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Updated August 4, 2026

What is the best app for JLPT N5 vocabulary?

Start with the thing most listicles skip: there is no official JLPT N5 vocabulary list. The test organizers stopped publishing Test Content Specifications after the 2010 revision and do not publish word lists at all. Every “official N5 list” you find online is a reconstruction from past papers and practice workbooks. The working convention is roughly 800 words.

For an iPhone learner who wants that scope handled without assembling anything, Moji - Learn Japanese Daily for iPhone is our pick: 746 N5-level words plus 208 kana-stage words, ordered by how often words actually appear rather than by textbook chapter, every entry carrying a curated example sentence, and a free tier that covers the entire comprehension path.

We are the ones who make Moji, so here is the claim stated narrowly: best for iPhone users who want zero setup. Not best overall. If you want maximum control over your deck, Anki is better. If you want breadth and price above everything, Renshuu is better. Both cases are covered below.

Why is there no official N5 word list?

The JLPT was revised in 2010, replacing the four-level test with the five-level N5 to N1 structure. The old test shipped with Test Content Specifications listing the kanji and vocabulary you were expected to know. The new one does not. The official FAQ says those specifications are no longer available, and frames the reasoning plainly: the goal of studying Japanese is to use the language to communicate, not to memorize vocabulary.

What the organizers do publish is a competence description. For N5 reading, the standard is being “able to read and understand typical expressions and sentences written in hiragana, katakana, and basic kanji.” For listening, it is following slow, short conversations on everyday and classroom topics.

That leaves the word counts to the community, which is why the numbers you see vary. It also means any app claiming to teach you “the official N5 list” is telling you something that is not true.

How much vocabulary does N5 actually need?

About 800 words is the number schools and publishers converge on. Meguro Language Center, a Japanese-language school in Tokyo, publishes a free N5 vocabulary list of roughly 800 entries assembled from the official practice workbook for N5, the vocabulary from the old Level 4 test, and a set of common greetings. That construction is typical of how every credible N5 list gets built.

Treat 800 as an order of magnitude, not a target to grind. Two things matter more than the count:

  1. Which 800. Lists differ at the margins, and the margins are where wasted effort lives.
  2. What “knowing” a word means. Recognizing a word on a multiple-choice paper is a much lower bar than producing it, which is why the number of words you have “seen” is a bad progress metric.

We break the per-level counts down further in how many words you need for each JLPT level, and cover the rest of the N5 syllabus, including kanji and grammar scope, in the JLPT N5 guide.

What Moji covers for N5

Moji’s catalog holds 7,435 curated words across all five levels, of which 746 are tagged N5. Below those sit 208 kana-stage words, the very first vocabulary a beginner meets while kana is still settling. That 746 lands near the ~800 convention, which is not a coincidence: both are drawn from the same core of high-frequency everyday Japanese.

The order is frequency-derived, then hand-edited. Words are ranked by how often they appear in real Japanese, then the sequence is adjusted by hand where raw frequency produces a bad learning experience. Core particles are deliberately pulled forward: は (ha, read “wa”, the topic marker) enters around position 63, が (ga, the subject marker) around 89, か (ka, the question marker) around 109, and を (o, the object marker) around 129. Each arrives with example sentences chosen to show where the particle sits in a sentence, because a particle taught as a gloss is useless. The reasoning is in why word order matters.

Example sentences respect a difficulty budget. For the first 600 words, every example sentence uses at most one word the learner has not yet been taught. This is the difference between an example that teaches and an example that is just another wall of unknown Japanese, and it took a full rewrite pass to hold the line.

Meanings are curated, not dumped. Each entry gets at most about three friendly glosses, each 30 characters or shorter, with dictionary parenthetical noise stripped out. You do not get eleven comma-separated senses and a bracketed usage tag.

Mnemonics and pitch accent come included. Across the catalog, 5,300 entries carry hand-written mnemonics (kanji words only, since forcing a story onto a kana word helps nobody) and 7,029 carry pitch-accent annotations. Both are free.

Scheduling is FSRS-6 with no configuration. Moji runs the official FSRS-6 algorithm with all 21 parameters at a 90% target retention, on a two-button swipe. There is nothing to tune. How that works, and how it differs from SM-2, is its own page.

The placement test, for people who already know some of this

Self-taught learners tend to arrive already knowing a scattered chunk of N5, and starting from word one is demoralizing. Moji’s placement test is free and takes a few minutes: it starts at N5 and serves six-question rounds, needs two thirds correct to move you up a level, runs one confirmation round at the first level you miss, and scores with a correction for lucky guessing.

Be clear about what it does with the result: it recommends a study scope by level that you apply with one tap, so you are not grinding through a level you are past. It does not mark individual words as known. Within your scope you still meet each word once, which for a word you already know is a two-second swipe.

What costs money

Everything above is free. Flashcards with mnemonics and example sentences, kana writing practice, vocabulary and kana quizzes, the Daily Mix, and the placement test are all in the free tier, which is to say the entire comprehension path to N5 is free. Moji Premium ($4.99/month or $29.99/year) unlocks focused practice modes: listening, cloze, weak-words drilling, kanji writing, and the full quiz library. You are never sold something and then locked out of it mid-session.

How the options compare

MojiAnki + community N5 deckRenshuu
Cost on iPhoneFree tier covers N5 comprehension; Premium $4.99/mo$24.99 one-time (AnkiMobile)Free, optional paid tier
Cost elsewhereiPhone onlyFree on desktop and AndroidFree on web and mobile
N5 word list746 N5 entries, curatedWhatever deck you downloadJLPT lists built in
Study orderFrequency-derived, hand-editedDepends on the deckMultiple schedules, including textbook order
Setup requiredNonePick a deck, vet it, configure the schedulerChoose a schedule
SchedulerFSRS-6, fixed defaultsFSRS available, fully configurableBuilt-in
GrammarNot coveredDepends on the deckCovered

Choose Anki if…

You want control and you are willing to pay for it in setup time. Anki is more powerful than Moji in every configurable dimension: you can rewrite card templates, tune scheduler parameters, add images and audio, install add-ons, and run any of the many community N5 decks. It is free on desktop and on Android via AnkiDroid, and it syncs for free. If you want to own your deck permanently and export it anywhere, this is the honest answer.

The costs are real, though. On iPhone, AnkiMobile is a $24.99 one-time purchase. You have to find a good N5 deck and evaluate it yourself, and community deck quality ranges from excellent to unusable. And out of the box you get whatever example sentences and mnemonics the deck author bothered to write, if any.

Choose Renshuu if…

You want breadth and you want it free. Renshuu covers vocabulary, kanji, and grammar in one place, ships JLPT study schedules, and its free tier is genuinely usable rather than a demo. It runs on web, iOS, and Android. For a beginner who wants one free tool that handles more than vocabulary, Renshuu is a better fit than Moji, and we would rather you use it than bounce off a paywall somewhere.

Choose a textbook-order app if…

You are in a class, or self-studying from Genki or Minna no Nihongo. Frequency order is the right default when nothing else constrains you, and the wrong one when you have homework due. If your teacher covers chapter 7 this week, an app that follows chapter 7 wins, because vocabulary that shows up in your reading the same week is vocabulary that sticks. Renshuu carries textbook schedules; a matching Anki deck works too. Come back to frequency order once you finish the textbook.

So what does “best” mean here?

For N5 vocabulary specifically, on an iPhone, with no interest in configuring anything: Moji. A curated 746-word N5 set in a sensible order, sentences you can actually read, mnemonics and pitch accent included, FSRS-6 scheduling that needs no tuning, and a placement test so you do not start below your level. The comprehension path is free, so trying it costs nothing but the download.

For anything else, one of the three alternatives above is the better answer, and we would rather say so than pretend one app wins every case.

If the zero-setup version is the one you want, Moji is on the App Store.

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