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Updated August 4, 2026

What to use after Duolingo for Japanese

The short answer: nothing single replaces it. Duolingo was quietly doing four jobs at once, teaching you kana, drip-feeding vocabulary, showing you grammar patterns, and keeping you showing up daily. When people ask what comes next, the Japanese learning community almost always answers with a small stack of specialists rather than one app, and they are right. A typical next step looks like Bunpro for grammar, one spaced repetition system for vocabulary and kanji (Anki, WaniKani, or Moji - Learn Japanese Daily for iPhone), Renshuu if you want one free generalist instead, and some form of reading or listening input. Two or three tools, not six. This page explains what you already have, what is actually missing from Duolingo, and which tool fills which gap.

What Duolingo actually gave you

Finishing or plateauing in the Japanese course is not nothing, and it is worth being specific about what you walk away with.

You can read kana. The course front-loads hiragana, then folds katakana in early in Section 1, and starts introducing kanji once you have a command of both. That means you are not staring at a wall of unreadable characters anymore, which is the single biggest barrier most beginners never get past.

You have a daily habit. Whatever you think of streaks, showing up 200 days in a row is the hard part of language learning, and you have already proven you can do it.

You have real beginner coverage. Duolingo built the course against the JF Standard, a Japanese-language framework based on the CEFR, and says it covers the topics, vocabulary, and grammar needed to reach CEFR A1 on completion, including everything needed to pass JLPT N5.

That last claim is the useful one, because it tells you exactly where you are standing. N5 is the entry level of five. Passing it is a genuine milestone and also the point where the course you were using stops being the right tool.

Where the course runs out

Vocabulary volume. A course built to A1 and N5 gives you a few hundred to a couple of thousand words depending on how you count. Reading a manga page, following a YouTube video, or sitting N4 needs multiples of that. This is the gap that hurts most, and it is the one a well-ordered SRS closes fastest.

Kanji depth. Duolingo introduces kanji as they come up in lessons, so you learn to recognize characters in the sentences you happen to meet. What you do not get is systematic coverage: multiple readings, which words share a component, or any stroke order and writing practice. Recognition in context is fragile, and it collapses the moment a familiar kanji shows up in an unfamiliar word.

Grammar explanations. The course teaches by pattern exposure. You end up able to produce a sentence without being able to say why the particle is が (ga) and not は (wa), which is fine until you need to build a sentence Duolingo never showed you. Explicit grammar study is the fastest fix here, and it is why grammar is the one lane almost everyone recommends a dedicated tool for.

JLPT alignment. The course maps to a CEFR-based framework, not to a per-level JLPT syllabus. If your goal is to sit N4 or N3, you need materials organized the way the test is, so you can see what you have covered and what you have not.

The specialist stack, by lane

Grammar: Bunpro

Bunpro is the standard recommendation for grammar, and deservedly so. It applies spaced repetition to grammar points rather than words, with cloze-style fill-in-the-blank reviews that make you produce the pattern instead of recognizing it. It covers over 900 grammar items organized by JLPT level from N5 through N1, with example sentences and graded reading passages. Every new account gets a 30-day free trial of Premium, after which it is $5 per month or $150 lifetime, and a free tier keeps the grammar reference pages readable. If you only add one thing after Duolingo, this is the one to add.

Maximum control: Anki

Anki is free on desktop and Android and a one-time $24.99 on iOS, and it is more powerful than any commercial app you will find. You can build exactly the cards you want, and it supports FSRS, the modern scheduling algorithm. The tradeoffs are real: FSRS is opt-in rather than the default, you need to enable it in deck options and re-run the optimizer periodically, and you have to choose a deck from a large and uneven ecosystem before you study a single card. If you enjoy tuning your tools, Anki is the endgame. If deck-hunting is what stops you from studying, it is a trap. We wrote more about that tradeoff on our Anki alternative page.

Kanji-first: WaniKani

WaniKani teaches roughly 2,000 kanji and 6,000 vocabulary words through a strict radicals to kanji to vocabulary progression, with mnemonics built in. The first three levels are free, then it is $9 per month, $89 per year, or $299 lifetime. Choose it if kanji is the thing that scares you and you want it handled systematically by someone else’s curriculum. The flip side: the level order is fixed and kanji-driven, so you learn the words that happen to use this level’s kanji, not the words you are most likely to meet.

One free generalist: Renshuu

Renshuu is the best answer for anyone who wants a single free app and is tired of assembling things. It covers vocabulary, kanji, grammar, sentences, listening, and writing, all filterable by JLPT level, on web, iOS, and Android. The free tier is a full study platform rather than a demo, and an optional Pro subscription adds extras. If you are on Android, or if spending nothing is a hard requirement, start here and stop reading listicles.

Input: reading and listening

Whatever else you pick, start reading and listening to things made for learners: graded readers, comprehensible input channels, or a tool like Satori Reader. SRS makes words available, but only input turns them into comprehension. This does not have to be an app, and it should not wait until you feel ready.

Where Moji fits

Moji sits in exactly one lane: vocabulary and kanji SRS for people who want to open an app and study, with no deck to choose and no algorithm to configure.

The catalog is 7,435 hand-curated words, every one with an example sentence and English meaning, 5,300 of them with hand-written kanji mnemonics, and 7,029 with pitch accent annotated. Meanings are curated down to about three friendly glosses instead of dumped from a dictionary. Study order is frequency-derived and then hand-edited, with core particles deliberately pulled forward so you meet は (wa) around position 63 and が (ga) around 89, each with examples chosen to show where the particle sits in a sentence.

The scheduler is official FSRS-6, all 21 parameters, targeting 90% retention, with a two-button swipe (left for again, right for good) so reviews move fast and there is no grade anxiety. There is no daily review cap, so what is due is what you see.

The on-ramp matters more than usual for post-Duolingo learners, because your problem is not starting from zero, it is not knowing where you actually are. Moji opens with an adaptive placement test that maps you to a JLPT-aligned starting point, so you skip the several hundred words you already know instead of grinding through them to prove it. From there the catalog runs N5 through N1: 746 words at N5, 661 at N4, 2,101 at N3, 1,535 at N2, and 2,184 at N1, plus 208 kana-stage words.

The full comprehension path is free: flashcards with mnemonics and example sentences, kana writing practice, vocabulary and kana quizzes, and a Daily Mix quiz. Moji Premium ($4.99/month or $29.99/year) unlocks the focused practice modes, listening, cloze, weak-word drilling, and kanji writing.

Honest limits: it is iPhone only, with no Android version and no plans for one. It does not teach grammar, so pair it with Bunpro. And it will not do your reading practice for you.

Choose something else if

A realistic first month

Keep it boring. Pick one vocabulary SRS and do it daily, the same way you did Duolingo. Add Bunpro and work through N5 grammar in order, even the points you think you know, because the explanations are the part you were missing. Start reading something graded once a week. Leave Duolingo installed if the streak still motivates you, and use it as a warmup rather than the main event.

That is it. Three habits, two or three apps, and the compounding does the rest. If you want an honest answer on how long the road actually is, we did the math on how long it takes to learn Japanese, and if N5 is your next target specifically, the best app for JLPT N5 vocabulary goes deeper on what that level requires.

If the vocabulary lane is the one you want filled, and you are on an iPhone, Moji takes the placement test first so you start where you actually are: Download Moji on the App Store

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