Learning and careers decision

Gold List

A competent developer can recreate the Gold List core (notebooks, 2‑week distill cycle, scheduler, optional AI) within a few weeks using existing open-source SRS projects as references; no durable moats prevent self‑hosting so building is realistic and likely cheaper than continued subscription.

View on the App Store

You pay

$9.99/mo

$120/yr

Read off the official pricing page.

You’d pay instead

$100one-off52 h to build

$20/mo6 h/mo upkeep

On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.

Open-source builds that already do this

Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Gold List alternatives, with the arithmetic →

ankitects/ankiAnki is a smart spaced repetition flashcard programOpen on GitHub olmps/memoMemo is an open-source, programming-oriented spaced repetition software (SRS) written in Flutter.Open on GitHub

What a replacement has to do

User writes 'headlists' (notebooks of words/notes), lets lists rest, returns to distill forgotten items into new shorter lists, repeats; app tracks 2‑week cycles and notifies user; optional AI translation/sentence generation and speaking practice.

What it still won’t have

App Store in-app purchase flow and existing App Store listing
Polished native iOS UX and platform-specific optimizations
Existing user base and reviews
Any proprietary AI prompts or tuned model behavior the vendor uses

What remains hard

Product polish and ongoing maintenance

Read the build prompt

First-year cost

Keep paying

Paying is—cheaper in year one.

On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.

Paid seatsseats

Money you would actually spend

Keep paying

—

Subscription price × seats × 12

Build it

—

AI build —APIs + hosting —

Time you would spend

—

What you would spend

AI to build it$ onceAPIs + hosting$/mo

What we assumed

Initial buildhrsMonthly upkeephrsYour rate$/hr

The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.

Runnable build prompt

Not run yet

Build a minimal web-first Gold‑List replacement using React (TypeScript) frontend, Node.js (Express) backend, and SQLite (Prisma) for storage. Implement: user accounts (email/password), notebooks and headlists CRUD, record 'distill' operations that copy forgotten items into a new list while keeping history, a scheduler that marks lists as 'ready to distill' after 14 days and sends email notifications (SendGrid), subscription gating via Stripe (one monthly plan), an admin view to inspect user lists, and an integration with OpenAI for translation/sentence generation behind the server. Out of scope: native iOS App Store in-app purchases and App Store distribution. Include input validation, error handling, unit and integration tests for API endpoints, and deployment instructions for a single VPS (Docker).

How we checked3 sources · 2/3 runs agreed · evidence score 89

How the score was reached

Build verdict base78
An open-source build was found+5
3 cited sources+3
Price verified on pricing page+3
Evidence score89

The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.

How scoring works →

Cited sources · 3

Every page the run actually retrieved.

official productGold List: Active Recall & SAT - App Store
open sourceankitects/anki
open sourceolmps/memo

Integrity checks

What held up, and what did not.

✓ Price read off the page! 2 of 3 runs agreed; the verdict is the majority✓ Citations limited to fetched pages! 1 moat recorded