RSS, EPUB, YouTube transcripts in one inbox
- →If your knowledge system lives in Notion or Obsidian, Readwise is the plumbing that feeds it
- →If a gentle daily drip of past highlights is all the review you want, their Daily Review nails exactly that
Making the move
Using Mento with — or after — Readwise
This pair overlaps less than any other on our compare list; for many people the honest answer is both, with a clear division of labor.
01
Split by source
Leisure reading and articles stay in Readwise. Course material — notes, slides, textbook PDFs — lives in Mento.
02
Promote what matters
When a highlight is worth truly knowing, bring it into Mento and make it a real card with context around it.
03
Study on schedule
Daily practice, dated exam topics and practice tests handle the material with stakes attached.
Honestly: Mento has no Kindle sync and no read-later inbox, and isn't trying to be either. If reading is the whole workflow, Readwise is the right tool and this page won't pretend otherwise.
FAQ
Mento vs Readwise, asked directly
Doesn't Readwise already do spaced repetition?
Yes — Daily Review resurfaces highlights on a spaced schedule, and it's good at what it does. The difference is depth: resurfacing a highlight is recognition; Mento's cards demand recall, get graded, and feed study modes up to timed practice tests.
Is Readwise free?
No — there's a 30-day trial, then it's $9.99/month billed annually ($12.99 monthly), including Reader. Mento has a permanent free plan with the full study loop.
Can Mento sync my Kindle highlights?
No — that's Readwise's signature feature and Mento doesn't compete with it. You can bring individual passages over when they're worth making into real cards.
Which should a student pick?
If the goal is passing courses: Mento — the material with stakes is your own notes and PDFs, not your leisure reading. Plenty of people run both, split by source.
Does Mento export like Readwise does?
Mento includes full export on every plan, but it doesn't have Readwise's push-integrations into Notion, Obsidian and the rest — feeding other tools is Readwise's core business, not ours.
What does Mento cost?
Free to start. Pro is $14.99 a month or $95.99 a year; verified students pay $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year.
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Remember what you learn, not just what you read
Notes, cards and practice tests — free to start, no credit card.