FAQ
Questions, answered
The things people ask most. If yours isn't here, the help center has more, and the contact page has a real inbox at the bottom of it.
Plans & payments
What do I get for free?
Everything you need to actually study: notes, the notebook, flashcards, tests, spaced repetition, PDF reading, and the mobile apps. Free accounts get 10 spaces, 500 MB of storage, and a monthly allowance of AI actions. No credit card, and no time limit — free is free, not a trial.
How much does Pro cost?
$14.99 a month, or $95.99 a year — which works out to about $8 a month. Pro raises storage to 10 GB, unlocks unlimited editable notebooks, longer voice recordings, semantic search, PDF chat, and a much larger monthly AI allowance.
Is there a student discount?
Yes. Verify a school email and the Student plan unlocks: $8.99 a month or $59.99 a year, with the same features as Pro. It's the cheapest way to use Mento.
How does student verification work?
Add your school email in Settings after signing up. We send a confirmation link — click it and student pricing unlocks immediately. No ID uploads and no third-party verification service.
What happens when my student verification expires?
Verification lasts four years and we remind you before it runs out. If you're still a student, re-confirm your school email and nothing changes. If you're not, your account and everything in it stays exactly as it is — an active subscription keeps its student price for as long as it stays active.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes, in two clicks from Settings. You keep everything you paid for until the end of the billing period — nothing disappears the moment you cancel.
What happens to my notes if I downgrade?
Nothing is deleted. Your notes, cards, and files stay where they are and stay readable. What changes is what you can add: if you're over the free plan's storage or space limits, you can't create more until you're back under them. Delete something, or resubscribe, and you're moving again.
Why is my subscription billed by Apple instead of Mento?
If you subscribed inside the iPhone or iPad app, Apple handles the payment, the renewal, and any refund — we can't change or cancel that subscription for you. Manage it in your Apple account settings. Subscribing on the web avoids the app-store fee, which is why web prices are the lowest.
Do referral or partner codes stack with the student price?
No, and you don't lose anything. A friend or partner code takes 20% off Pro for the first payment; the Student plan saves you more than that on both monthly and yearly. You simply get whichever price is lower.
Storage & limits
How much storage do I get?
500 MB on Free and 10 GB on Pro and Student. Storage counts the files you upload — PDFs, images, and voice recordings. Text costs effectively nothing, so notes and flashcards will never be what fills it up. Individual files can be up to 50 MB on Free and 100 MB on a paid plan.
How many spaces, topics, and cards can I have?
Free accounts get 10 spaces and paid accounts get 100. Inside a space you can have up to 200 topics, and inside a topic up to 2,000 cards — those two are the same on every plan, including Free. They're there to stop runaway automated abuse, not to push you to upgrade, and normal studying does not come near them.
How long can my voice recordings be?
Up to 20 minutes per recording on Free, and 90 minutes on Pro and Student — long enough for a full lecture.
What's an editable notebook?
A notebook you can handwrite and draw in. Free accounts can keep 3 of them editable; on a paid plan there's no limit. Beyond the free limit, new notebooks open in read-only mode — nothing is lost, and upgrading makes them all editable again.
Product & devices
Which devices does Mento work on?
The web app works in any modern browser, and there are native apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Everything syncs across all of them with the same account.
What languages is Mento available in?
English and Spanish — the whole interface, the emails, and the help pages. You can switch language in Settings at any time.
Can I write by hand with an Apple Pencil?
Yes. The notebook is built for it — pressure-sensitive pens, highlighters, shapes, and infinite scrolling paper. Ink stays sharp at any zoom level, and you can convert handwriting into typed text or math when you want it searchable.
Can I get my notes out of Mento?
Yes, whenever you want. Settings has a full export of your account's content — your notes, cards, and files — with no waiting period and no requirement to be on a paid plan.
Studying & AI
How does spaced repetition work in Mento?
Every card tracks how well you know it. Cards you find hard come back soon; cards you know well come back later, at growing intervals. You don't schedule anything — open a study session and Mento shows you what's due, so the work goes into the cards you're actually shaky on.
What is an AI action?
One use of an AI feature: generating cards from your notes, summarizing a PDF, transcribing a voice note, or reading a scanned page. Each plan includes a monthly allowance, and there's a meter in the app showing exactly how much of it you've used. We count actions, never dollars.
What happens when I run out of AI actions?
AI features pause until your allowance resets at the start of the next month. Studying never stops — notes, flashcards, tests, and review keep working exactly as before. The meter warns you well before you get close, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.
Why do I need to verify my email before using AI?
Because AI costs real money to run, and unverified accounts are how people abuse that. Verifying takes one click on the email we sent you — check spam if it isn't there. Everything else in Mento works before you verify.
How accurate is scanning handwritten notes?
Good on ordinary handwriting, and better the neater the page and the more even the lighting. It handles diagrams, headings, and mixed print-and-cursive pages. Treat it as a strong first draft: everything it produces is editable, so fixing a misread word is a quick correction, not a re-type.
Privacy & sharing
Do you train AI on my notes?
No. We don't use your content to train AI models, and we don't permit our AI providers to train on it either. Anything sent to an AI provider is processed only to return the result of the request you made, and nothing else.
Who can see what I write?
Nobody, by default. Everything you create is private to your account until you deliberately share it. When you do share something you choose how: an unlisted link that only works for people you send it to, or — where available — a public page on your profile.
Where is my data stored?
Mento is operated from Mexico, and the infrastructure we rely on is located primarily in the United States. Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Payment details never touch our servers — Stripe handles them and we only receive a token.
How do I delete my account and everything in it?
From Settings, under the danger zone. You'll see exactly what's about to be removed before you confirm. Once confirmed, your content is deleted within 30 days, apart from the few records we're legally required to keep — tax records and fraud-prevention logs.
Feedback & what's next
How do I request a feature?
Post it on the feedback board, linked from the contact page. Other people can vote on it, which is genuinely how we decide what to build next — and you get notified when the status changes.
How do I report a bug?
The feedback board is the fastest route, because it's the list we work from. Tell us what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead — and mention your device if it's specific to one.
What are you working on next?
The roadmap page shows what's in progress, what's planned, and what shipped recently. We don't put dates on it, because dates on a small team's roadmap are a promise nobody can keep.
Didn't find it?
The help center covers more ground, and every way to reach us is on the contact page.