Nursing Anki Deck by Debase27 Review

The Debase27 nursing deck is a free 320 MB Anki file, and we downloaded it and read its database rather than repeating the listing. It holds 1,419 notes that generate 2,479 cards, 1,418 of those notes carry at least one image, and every single card was written between 17 May and 21 August 2022.

That makes it the richest free NCLEX deck we have reviewed and the most out of date. It is worth importing as a recall layer if you already run Anki. It is not worth treating as coverage of the exam you will sit.

Summary Table

The deck's entire official page. There is no landing page, no changelog and no version history, only this file. Source: drive.google.com (captured October 2026).

Nursing Anki Deck by Debase27 Overview

This is one student's deck, shared for free. It was posted to the r/NursingSchoolAnki community and it now has a wiki entry on AnkiHub that describes it as a "Comprehensive nursing deck primarily based around UWORLD content". There is no company behind it, no support address and nobody to tell when a card is wrong.

The download is a single file called Nursing__NCLEX Media.apkg. Google Drive reports it as 320M and will not scan it, because it is too large.

What is actually in it:

• 1,419 notes, which Anki expands into 2,479 cards.
• Two subdecks: Nursing::NCLEX with 1,059 notes, and Nursing::NCLEX::ATI comprehensive with 360.
• 1,385 cloze notes producing 2,445 cards, at an average of 1.8 deletions per note.
• 34 image occlusion notes, the kind where part of a diagram is masked.
• 1,533 media files, of which 1,528 are used by a card and 5 are left over.

The media is the whole story of the file size. 206 MB of it is JPEG and another 100 MB is PNG, so roughly 306 of the 320 MB is two image formats. That is because a typical note here is not a line of text. It is a sentence with a word clozed out, sitting next to a screenshot of the rationale screen it came from.

One piece of housekeeping is done right. All 2,479 cards are new, the review log is empty and nothing is suspended, so importing this deck does not drop somebody else's scheduling history into your collection. Plenty of shared decks do. That is only checkable by opening the file, and this one is clean.

Nursing Anki Deck by Debase27 Review For 2026

The date on the file is the thing to decide on

Anki stamps every note with its creation time. Source: the deck's collection database, read October 2026, against NCSBN's published dates.

Anki records when each note was made and when the collection was last saved. The oldest note in this deck was created on 17 May 2022, the newest on 21 August 2022, and the file was last written on 22 August 2022. One summer, then nothing.

Two things happened to the exam after that. The Next Generation NCLEX launched on 1 April 2023, adding case study items built to measure clinical judgment. Then the 2026 RN Test Plan took effect on 1 April 2026 and runs to 31 March 2029, the second revision since the deck was finished, because NCSBN rewrites the plan every three years.

Be fair about what that does and does not break. Normal potassium is still 3.5 to 5.0 mEq/L and nystatin is still an antifungal, so recall content ages slowly. What it does mean is that nothing in here was written against the blueprint you will be scored on, nobody has checked it since, and the AnkiHub wiki note that the author was "currently working on tagging and streamlining of all cards" describes work that stopped four years ago.

Cloze cards over rationale screenshots are the real strength

The format is better than the free competition. A card such as "The nurse should apply suction for only {{c1::5 to 15 seconds}} to minimize oxygen loss when suctioning the client's airway during tracheostomy care" keeps the clinical sentence intact and removes one fact from it, with the braces marking the part Anki hides. You recall the number in context instead of matching a bare term to a bare definition.

Compare that with the NCLEX-RN 400+ deck, which is 407 notes, 0.12 MB and zero images. This deck has three and a half times the notes and carries a picture on essentially every one of them. For pharmacology, lab values and the kind of priority question that hangs on one qualifier, that is a genuinely better card.

The image is usually the source screen the fact was taken from, which is useful when a cloze answer looks wrong and you want to see the reasoning. It also means the deck is heavy. 320 MB syncs to your phone through AnkiWeb and sits there, which is worth knowing before you start it on a device that is already full.

No topic index, and that costs you more than it sounds

The deck has exactly five tags: UWORLD on 998 notes, ATI on 380, SimpleNursing on 17, Nutrition on 8 and EKG on 4, with 37 notes carrying no tag at all.

The deck's own tags, counted inside the file. None of them is a content area.

Those tags record where a card came from, not what it is about. There is no Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies tag, no Safety and Infection Control tag, nothing that maps to a Client Needs category. So you cannot unsuspend one content area, you cannot drill the topic your last practice test exposed, and you cannot check coverage before you commit. You take the deck in the order Anki hands it to you, or you tag 1,419 notes yourself.

This is also why we publish no category breakdown for this deck. Any split we printed would be our own keyword guessing dressed up as a measurement. The honest statement is that the deck has no content index and nobody can tell you how its 1,419 notes distribute across the 2026 plan. Our NCLEX study guide sets out the current content areas if you want to audit a sample yourself, and our review methodology explains how we weigh maintenance and transparency.

The other thing missing is recourse. There is no comment thread on a Google Drive file, no rating, no issue tracker and no one to report a wrong card to. Vetting is entirely your job, and with 1,419 notes that is real work.

Where the content came from, and why that matters to you

Seven in ten notes are tagged UWORLD and almost all of them carry a screenshot. The AnkiHub wiki says the same thing in plain words: the deck is based around UWorld content.

Nothing in the file or on any page we read this run shows that UWorld or ATI agreed to that. We are not going to tell you what to do about it, but two practical consequences follow. A free file that redistributes another company's paid material can stop being available without notice, and it will never receive an official update, because the only people who could maintain it properly are the people whose content it copies.

If you want the rationales with the current question bank attached, that is UWorld NCLEX itself.

Pricing

• Deck: $0. The Google Drive page has a download button and no price, no account requirement and no checkout.
• Anki desktop and AnkiDroid for Android are free, and AnkiWeb sync is free. AnkiMobile for iOS is the one paid client.

There is no plan to compare and no per-month figure to work out. The real costs are the 320 MB on your phone, the import, and the hours you spend deciding which 2022 cards you still trust.

That last one is not nothing. A free deck that absorbs review time a current question bank would have used better has charged you something, and the receipt never shows it.

Who Nursing Anki Deck by Debase27 Is Best For

• Students already running Anki daily who want the largest free nursing deck available and will treat it as supplementary reps.
• Anyone who learns better from a clozed clinical sentence with the source rationale next to it than from a bare front and back card.
• Candidates who use UWorld or ATI and want an offline spaced repetition layer over material in the same house style.
• People willing to vet cards themselves, because no rating, comment thread or maintainer exists to do it for them.

Skip it if you want a deck that tracks the current test plan, if you need to study by content area, or if 320 MB is a problem on your phone.

When You Might Look Elsewhere

• If the update date is what worries you, the NCLEX-RN 400+ deck was last touched in September 2025. It is far smaller at 407 notes and text only, but it is three years newer.
• If you want cards you can trace to a book on your shelf, the Saunders Comprehensive Review deck gives you that trail.
• If you want the other free ATI-based option, the Nursing High-Yield ATI deck is on AnkiWeb, and it is older still.
• If the case studies are the real worry, no flashcard deck fixes that. NCSBN says the exam "uses real-world case studies to measure a nurse's ability to think more critically and make the right decisions", and a cloze card cannot rehearse choosing between plausible actions. A question bank such as UWorld or a course built for the current format such as NCLEX Bootcamp is the better spend.
• If you just want to see where you stand before buying anything, our free NCLEX practice questions are a faster read.

Every free and paid deck we have measured is on the NCLEX flashcards page, and the NCLEX hub has the rest of our coverage.

Final Verdict

This deck is better built than its reputation and older than its reputation admits. 2,479 cards, almost all of them a clozed clinical sentence beside the rationale screen it came from, is a real study asset that costs nothing. The export is clean, the format is consistent, and no other free nursing deck comes close on volume or on card quality.

What it cannot do is tell you it is current, because it is not. It stopped in August 2022, before the exam added the item type everyone now worries about, and its five tags give you no way to study one topic.

If you do use it, unsuspend one subdeck at a time, check anything surprising against a current source, and let your question bank settle any disagreement.

Nursing Anki Deck by Debase27 FAQs

How many cards are in the Debase27 nursing deck?

2,479 cards, generated from 1,419 notes. We counted them inside the file rather than relying on the listing. The notes split into 1,385 cloze notes, which produce 2,445 cards at about 1.8 deletions each, and 34 image occlusion notes producing one card apiece.

Is the Debase27 NCLEX deck free?

Yes. It is a single .apkg file on Google Drive with a download button, no account and no price. Anki for desktop and AnkiDroid are free too. The only paid piece in the chain is AnkiMobile, the official iOS client.

Is the deck updated for the 2026 NCLEX test plan?

No. Every note was created between 17 May and 21 August 2022, and the collection was last saved on 22 August 2022. That is before the Next Generation NCLEX launched on 1 April 2023 and nearly four years before the 2026 RN Test Plan took effect on 1 April 2026. Recall facts age slowly, so the deck is still usable, but nothing in it was written against the current blueprint.

Why is the download 320 MB when it is only 1,419 notes?

Because it is image-first. 1,418 of the 1,419 notes carry at least one image, and the file bundles 1,533 media files, mostly screenshots of UWorld and ATI rationale screens. About 306 MB of the 320 MB is JPEG and PNG data. Plan for that before you sync it to a phone.

Can I study one NCLEX content area with this deck?

Not without doing the tagging yourself. The deck has five tags, and they record the source of a card rather than its topic: UWORLD, ATI, SimpleNursing, Nutrition and EKG, plus 37 notes with no tag. There is no Client Needs category index, so you cannot filter to pharmacology or safety and infection control out of the box.

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