Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to 3-5 Year Japanese Rapid Fluency Online Curriculum
We at Japanese Complete have been hard at work on a rapid fluency curriculum designed to take people with no exposure in Japanese all the way to fluency. Our three-year timeline is designed for the ambitious learner to be well equipped to tackle the Japanese Language Proficiency Test highest level (N1). We have designed this curriculum because, frankly, it solves a problem our founders had: No good online textbooks or drill-like training systems exist for Japanese that can take one beyond intermediate. In 2011 a huge corpus called the BCCWJ (Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese)…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. 3-5 Year Japanese Rapid Fluency Online Curriculum launched in 2019; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1

Learn Japanese online with the most efficient curriculum ever devised. Get started for free.
2019 · japanesecomplete.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Mainichi▲133Learn Japanese, one prefecture at a time.
Jul 2026 · mainichiapp.com · its alternatives →
- 3

Rapid Fluency Acquisition Platform for Serious learners
2019 · japanesecomplete.com · its alternatives →
- 4

Hey HN, it’s been 8 years since I posted on here about the launch of my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo [0] and I’m finally back with a new app: Nihongo Lessons! Think of Nihongo Lessons as the textbook to Nihongo’s dictionary. It’s an app for learning Japanese, specifically made for learners who are serious about becoming fluent, and want a guided set of content that will help them efficiently acquire vocabulary and grammar. The project came about when Adam Shapiro of Japanese Level Up (Jalup) [1] announced last April that he was shutting Jalup down. As a fan of Adam’s work I was bummed to…
2022 · lessons.nihongo-app.com · its alternatives →
- 5JC
Hello friends at HN For the past 3 years we have been arranging our physical textbook series and the first one has been published. You can view sample chapters and see that the book is printed on premium, photo-quality paper here: https://japanesecomplete.com/book-1 In true hacker ethos, Japanese Complete was a project started to address a need the founders had and now it’s turning into a tangible product so it is quite exciting for us and we appreciate your continued support. All the material in the first book is available with a free online account on our online curriculum,…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 6

Master Japanese in 3 years, leveraging your native language.
2021 · japanesecomplete.com · its alternatives →
- 7
JapaneseTab▲144Learn Japanese with every new tab
2019 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
- 8

Hi HN, Just wanted to share a tool i've been working on to help with my own study routine. It’s a browser extension called Lingoku. The idea is simple: we spend hours browsing the web in English every day. This tool replaces some of the english words with Japanese vocabulary based on your japanese level (Similar to Toucan, but with a better user experience). It’s basically an attempt to make the "i+1" method actually passive, you understand the sentence because it's mostly english, but you pick up Japanese words naturally from the context. It uses an LLM in the backend to make sure the…
Dec 2025 · lingoku.ai · its alternatives →
- 9IM
The idea is actually quite simple. As a Japanese learner and a coder, I've always wanted there to be an open-source, 100% free for learning Japanese, similar to Monkeytype in the typing community. Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned. But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion…
2025 · kanadojo.com · its alternatives →
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- 12JL
2020 · questions.japanesecomplete.com · its alternatives →
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Kazu Navi (かずナビ)▲142Learn Japanese with clarity, context, and confidence
2025 · kazunavi.com · its alternatives →
- 15LL
Hi! I'm living as an expat in France and I had a hard time following the news. So I've been working on Fluentsubs that turns YouTube content into a language learning experience. YouTube videos up to 20 minutes can be transcribed and listened to. At the same time I made it easy to lookup certain words and automatically add spaced repetition cards using the given context. This means that you can also rehearse with a real voice and not with AI dubs. This works especially well for the somewhat smaller languages that have a small track on Duolingo, and now are desperately looking for content…
2025 · fluentsubs.com · its alternatives →
- 16
WaseiGo▲86Learn the 1,000+ Japanese words that only look like English
Aug 2026 · waseigo.take-lab.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Dozo▲8Learn Japanese N5 to N1 with a real teacher in your corner
Aug 2026 · nihongodozo.com · its alternatives →
- 18

Learn Japanese, Russian and Hebrew at the speed of light.
2018 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 19IW
As hard as I tried, I didn't find a modern language learning book that's either very academic, or like "master a language with my super-magic great method in 3 months". So I dug into the academic research, tried many techniques myself, saw what worked, wrote a book for learners of any language and any level, and made it free without ads. Today, finally, a 2 years-long project ends. I hope it helps anyone. Book's here: https://thehardway.guide/ Cheers
2023 · its alternatives →
- 20
WaniKani▲4Web application for learning Japanese kanji and vocabulary.
2018 · wanikani.com · its alternatives →
- 21

- 22

From zero to fluent in a few repetitions.
2023 · jbr.works · its alternatives →
- 23AF
I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News. Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention. There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com. It's only for Android so far. The free version includes…
2012 · kanjibyhand.com. · its alternatives →
- 24

Math Academy for Mandarin — mastery learning, $49 for life
Jul 2026 · graphchinese.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →