🇯🇵 Japanese for beginners: the best resources

Free on desktop, Android and web; the iOS app is a one-off paid purchase that funds the project. The interface is dated and the options are overwhelming at first, but nothing beats it for retaining vocabulary over years. Most effective when you stop grinding premade decks and start mining sentences from things you actually read or watch.

Foreign Service Institute, Peace Corps and DLI materials — full textbooks plus hundreds of hours of audio — are public domain and hosted here for free across dozens of languages. The depth is extraordinary and the FSI Basic courses take diplomats to professional working proficiency, which no consumer app attempts. The recordings are from the 1960s–80s, the drills are relentless, and some vocabulary is dated (Cold War era), so they suit disciplined self-studiers, not casual learners.

Every grammar point and word is illustrated with real in-game text from titles you probably recognise, which makes it stick and shows you the language as it is actually written. Structured roughly along JLPT levels so you can follow it as a course. Free on YouTube. Obviously best if you play games in Japanese; the examples skew toward RPG and fantasy register.

Misa goes into far more detail than a textbook on individual grammar points and is unusually good at explaining the casual, contracted and slangy forms that textbooks skip entirely. Videos are long — often 30 to 60 minutes on a single point — which is a feature if you want depth and a problem if you want a quick answer. All free on YouTube.

Built on the free JMdict/KANJIDIC data, it handles wildcard searches, deconjugates verbs, draws kanji by radical or handwriting, and tags words by JLPT level and commonness. Free with no account required. The example sentences come from Tatoeba and vary in quality, and for nuance between near-synonyms a monolingual dictionary will serve you better once you can read one.

Built specifically to replace the ageing Core 2k/6k decks, with hand-checked sentences, native audio, pitch-accent marking and no broken formatting. Free on GitHub. It is deliberately small — the point is to get you to the level where you can start mining your own words from real material within a few months, not to be your whole vocabulary plan.

Mihalis Eleftheriou records real lessons with a real student and walks you through constructing the language yourself using cognates and logic — Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Turkish, Arabic and Swahili are covered. Completely free, no ads, no sign-up, funded by donations. The Spanish course in particular is one of the most recommended free resources anywhere; the trade-off is small vocabulary and no reading or writing practice.

Daily news stories rewritten for children and non-native residents, with furigana on every kanji, definitions on hover, and a slow narrated recording of each article. Free, updated every weekday, and the single best bridge from textbook Japanese to real news. Note that NHK moved the site to news.web.nhk and renamed it NHKやさしいことばニュース; old www3.nhk.or.jp links redirect. Articles are short and the vocabulary skews toward politics and disasters.

Teppei talks about everyday nothing-in-particular in slow, simplified Japanese for three to five minutes an episode, with well over a thousand episodes across separate beginner, intermediate and Z (advanced) feeds. The short format makes daily listening genuinely sustainable. Free on all podcast apps. No transcripts on the free feeds and no structure — the value is volume and consistency, not instruction.

An archived but complete video course arguing that standard textbooks misrepresent Japanese by mapping it onto English, and rebuilding the grammar around an invisible が subject in every sentence. For a lot of learners this is the explanation that finally makes は versus が, passives and causatives click. Cure Dolly died in 2021, so nothing new is coming and the Patreon is gone; the channel and an Internet Archive mirror remain up. Be warned: the synthetic robot voice and avatar put many people off, and subtitles are essential.

The default place to ask 'is X app worth it' or 'what should I do at B1' and get answers from people who have actually done it, plus per-language subreddits (r/Spanish, r/LearnJapanese, r/French) with far better resource lists. The wiki and FAQ head off most beginner questions. Expect strong ideological camps — comprehensible-input purists versus textbook people — so read a few threads before taking any single answer as settled.

Covers kana plus 3,500 kanji including all jōyō and jinmeiyō characters, checking your stroke order as you draw. It can sync its order to WaniKani, RTK or JLPT levels so it slots into whatever you already use. Currently free on iOS and Android (the developer has said early users keep the full version free permanently). Handwriting is a real time cost, so it only makes sense if producing kanji by hand actually matters to you.

Kaname films ordinary Japanese life — convenience stores, trains, cooking, seasonal customs — speaking clearly and simply with subtitles in both languages. It gives you culture and vocabulary in the same package, which is rare. Entirely free. Not a grammar course, so treat it as listening input rather than study material.

Dozens of illustrated PDF booklets sorted into levels, from near-zero Japanese up to comfortable intermediate reading, published free by the tadoku (extensive reading) organisation. Perfect for the phase where textbook dialogues are boring but native material is still impossible. The catalogue is small compared to the paid printed sets, and the stories are simple by design.

Explains the language on its own terms — the copula, the real function of は versus が, plain form before polite form — instead of forcing it into English grammar categories. Completely free online, and available as a cheap ebook or app. It is dense and dry, uses casual forms early (which surprises people used to textbooks), and the last update was years ago, but as a grammar reference it has aged well.

Works entirely offline, shows conjugation tables and example sentences, supports handwriting input, and can export selected words straight to Anki — which makes it the practical companion to a paper textbook or a book you are reading on the train. Completely free with no ads. Android and Windows only; iOS users should use Shirabe Jisho instead.

A collaborative, Creative Commons-licensed corpus you can search for real usage of a word or download in bulk to build your own decks. It is the raw material behind Clozemaster and countless Anki decks rather than a study tool in itself. Sentences are contributed by volunteers, so quality and naturalness vary — prefer sentences from native contributors and cross-check anything surprising.

Free blog and grammar reference from the team behind WaniKani, covering everything from particle nuance to honest reviews of other learning resources. Its resource-review database is genuinely useful when you are deciding what to buy. It is reference reading rather than a curriculum, so it works best alongside a structured course.

Two long-form articles with a mnemonic and a practice sheet for every character, plus a spaced-out study schedule you can follow in a couple of days. This is the standard first step almost every serious Japanese learner is pointed at, and it costs nothing. Do these before touching any app — kana first is not optional, and romaji-based courses will slow you down later.

Over 100 language editions; the English edition alone has millions of entries covering hundreds of languages, with IPA, declension and conjugation tables, etymologies and usage notes that commercial apps usually paywall. The etymology sections are quietly one of the best vocabulary-retention tools available. Being crowd-sourced, coverage is uneven and rare entries can be wrong — cross-check anything unusual against a native-language dictionary.

A second strong comprehensible-input channel, running since 2021, covering complete beginner through advanced with a wider range of formats than most — folktales, vlogs, quizzes, let's-plays. The website is a free index that lets you filter by level, topic and style, read transcripts and download audio. Content is free; there is no structured curriculum, so you pick your own path through it.

Modern assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) will roleplay a scenario at your level, correct your writing with explanations, generate graded reading, and hold voice conversations — endlessly patient and available at 2am, which no tutor is. Free tiers are enough for text practice; voice modes generally need a subscription. The caveats are real: models are noticeably weaker and more error-prone in lower-resource languages, they tend to produce bland textbook register rather than how people actually speak, and they will not correct you unless you explicitly ask them to.

Fills the gap Anki and WaniKani leave: it drills grammar in cloze sentences and, for every point, links to the relevant page in Tae Kim, Genki, Imabi and others so you can read a real explanation before reviewing. There is a permanent free tier plus a 30-day full trial; Premium is $5/month or $150 lifetime, which is cheap for what it covers. It assumes you already have kana and some vocabulary, and it is a review tool rather than a first-time teacher.

Covers 14 languages along an explicit CEFR path, and its best feature is the community exchange: you submit short writing or speaking exercises and real native speakers correct them, free of charge, in exchange for you correcting theirs. The free tier is limited to core lessons; Premium unlocks grammar, offline and the full path. A solid Babbel alternative if you specifically want writing practice with human feedback.

Mark Pentleton teaches a genuine student while you listen in, across French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish, Portuguese, Japanese and Gaelic. The podcast seasons are free on any podcast app and are structured as a real curriculum rather than scattered episodes; the Academy sells premium lesson notes, video and bonus audio. Ideal commuting material for beginners through B1, and the Spanish and French series are the strongest.

The free tier is genuinely usable (ads plus a limited 'hearts' system); Super removes both for about $96/yr. Its real value is streak-driven consistency for absolute beginners, and the smaller courses are thin machine-assisted content rather than the polished Spanish or French trees. Treat it as a warm-up habit, not a curriculum — nobody reaches conversational fluency on Duolingo alone.

Around 6 million words recorded by native speakers across 400+ languages, usually with several accents per word so you can hear regional variation. Free to search on the site; the paid tiers are aimed at API users and bulk audio downloads. Indispensable for names, place names and anything a TTS voice would mangle — many learners wire it directly into Anki for card audio.

Built-in correction tools let partners fix your messages inline, and the social 'moments' feed gets you corrections from strangers without arranging a call. Free for the core exchange; VIP adds more translations and simultaneous target languages. The persistent caveat is that a fair share of users treat it as a dating app, and exchange partners are unreliable — it works best once you already have some output to correct.

Thousands of lessons built around a short native dialogue plus line-by-line breakdown, with PDF transcripts, vocabulary lists and cultural notes at the paid tiers. The sheer volume means you can always find something at your level. Caveats worth knowing: the pricing is aggressive with constant discount emails and multiple tiers, quality varies a lot between older and newer series, and the free account is heavily limited after a trial period.

Lets you build study sets by JLPT level, grade, frequency or your own list, with flashcards, multiple-choice quizzes, writing challenges and a built-in dictionary — all offline. The free version covers the first few JLPT levels; a single in-app purchase (around $12) unlocks everything permanently, with no subscription. Android only, and the sheer number of options takes a while to navigate.

Import podcasts, articles or ebooks, tap unknown words for definitions, and LingQ tracks your known-word count over time. The free tier caps how many saved words you can keep, so serious use means paying (~$13/month or less annually). The interface is clunky and the built-in SRS is weaker than Anki, but the reading-plus-audio workflow with 50+ languages is hard to replicate elsewhere.

Aims to be WaniKani plus Bunpro plus graded reading in a single structured route from pre-N5 to N1, with human-written (explicitly not AI-generated) grammar lessons. $8.99/month, $83.88/year or $349.99 lifetime, with a 14-day trial and a free kana trainer, dictionary and grammar library. N2 content was still being completed as of 2026 and N1 has not started, so advanced learners will outrun it.

The 'learn with locals' video clips are the distinguishing feature — you hear real people at real speed rather than TTS. Be aware that Memrise moved user-created community courses off the main app in 2024 onto a separate site, which gutted what many long-time users valued most, and the app has leaned hard into AI chat features since. Fine as a phrase-and-vocabulary app for major languages; if you came for the community decks, use Anki instead.

Yuki speaks slowly in Japanese only, using drawings, gestures and props so you understand from day one without translation — the closest thing Japanese has to Dreaming Spanish. Rebranded from Comprehensible Japanese to Natural Japanese (NIJ) and moved to nijapanese.com; cijapanese.com now redirects there. Most videos are free on YouTube; the site adds a level-sorted library, transcripts and watch-time tracking behind a subscription.

A detailed staged roadmap for acquiring a language through massive comprehensible input — what to do at each stage, when to start output, how to mine sentences — with a free tracker, starter courses and an active Discord. The roadmap and community are free; vocabulary decks, advanced courses and coaching are paid. It is opinionated to the point of dogma about avoiding early output and translation, so take the framework and ignore the purity rules if they do not fit your goals.

One of the few sites where the free tier is a complete study system rather than a demo: kanji, vocabulary, grammar and listening schedules, quizzes in several formats, and preset lists matching Genki, Tobira and the JLPT levels. Pro adds extras but is not required. The interface is busy and old-fashioned, and the friendly-mascot presentation is not to everyone's taste, but for a free all-rounder it is hard to beat.

Over 1,600 episodes of original serialised stories and articles, each with human-recorded audio, per-word definitions in context, and editor notes explaining why a sentence works the way it does — that last part is what separates it from generic reading apps. You can dial furigana down as you improve, and it syncs with your WaniKani level so known kanji lose their furigana automatically. Some content is free; full access is $9/month or $89/year, and it is aimed squarely at the awkward post-Genki stage rather than absolute beginners.

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit: you shadow native audio, record your own version, and a real human coach returns feedback — 10 free submissions a month, unlimited for about $20/month, with full scholarships for anyone who needs one. Covers French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and English. It only fixes pronunciation and delivery, so it complements rather than replaces conversation practice.

Same idea as HelloTalk but with vetted profiles and a cleaner focus on actual voice and video calls, which makes it noticeably less spammy in practice. Free to use; Pro adds unlimited partner search and extra languages, and the app also sells paid tutors. Both apps live or die on finding one or two committed partners, so expect to message a lot of people before anything sticks.

If you are self-studying Genki or Tobira without a teacher, these lesson-by-lesson videos are the closest free substitute for a classroom explanation. Andy also covers study strategy and JLPT prep honestly, without hype. The YouTube content is free; a paid membership adds structured courses and practice material. It is tied to specific textbooks, so it is less useful if you are not using them.

Each course is ~100 short bilingual dialogues with native audio: you passively absorb for months, then start an 'active wave' translating back into the target language. Books run around €30 (e-courses ~€50) across 70+ languages, and the method is a long-standing favourite among polyglots for reaching real reading fluency. Caveats: many courses are only published from French, the humour is dated, and it demands daily discipline with no gamification to carry you.

Subscription-only after a handful of free intro lessons, typically $10–15/month with big discounts on annual plans. Lessons are short, dialogue-first and explain grammar properly, which makes it a much more serious beginner course than Duolingo. It covers only 13 languages and effectively stops around B1, so it is a stepping stone rather than a destination.

Over 70 languages, each a step-by-step beginner course written by an experienced teacher, and crucially all the audio is free to download from the companion site even if you find the book secondhand. Slightly more academic and grammar-forward than Teach Yourself, which some learners prefer. Like any book series the individual titles differ in quality; the less common languages are often the only decent course in existence.

Balanced coverage of grammar, kanji, reading, listening and production, with a workbook and audio, which is why most university courses use it. Buying both volumes plus workbooks runs to roughly $150, and it really wants a teacher or study partner for the pair-work exercises. If you are self-studying, pair it with the free ToKini Andy video walkthroughs, which are keyed chapter by chapter.

You listen to and repeat thousands of native-recorded sentences on a spaced schedule, which builds fluent output patterns without explicit grammar study. It covers 60+ languages and keeps nine minority languages (Catalan, Welsh, Taiwanese, Kurdish and others) permanently free as a preservation effort. It is expensive at roughly $20–40/month, and the repetition is monotonous — most reviewers call it effective but overpriced, so try the 7-day trial first.

One-on-one video lessons from roughly $5–30/hr depending on the language and the teacher's credentials. It is the single fastest way to get real speaking practice, and the reason most self-study plans stall is that they skip this step. Community tutors are cheap conversation partners; professional teachers are worth it if you want structure, homework and error correction.

Lessons build outward from real conversations with colour-coded literal translations and cultural notes, and the catalogue includes endangered and indigenous languages nobody else covers. Retail pricing starts around $10/month, but a very large number of public libraries and universities give patrons free access — check yours before paying. Content depth per language is modest, so it suits travellers and early learners more than people pushing toward B2.

You sit in on a recorded lesson with two students and build sentences aloud alongside them, with no writing, homework or memorisation; 19 languages are available. It is remarkably good at making the core grammar of Romance languages click in a few hours. Vocabulary coverage is small, the recordings are old, and the courses after Michel Thomas's death are taught by other teachers with mixed results — treat it as a fast on-ramp, not a course of study.

Thirty-minute audio lessons force you to produce sentences out loud before you see anything written, which builds unusually good accent and recall. Subscriptions run about $15–21/month (all-access covers 50+ languages), and older courses are often available through public libraries. It is slow and vocabulary-light by design, so pair it with reading — but for commute or walking time it is the best use of otherwise dead hours.

100,000+ tutors across 120+ subjects, with a free replacement if your first tutor is a bad fit. The main structural difference from italki is that Preply pushes weekly lesson subscriptions and takes a large commission from tutors, which some learners consider a reason to prefer italki. Worth comparing side by side for your language — prices, availability and tutor quality differ per market rather than per platform.

Unlike most apps it is built around producing speech: you repeat, roleplay and converse with an AI tutor that gives pronunciation and phrasing feedback in real time. Covers Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Italian and Chinese for English speakers, with a 7-day trial then a subscription (roughly $20/month or $99/yr). Good for overcoming the fear of speaking before your first human lesson, but an AI will not push back or drift off-script the way a real conversation partner does.

The 'Complete' books are proper structured courses with dialogues, graded exercises and downloadable audio, and the range covers languages no app touches. Quality varies noticeably by title and author, so check reviews for your specific language before buying rather than trusting the series name. Their graded readers and 'Script Hacking' alphabet guides are also worth knowing about for non-Latin scripts.

Radicals build into kanji which build into vocabulary, all on a spaced-repetition schedule you cannot rush — that enforced pacing is exactly why it works for people who bounce off self-managed Anki decks. Levels 1–3 are free; after that it is $9/month, $89/year or $299 lifetime (lifetime goes on sale most Decembers). Downsides: you cannot skip kanji you already know, the pace is fixed at roughly 1.5 years to finish, and it teaches readings rather than how to use the words in sentences.