Best Japanese Learning Resources for Beginners: The Stack I Actually Use

First, a disclosure. I use several of the apps below, and I’m also building my own Japanese learning app, YapaneseAI. That gives me a stake in this guide, but it also means I can tell you where each app helped me and where I got stuck.

Why one app usually isn’t enough

No single app does everything well. Learning Japanese takes structure (what to learn next), review (keeping what you learned) and practice using it. Most apps are strong at one or two of those, so pick one tool for each and try not to keep adding more.

Speaking is the part learners most often say is missing. I spend time in Japanese learning communities, and it comes up constantly. On the WaniKani and Bunpro community forums, people describe blanking in speaking tests on material they’d studied, finding output far harder than input, and understanding much more than they can say. Using several tools at once is normal there too. Study logs regularly list a kanji app, a flashcard deck and a grammar tool side by side.

This isn’t a ranking of every Japanese app. It’s the setup I actually use, what each part does for me, and where each one falls short.

If you can’t read hiragana yet, start with Japanese alphabets and kana practice before any app. Everything below assumes you can.

Structure and review: Renshuu

Renshuu is the app that has done the most for my vocabulary, and I still go back to it. Renshuu is also a Japanese word, 練習, and it means practice. What I like most is how its lessons are structured. It’s made for Japanese, free to start and ad-free, with grammar, vocabulary and kanji lessons, study packs for textbooks and the JLPT, and review that adjusts to what you already know. It’s a study tool, though. Knowing a pattern like ことができます (I can…) in a quiz is different from using it when someone asks what you can do, and for that I had to go somewhere else.

Your own decks: Anki

Anki is a free flashcard app built on spaced repetition. It doesn’t come with a Japanese course, so you make your own cards or download shared decks. That suits learners who want full control over what they review. I’m describing what it offers here, not reporting a long test of my own.

The daily habit: Duolingo

I use Duolingo every day, and its Japanese course now goes up to CEFR B2. It’s very good at getting you to open the app at all, which most apps struggle with. My problem is that the streak started to matter more to me than the learning. On busy days I do the smallest lesson I can find just to keep it going. The habit survives, but the skill I most need to work on doesn’t get much practice.

If that sounds familiar, keep Duolingo for the habit and use a different tool for practice that makes you produce Japanese.

Speaking what you know: Talkpal

Talkpal is where I realised what was missing from my routine. It’s an AI tutor with calls and role-plays, and using it gave me the confidence to start speaking instead of only studying. For Japanese learners, the downside is how broad it is. It covers more than 130 languages, and its site doesn’t show a curriculum made for Japanese, so conversations aren’t linked to what you’re learning.

Build your own speaking partner: ChatGPT or Claude

I use ChatGPT and Claude a lot, and over time I’ve built my own study setup on top of them, including assistants that research and prepare material and speaking partners I set up as voice agents. For my own study, it now covers most of what I used to look for in a tutor. Both apps offer voice conversation on their free plans, with more usage on paid plans, so anyone can try it.

It took a lot of prompting, testing and building to get there, though. Learners on the Bunpro forum describe what to expect without that work. Voice mode can handle basic conversation if you tell it your level and how polite to be, but it doesn’t reliably hear and correct your mistakes, it can sound less natural than a person, and it can agree with you too easily. It also doesn’t know what you studied this week unless you tell it.

A free course instead of an app: Irodori

If you’d rather follow a free course, the Japan Foundation’s Irodori teaches Japanese for everyday situations from beginner to pre-intermediate, with plenty of audio. It’s designed for living and working in Japan, not JLPT preparation.

The stack at a glance

Where YapaneseAI fits

What I kept wanting was Renshuu’s structure, the confidence Talkpal gave me and the speaking setup I’d built for myself, all in one app made only for Japanese. That’s what I’m building with YapaneseAI. The reviewed lessons are free on the site, and calls, messages and journal practice using what you’ve just learned, with feedback along the way, are coming soon. You can join the waitlist for early access. You shouldn’t need to be good at prompting to practise speaking.

It isn’t meant to replace your review tool. Keep Renshuu or Anki for vocabulary and kanji, and once the app launches, use YapaneseAI to practise saying those words.

The plan is a free tier to start with and one paid plan that includes speaking practice rather than charging extra for it. The lessons on the site are free and always will be.

It won’t suit everyone. The structured curriculum is planned to cover CEFR A1 to B1, so learners well past intermediate will outgrow it, and the app itself isn’t out yet, so for now you can join the waitlist.

Build your stack in a week

• Pick one tool for structure: Renshuu, Irodori or a course.
• Pick one tool for review, and only one: Renshuu’s review or Anki.
• Keep a habit app if it helps you show up, but judge your progress by what you can say, not by the streak.
• Add one speaking tool, and use each week’s lesson in it at least three times. If the lesson is ほしいです, ask for three different things you want, out loud.

At the end of the week, drop anything you didn’t open.

Here’s a quick way to test your setup. Learn これをください in a lesson, review it, then say it out loud in a new situation. If your tools cover all three steps, it’s working.

Continue learning

For free focused lessons, start in the Learn hub. To start the speaking layer today without any app, read how to practise speaking Japanese without a partner.