Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Kantoku
Tiktok-style kanji learning
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1IM
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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Learn Japanese hiragana and vocabulary with cute characters
2023 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Kanji Words▲62Study Japanese Kanji words with this simply game
2023 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 7
- 8AF
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 →
- 9
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 →
- 10
Laoshi▲239Learn new words with flashcards to master Chinese faster
2021 · laoshi.io · its alternatives →
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QWANJI▲174Hey HN! I've built this bit of cuteware (software not solving a problem but just for fun) inspired from the patterns made by swipe typing on mobile devices. To me it seemed like the closest thing to an English version of Kanji and it would be cool to consistently recreate those patterns. The implementation is vanilla js to keep things simple (and from a bit of framework fatigue) I'm keen to see how people use qwanji. Any and all feedback welcome!
2024 · byronicalpatrick.github.io · its alternatives →
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Kana Words▲76Study Japanese hiragana and katakana with this simply game
2023 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
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Mainichi▲133Learn Japanese, one prefecture at a time.
Jul 2026 · mainichiapp.com · its alternatives →
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LanGo▲140Learn Japanese with 1000 phrases and smart flashcards
2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Learn Japanese with 1000 phrases and intelligent flashcards
2016 · ling-app.com · its alternatives →
- 17
Japanese dictionary app for iPhone and iPad with kanji lookup, example sentences, flashcards, OCR photo lookup, and a Safari extension for reading Japanese.
2015 · nihongo-app.com · its alternatives →
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MojiMori ▲13Learn Kanji by breaking them down to first principles
May 2026 · mojimori.app · its alternatives →
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I quit my job last year and worked mostly on this full SwiftUI rewrite of my Japanese reading app, Manabi Reader. The rewrite gave me the opportunity to expand to macOS (and without Catalyst so it feels extra native) and redo the data layer to be offline-first via Realm with iCloud sync. The biggest differentiators compared with other language study apps are that it tracks every word/kanji you read so that you can see how much of a given webpage/article you're already familiar with and other features/analytics built on that foundation; it automatically builds a personal corpus…
2023 · reader.manabi.io · its alternatives →
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Easy kanji game to improve recognition of kanji.
2020 · play.google.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 →