Guide
How to choose an AI quiz generator
Eight criteria to decide with your own notes in front of you, what to look at depending on how you study, and a ten-minute test to check it with your material.
By Michel Rodrigues, who makes CanQuiz.
Before comparing: what you'll feed it and what comes after
Nearly all of these tools write questions from a text. Where they differ is everything around that: what material they accept, what kinds of question they write, what happens when you get one wrong and what you can do with the quiz afterward. So it pays to start from your own situation rather than from each tool's feature list.
A disclosure: the author of this guide makes CanQuiz. That's why there's no ranking and no price comparison here: the criteria work for any tool, and you run the final test yourself with your own material.
The eight criteria
What material it accepts
Pasted text, PDFs, photos, slides, Word files, a web page or a YouTube video. Think about the format your notes are in today. If you study from photos of a textbook, it needs to read images; if from recorded lectures, video or audio.
What kinds of question it writes
One correct answer, several correct answers, true or false, short or open answers. Practice in your exam's format: options for a multiple-choice exam, open answers with grading for an essay exam.
Whether it explains each answer
A question that only says “wrong” teaches little. Explaining why the right option is right, and why the others aren't, is what turns a mistake into something learned.
What it does with your mistakes
Redoing only what you missed, and coming back to it another day, pays off most. Check whether the tool does this for you or leaves you to keep track.
Whether it shares without an account
If you study in a group, it matters that others can open the quiz from a link without signing up. Every extra step means someone won't open it.
Whether you can take the quiz with you
Exporting to an open format (JSON, CSV, text for Anki) lets you switch tools without losing the work. Without export, the quiz only lives there.
What it does with your material
Read the privacy policy: whether your notes are used to train models, how long they're kept and where they're processed. With course or work material, this matters more than it seems.
Limits and price
Most have a no-cost tier of use with limits, plus paid plans. Look for the limit that clashes with the way you study (quizzes per month, file size, number of sources), not just the price.
What to look at for your situation
Where to look depending on how you study, without recommending any tool.
If you study with YouTube videos
Look for a tool that takes video, and check whether the video needs subtitles. CanQuiz doesn't work with videos: you'd have to paste the transcript.
If your notes are in PowerPoint or Word
Check whether the tool reads those formats directly. In CanQuiz you have to export them to PDF or paste the text.
If the quiz is for a group
Check whether the others will need to create an account to open it, and whether you can pass the quiz on as a file. In CanQuiz the file opens without an account; its JSON format is documented.
If your exam is multiple choice with a penalty for wrong answers
Look for your exam's format (number of options, several correct answers) and practice with it.
If you already use ChatGPT
You can ask it for the quiz directly. If you want the quiz graded for you and brought back for review, the CanQuiz plugin saves it to your CanQuiz account.
A ten-minute test before you decide
Each tool says what it promises on its website. This shows how it does with your material.
Use the same material in all of them
A topic you know well, a few pages long. That way you quickly see which tool makes things up.
Look for errors
Check five random questions: that the marked answer is right, that the wrong options are believable and that the question doesn't give itself away.
Get some wrong on purpose
Answer two questions wrongly and see what happens: whether it explains the mistake and whether it lets you redo just those.
Try to take it out
Open the link in a private window, signed out, and export the quiz if you can. That tells you whether your work gets locked in.
Why explanations and redoing mistakes matter so much: the active recall guide explains it, with the studies linked.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI quiz generator?
It depends on your material and your exam. This guide doesn't rank tools because it's written by the maker of one of them. What helps is checking what each accepts, what questions it writes and what happens with your mistakes, then trying two or three on the same topic.
Why not just use ChatGPT?
You can, and it writes good questions if you give it the material. What's usually missing is what comes after: grading without seeing the answers first, redoing only the ones you missed and coming back another day. Many tools exist to cover that part, not just to generate.
Do these tools make mistakes?
Yes, all of them can. An AI can mark the wrong answer as correct or invent a fact that isn't in your material. Check the questions against the source, especially before an exam, and fix or delete the bad ones.
Do they all read my PDFs?
Almost all of them say so, but size or page limits differ in each. If your PDF is a scan, also check that it reads images, because its text can't be selected.
What does CanQuiz do, and what doesn't it do?
It exports the quiz to JSON, CSV and text for Anki, has open questions graded by the AI, repeats only the ones you missed, and its links open without an account. It doesn't read Word, PowerPoint, audio or video directly: paste the text or turn it into a PDF.
Run the ten-minute test on CanQuiz too
Paste the same topic or upload the same PDF and look at the questions, the explanations and what happens when you get one wrong.
AI comes with the account, no API key.