How many new words a day should you learn?

The arithmetic of a backlog

Each new word comes back roughly six or seven times over the following months before it is stable. At a steady input rate, your daily review count settles at several times your daily new-word count.

Ten new words a day therefore means somewhere in the region of thirty to fifty cards to review daily once the system reaches equilibrium — perhaps twelve minutes. Fifty new words a day means several hundred daily reviews, which nobody sustains.

Recommended pace by situation

Pick the row that matches the time you can genuinely give it every day.

• •Casual, under 10 minutes a day: 5 new words
• •Steady progress, 15 minutes: 10 new words
• •Exam preparation, 25–30 minutes: 15–20 new words
• •Intensive, over 45 minutes: 25 new words, and expect it to be temporary

Reviews come first

On any day when time is short, do the reviews and skip the new words. Reviews protect vocabulary you have already paid for; new words are an additional debt. Reversing that order is the most common way a study habit collapses.

If a backlog has already built up, do not try to clear it in one session. Cap yourself at a fixed number of reviews per day, add no new words, and it will drain in a week or two.

Signals you have the pace wrong

If your accuracy on reviews drops below roughly 80%, you are adding faster than you are consolidating — cut the new-word count until it recovers. If you are getting nearly everything right and finishing in three minutes, you can safely add more.

Accuracy around 85–90% is the sweet spot: high enough to feel like progress, low enough that the reviews are doing real work.