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Published August 13, 2026. Updated September 6, 2026

JLPT levels explained: N5 through N1

The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test has five levels. N5 is the easiest, N1 is the most difficult, and the numbering runs backwards from what most people expect. The organizers put it plainly: N4 and N5 “measure the level of understanding of basic Japanese mainly learned in class,” N1 and N2 “measure the level of understanding of Japanese used in a broad range of scenes in actual everyday life,” and N3 is “a bridging level between N1/N2 and N4/N5.”

The practical version: N5 and N4 show you have started, N3 shows you can function in everyday situations, N2 is the level that Japanese immigration rules and employers actually name, and N1 is the top of the scale. One thing to know before you read any level breakdown, including this one: there are no official vocabulary or kanji lists behind these levels. The 2010 revision removed them deliberately, so every per-level word count you see online is an estimate.

What each JLPT level certifies, in the organizers’ own words

LevelOfficial summary of competence
N1”The ability to understand Japanese used in a variety of circumstances.”
N2”The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations, and in a variety of circumstances to a certain degree.”
N3”The ability to understand Japanese used in everyday situations to a certain degree.”
N4”The ability to understand basic Japanese.”
N5”The ability to understand some basic Japanese.”

Those one-liners are deliberately vague, and the detail underneath them is where the levels actually separate. The official descriptions are written as language activities, reading and listening, rather than as lists of things to memorize. That is the whole design philosophy of the post-2010 test.

N5 and N4: the beginner levels

N5 asks that you can “read and understand typical expressions and sentences written in hiragana, katakana, and basic kanji,” and follow conversations about daily life and classroom situations “spoken slowly.” That is a real bar, and it is lower than most beginners assume. Both kana read fluently plus a few hundred words of everyday vocabulary gets you most of the way there.

N4 raises reading to “passages on familiar daily topics written in basic vocabulary and kanji” and listening to daily conversations, still “spoken slowly.” The jump from N5 to N4 is mostly kanji density and sentence length rather than new grammar exotica. If you are working toward either, the JLPT N5 guide and JLPT N4 guide go level by level.

N3: the bridging level

N3 is where the test stops being a classroom exercise. The official description asks you to read “written materials with specific contents concerning everyday topics,” grasp summary information “such as newspaper headlines,” and handle “slightly difficult writings encountered in everyday situations” when alternative phrasings are available to help. Listening moves to “near-natural speed.”

That phrase, near-natural speed, is the whole difficulty of N3 in three words. N4 listening is slowed down for learners. N3 listening is not, or barely. Most people who stall between N4 and N3 stall on listening, not vocabulary. The test structure changes here too: N3 splits into three scoring sections rather than two, so vocabulary and grammar, reading, and listening each get their own minimum.

N2: the level employers and immigration ask for

N2 is the line that matters outside the test itself, and the evidence is in Japan’s own rules rather than in anyone’s opinion. The JLPT organizers list N2 or higher as meeting the Japanese-language requirement for the “Business Manager” residence status and for “Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services” where language skill must be proven, and as “a benchmark for the Japanese language proficiency required for admission to higher education institutions in Japan.” Under the Point-based Preferential Immigration Treatment System for Highly Skilled Foreign Professionals, N1 earns 15 points and N2 earns 10.

The organizers also say directly that “use of JLPT results has expanded from skill measurement to include employment screening and evaluation for promotions and pay raises.” Individual companies set their own bars, so treat N2 as the level most commonly named rather than a guarantee.

Content-wise, N2 asks for newspaper and magazine articles, commentaries, and “simple critiques,” with listening at “nearly natural speed.” This is the level where studying stops being about volume and starts being about reading real material regularly.

N1: the top of the scale

N1 asks for “logically complex and/or abstract writings,” newspaper editorials and critiques, and comprehension of “both their structures and contents.” Listening covers conversations, news reports, and lectures “spoken at natural speed in a broad variety of settings.”

N1 is required rather than merely preferred in a narrow set of cases: overseas-licensed medical practitioners need an N1 certificate to sit Japan’s national exams for doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists and a long list of related professions. For most learners, N1 is a personal ceiling rather than a job requirement, and the gap between N2 and N1 is the largest on the ladder by a wide margin.

How many words and kanji does each JLPT level need?

The exam question and the fluency question have different answers; the second is worked through in how many Japanese words you need to be fluent. No official answer exists. The JLPT stopped publishing its Test Content Specification with the 2010 revision, on the reasoning that the goal is communication “rather than simply memorizing vocabulary, kanji and grammar items.” What circulates now are estimates reconstructed from past exams by prep publishers and community projects:

LevelEstimated kanji (cumulative)Estimated vocabulary (cumulative)
N5~100~800
N4~300~1,500
N3~650~3,700
N2~1,000~6,000
N1~2,000+~10,000+

Two things worth holding onto. These are cumulative, so N3’s ~3,700 includes everything below it, and each level is roughly double the one before. And they are reconstructions, so expect out-of-scope items on any given exam. How many words you actually need for each JLPT level goes into where the numbers come from and how far to trust them.

How JLPT scoring works, and why the sectional pass mark matters

Every level is scored out of 180. Overall pass marks are 100 for N1, 90 for N2, 95 for N3, 90 for N4 and 80 for N5. Yes, N3’s pass mark is higher than N2’s, which surprises people every year and is a consequence of how each scale is calibrated rather than a difficulty statement.

The part that catches candidates out is sectional pass marks. N1, N2 and N3 have three scoring sections (language knowledge, reading, listening), each scored 0 to 60, each requiring at least 19 points. N4 and N5 have two sections: combined language knowledge and reading scored 0 to 120 with a 38-point minimum, and listening scored 0 to 60 with a 19-point minimum. Fall below a sectional minimum and you fail regardless of your total. This is why “I will make up for listening with reading” does not work, and why listening deserves real practice from N5 onward.

Which JLPT level am I?

Rough self-assessment, honest about what each signal is worth:

The common failure mode is overshooting. Recognizing a word on a flashcard is much easier than reading it inside a timed passage, so vocabulary counts flatter you. Listening speed, not word count, is usually what decides the level you can actually pass.

Moji - Learn Japanese Daily for iPhone includes a free placement test that answers this faster than self-assessment does. It is JLPT-aligned and adaptive, so it narrows in on your level rather than marching through every question, and the score is guess-corrected, so a lucky multiple-choice run does not inflate the result. It reports a composite as a level bar rather than a single pass or fail verdict. It runs at onboarding or any time from settings.

Every entry in Moji’s catalog carries a JLPT band, and you can filter study by band: 775 words tagged N5, 730 N4, 2,288 N3, 1,984 N2 and 2,252 N1, across a 8,237-word catalog, plus 208 kana characters taught as their own cards. Those are facts about this catalog, not official JLPT scope, and they are per-band rather than cumulative. Moji is not a dictionary app, it is a study system with a curated order and FSRS-6 scheduling, and the free tier covers the whole comprehension path.

If you would rather have your level measured than guessed at, the placement test is free and runs at onboarding, before you decide anything about the app: Moji is on the App Store.

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