Gizmo
Gizmo turns PDFs, YouTube videos, lecture notes, PowerPoint decks and Quizlet sets into AI flashcards, then quizzes you on them using spaced repetition, active recall and a heavily gamified progression system across web, iOS and Android.
What is Gizmo?
Gizmo is a study app built by SAVE ALL LTD in London around a single idea, summed up by its own tagline: get addicted to learning. You feed it whatever you are studying, an AI turns that material into flashcards, and the app then quizzes you on them until the content sticks.
The intake is deliberately wide. Dedicated pages cover a manual Flashcard Maker, Quizlet set import, YouTube Summarizer and YouTube to Flashcards, PDF Summarizer and PDF to Flashcards, Notes to Flashcards, and PowerPoint Summarizer and PowerPoint to Flashcards. The automatic conversion is branded Magic Import. On its Quizlet page Gizmo positions itself bluntly as a free alternative to Quizlet, and offers to convert existing sets rather than asking you to start over.
What happens after the cards exist is where the product makes its argument. Revision runs on two documented learning mechanisms, spaced repetition and active recall, and the site claims five minutes of quizzing a day is enough to stop forgetting what you learn. Around that sits an unusually thick game layer: you spend hearts when you get an answer wrong and must wait once they run out, you earn coins and XP, you keep streaks, and you climb leagues. An AI Tutor explains topics on demand, and Practice Tests rehearse exam conditions.
Gizmo is also social. Decks can be created and shared, friends can follow each other, and Gizmo Live runs real-time multiplayer quiz games that a class or a study group can join with a code. Profile details such as first name, school and picture are visible to other users by default, and can be reconfigured in account settings.
The app runs on the web and as native iOS and Android applications. The audience it shows on its own homepage is school and university students, quoting GCSE, A-level, AP Biology, biology and microbiology results. Commercially it is freemium: the core is genuinely free and only the limits are sold, through a subscription called Gizmo Unlimited.
What it does
- Turn a PDF, YouTube video, PowerPoint deck, set of notes or Quizlet set into flashcards automatically
- Quiz you on your decks using spaced repetition and active recall
- Summarise long source material before converting it into cards
- Run practice tests ahead of a real exam
- Answer your questions on a topic through the built-in AI Tutor
- Host real-time multiplayer quiz games against friends or a class
- Track progress through hearts, coins, XP, streaks and leagues
When to use Gizmo / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Gizmo is the right fit.
When to use Gizmo
- Secondary-school students revising for GCSEs, A-levels or AP exams, who need a short daily quiz rather than a long study session
- University students cramming fact-dense subjects such as biology or microbiology from lecture PDFs and slide decks
- Learners already sitting on a Quizlet library who want to move their existing sets somewhere free and re-quiz them
- People who know what they should revise but never start, and who respond to streaks, hearts, coins and leagues
- Study groups and classmates who want to revise competitively together through real-time Gizmo Live quizzes
When not to use Gizmo
- Anyone under 13: the minimum age is a hard rule and parental consent does not lift it
- Developers or product teams looking to embed flashcard generation, since Gizmo publishes no API and no developer documentation
- Schools, universities and companies needing a signed DPA, a subprocessor list or a purchasing contract, none of which are published
- Buyers who must budget before committing, as no price is shown anywhere outside the app
- Learners handling confidential or proprietary material, which the terms explicitly refuse to treat as confidential
How to use Gizmo
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open gizmo.ai and click 'Start learning', or download the iOS or Android app
- Create an account with an email address, or sign in with an existing Google or Apple account
- Create a deck by hand, or launch a Magic Import from a PDF, YouTube video, PowerPoint file, set of notes or Quizlet set
- Let the AI generate the flashcards, then review and organise them into folders
- Revise in Memorise mode, where spaced repetition decides what comes back and when
- Watch your hearts: fifteen wrong answers means a ten-minute wait before you can quiz again on the free plan
- Ask the AI Tutor when a card exposes something you do not actually understand
- Run a Practice Test as the exam approaches
- Join or create a Gizmo Live game to quiz against friends in real time
- If the free limits get in the way, open Settings, tap 'Try Unlimited' and pick the weekly or yearly plan
Pros & Cons
Pros
- The free plan is genuinely usable: unlimited cards, unlimited decks and unlimited quizzing, not a countdown trial
- Wide range of accepted inputs, including a direct migration path from an existing Quizlet library
- Built on two well-documented learning mechanisms rather than on flashcards alone
- The gamification tackles the real obstacle for most learners, which is starting at all
- Genuinely multi-surface: web plus native iOS and Android apps
- Substantial help centre, roughly eighty articles across eleven collections, available in English and French
- Full refund promised within 48 hours of a subscription or a renewal, and controller plus DPO named with a postal address
Cons
- No public pricing at all: Unlimited prices only appear inside the app and vary by device and region
- No API and no developer documentation, so nothing can be integrated elsewhere
- No published DPA and no subprocessor list, which rules out most institutional procurement
- No documented way to exclude your data from AI model improvement
- The content licence granted to Gizmo is perpetual and irrevocable, your content is expressly non-confidential, and backups are your problem
- Wi-Fi geolocation is collected and may continue in the background, while Do Not Track signals are ignored
- Retention is described only in general terms, with no stated duration for personal data
Pricing & Plans
Gizmo operates on a freemium basis. The core product is free and permanently so: unlimited cards, unlimited decks and unlimited quizzing, constrained only by waiting periods once fifteen hearts are lost and by a cap of two Magic Imports per day with a twenty-minute gap between them. The paid tier, Gizmo Unlimited, removes those constraints and is sold either weekly or yearly. No entry price can be quoted here: the publisher does not display any amount on its website, and the help centre states that prices are shown inside the application according to the user's device and region. A conditional student discount may reduce whichever amount is displayed.
- unlimited cards and decks
- Memorise quizzing up to fifteen hearts
- Magic Import limited to two per day with a twenty-minute wait
- limited AI Tutor
- hints purchased with coins
- Gizmo Live and Practice Tests included
- billed yearly
- paid once for 365 days
- presented by the publisher as the best value
- billed weekly and charged every week until cancelled
- aimed at short periods such as exam season
- unlimited hearts
- unlimited AI Tutor
- unlimited hints and unlimited imports with no waiting
- No amount is published for either Unlimited plan
- a conditional student discount appears during sign-up for eligible users
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Gizmo handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR is addressed explicitly. The privacy notice, last modified 13 May 2025, states that Gizmo acts as a data controller, sets out its legal bases (contractual necessity, legitimate interests, consent and legal obligations), and names the controller as Save All Ltd, Longcroft House, 2-8 Victoria Avenue, London EC2M 4NS. European residents are offered access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and portability, plus the right to complain to their supervisory authority; access requests get a 30-day response commitment. A Data Protection Officer is reachable at privacy@gizmo.ai. Two gaps are worth naming: no Article 27 EU representative is designated even though the publisher is British and therefore outside the EU, and no Data Processing Agreement or subprocessor list is published.
Who owns the data?
The terms state plainly that you own your User Content. Ownership, however, comes with a licence you grant Gizmo and its affiliates that is irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, worldwide and unrestricted, covering both what you upload and what the AI generates from it, for the purpose of providing and improving the Services. Educational and user-generated data is also disclosed to an unnamed third-party AI service provider, partly to improve AI functionality. Any feedback you send becomes Gizmo's exclusive property. Your content is expressly not confidential, and Gizmo accepts no obligation to back it up.
Reuse rights
You keep the right to reuse your own material freely: the licence granted to Gizmo is non-exclusive, so nothing stops you using, exporting or republishing the notes and decks you created. What you may not reuse is the service itself. Gizmo grants only a personal, non-commercial right to access and display the platform and its content, and expressly forbids renting, reselling, sublicensing or redistributing it, using it for competitive analysis or product development, publishing benchmark results, and scraping it with any automated process. AI outputs come with a further caveat: because generation is not deterministic, another user may receive the same or a similar result, and you waive any claim on that basis.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The privacy notice is unambiguous: the services are hosted and offered in the United States and are subject to US federal, state and local law. Users elsewhere are asked to consent to their personal data being transferred, processed and stored there. No European hosting region is offered, and no transfer mechanism is named, so there is no mention of standard contractual clauses or of any adequacy framework, despite the publisher being a UK company and the notice granting GDPR rights. Security is described only in general terms, as physical, technical and organisational measures with employee access restricted to those who need it; no certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is claimed anywhere. As a technical observation rather than a published statement, the site is served through Cloudflare on an anycast address, which says nothing about where the application data itself resides.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Gizmo.
- The app is engineered to be habit-forming, and says so; hearts, streaks and leagues can turn revision into score-chasing rather than understanding
- Cards generated by AI can be wrong or shallow, and the terms put the burden of checking accuracy entirely on you
- Outsourcing the making of flashcards removes the summarising and structuring work that is itself a large part of learning
- The licence you grant over your uploads and the AI outputs is perpetual, irrevocable and worldwide, and your content is expressly not confidential
- Study material goes to an unnamed third-party AI provider, partly to improve AI functionality, with no documented way to opt out
- Wi-Fi geolocation may be collected in the background, Do Not Track signals are ignored, and your first name, school and photo are visible to other users by default
- Subscriptions renew automatically with only a 48-hour refund window, US users are pushed into individual arbitration unless they opt out in writing within 30 days, and account termination for a terms breach carries no refund
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Effectively none. There is no installation, no API key, no configuration and nothing to integrate. You create an account with an email address or sign in with an existing Google or Apple account, then either use the web app or install the iOS or Android version. The help centre states that you can start learning straight away. The only friction is deliberate rather than technical: the free plan imposes a ten-minute wait once fifteen hearts are lost and a twenty-minute gap between imports.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Gizmo
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Gizmo.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gizmo free?
What are the limits of the free plan?
What can I turn into flashcards?
How much does Gizmo Unlimited cost?
Can I get a refund?
What is the minimum age?
Is there a mobile app?
Does Gizmo offer an API?
Where is my data hosted?
Who do I contact about privacy or GDPR?
Should you pick Gizmo?
Gizmo is one of the rare study tools whose free tier is not a sales funnel in disguise. Unlimited cards, unlimited decks and unlimited quizzing genuinely cost nothing; what the subscription sells is the removal of friction, in the form of waiting periods, import caps and a rationed AI Tutor. That is an honest structure, and it explains the volume of enthusiastic student testimony the homepage carries.
The product itself is well aimed. Spaced repetition and active recall are the right mechanisms for exam revision, the intake covers the formats students actually hold, and the migration path from Quizlet removes the usual reason for not switching. The game layer, easy to dismiss as noise, addresses the failure mode that defeats most revision plans, which is never opening the book. Gizmo Live and shared decks extend that to a group.
Two reservations deserve weight. The first is commercial: no price is published anywhere, and the only way to learn what Unlimited costs is to install the app and reach the checkout, where the amount then depends on your device and region. The second is contractual. The terms take a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide licence over what you upload and what the AI produces from it, state that your content is not confidential, disclaim any duty to back it up, and offer no way to keep your material out of AI improvement. There is no published DPA and no subprocessor list.
For an individual learner under exam pressure, those trade-offs are usually acceptable and the free plan makes trying it cheap. For a school, a university or an employer, the absence of published pricing and contractual documentation is the deciding obstacle rather than a detail.
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