What Clozemaster does well, and where it thins out
Clozemaster's core loop, cloze-deletion sentences with multiple-choice or typed answers, is a genuinely effective drill for pattern recognition and raw vocabulary exposure at scale. It's free to start, has a huge sentence count per language, and the game-like scoring keeps a lot of people coming back. The trade-offs show up once you look closely at where the sentences come from:
- Sentences are mass-produced. Most come from Tatoeba, a crowd-translated sentence database. They're grammatically fine but often odd, generic, or unrelated to anything you're actually trying to read or say.
- Context is thin. A cloze sentence you'll never see again isn't the same as a word you met while reading something you chose to read. There's nothing to anchor it to.
- It's fill-in-the-blank, not free recall. Multiple choice or a single missing word is an easier task than genuinely retrieving a word's meaning from memory, which is where most of the learning benefit lives.
- Pro is a paywall for the useful parts. Offline play, no ads, and some review controls sit behind a subscription.
Your text, real context, still spaced
Smisli keeps the idea that context matters, and takes it further: instead of sentences chosen for you by a matching algorithm, you bring the text. An article, a short story, song lyrics, whatever you're actually trying to read. Tap any word you don't know and it becomes a card, saved with the exact sentence you met it in, a translation, pronunciation audio, and an AI example. Review is genuine recall, not picking from four options, and it's scheduled with FSRS, a modern algorithm that times each review to the moment you're about to forget.
Words you meet inside real sentences stick better than words drilled from a bare list, because context gives memory something to hold on to.
Webb (2008), context and word learningSide by side
| Clozemaster | Smisli | |
|---|---|---|
| Content source | Tatoeba sentence database | Text you choose to read |
| Exercise type | Fill-in-the-blank | Recall from context |
| Scheduler | Basic spaced repetition | FSRS, timed per word |
| Context quality | Random, disconnected sentences | Your own reading, real context |
| Price | Free / Pro subscription | Free to start |
This isn't "Clozemaster is bad." It's a volume drill, and a decent one, for people who want a lot of reps fast. Smisli is a slower, more deliberate loop for people who'd rather the words they keep come from something they actually chose to read.
Who Smisli is for
If you want your vocabulary practice tied to real material you care about, and you'd rather genuinely recall a word than pick it from a list, Smisli is the better fit. If you specifically want maximum sentence reps regardless of source, Clozemaster's volume is hard to match. Some people use both: Clozemaster for reps, Smisli for the words that come from what they're actually reading.
New to this approach? Start with how to learn Swedish, or see how to start reading Swedish.