Bunpro alternatives: an honest comparison for JLPT grammar (2026)
Short answer: if you want free, use Renshuu. If you want total control and don't mind building it yourself, use Anki with a shared grammar deck. If you want to be taught rather than drilled, use Bunpo or a textbook. If your real problem is kanji rather than grammar, you want WaniKani, not a Bunpro replacement. And if you can already recognise grammar but freeze when you have to produce it, none of the above is your fix — see the last section.
This page exists because the current search results for "Bunpro alternative" are a 2019 forum thread, a 2021 forum thread and a listicle. We build a JLPT study app, so we are not neutral — the honest version is below, including the parts where the alternatives beat us and where Bunpro beats all of us. Prices checked August 2026.
First: are you sure the problem is Bunpro?
Three of the most common reasons people go looking for an alternative are not fixed by switching apps.
- "My reviews piled up." That is an SRS load problem, and it follows you to every SRS. Review count settles at roughly 8–10× your daily new-item count on any of these systems. Lower the new-item number and the pile shrinks — on any app.
- "I keep failing the same points." An item you have failed three or four times is a bad item, not a discipline failure. Every app on this page lets you delete or reset one. Deleting is usually correct.
- "I finished N3 grammar and nothing stuck." Recognising a grammar point in a cloze sentence and being able to produce it are different skills, and the first does not reliably transfer to the second (Roediger & Karpicke, Psychological Science, 2006, on the testing effect and production). No amount of switching between cloze apps fixes this, because they all test the same direction.
If one of those is the actual complaint, fix it where you are. Bunpro is a well-made app and its grammar explanations are among the best available in English.
The comparison
| App | What it is | Price (Aug 2026) | Best for | Worst at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bunpro | Grammar SRS with cloze sentences + written explanations | $5/mo, $50/yr, $150 lifetime, 30-day trial | Systematically covering a JLPT level's grammar | Vocabulary and kanji are bolted on; no output practice |
| Renshuu | Full-stack Japanese study — grammar, vocab, kanji, listening | Genuinely free; optional Pro from ~$6.99/mo | Anyone who wants Bunpro's coverage without paying | Dense interface; the breadth is overwhelming at first |
| Anki | A bare SRS engine plus community decks | Free (desktop/Android); $25 one-time iOS | People who want to control every card | You are the curriculum designer, and most people quit rather than be one |
| Bunpo | Guided lessons with quizzes — a course, not a drill | Free tier + paid subscription | Being taught a point you have never seen | Weak long-term retention loop; not a review system |
| Marumori | Grammar + vocab + kanji in one integrated path | Free tier + subscription | Wanting one app instead of three | Smaller catalogue and community than the incumbents |
| WaniKani | Kanji and vocabulary via mnemonics and SRS | $9/mo, $89/yr, $299 lifetime; first 3 levels free | Kanji, and only kanji | It teaches no grammar at all — it is not a Bunpro replacement |
| Duolingo / LingoDeer | Gamified beginner courses | Free tier + subscription | Building a daily habit from zero | Both run out of road well before N3 |
| A textbook (Genki, Tobira, Shin Kanzen) | Ordered explanations plus exercises | ~$30–50 per book | Actually understanding why a point works | No scheduling — nothing makes you come back |
Renshuu — the answer to "free Bunpro alternative"
If you searched for a free alternative, this is the end of the search. Renshuu's free tier is a complete study system rather than a trial: grammar with a scheduling engine, vocabulary, kanji, listening, and JLPT-level filtering. It is not a stripped demo.
Better than Bunpro at: price, breadth, and the fact that grammar, vocab and kanji share one schedule instead of living in three apps.
Worse than Bunpro at: presentation. Bunpro's grammar write-ups are cleaner and more consistently edited, and its interface asks less of you. Renshuu's density is the price of its breadth.
Anki — the answer to "I want control"
Anki is not a Japanese app; it is a scheduler you point at your own material. With a shared grammar deck it does most of what Bunpro does for free.
Better than Bunpro at: cost, flexibility, and mining sentences from things you actually read.
Worse than Bunpro at: everything you would otherwise not have to think about — card design, ordering, explanations, and the discipline to maintain a deck. Mined cards also test recognition only: nothing in Anki checks what you produce, so it shares Bunpro's blind spot rather than fixing it.
Bunpo — the answer to "I want to be taught"
Bunpo runs on lessons: it explains a point, then quizzes you on it. If your complaint about Bunpro is that it drills points you never properly learned, this is the right shape of tool. Its weakness is the mirror image — the review loop is not strong enough to carry a whole JLPT level, so most people end up pairing it with an SRS anyway.
WaniKani — a common mis-recommendation
WaniKani appears in every "Bunpro alternative" thread and it is not one. It teaches kanji and vocabulary through mnemonics and a fixed level order, and it teaches zero grammar. If your reading is stalling on unknown characters rather than unknown structures, WaniKani is a good purchase and Bunpro was the wrong tool to begin with. If sentences fall apart even when you know every word, your problem is grammar and WaniKani will not touch it.
What none of them do — and where we come in
Disclosure: I build BetterLingo, so treat this section as an interested party's argument rather than a neutral review.
Every app above tests the same direction. Bunpro gives you a sentence with a hole in it. Anki shows you a card and you judge yourself. Renshuu offers multiple choice. All of them ask: do you recognise this? None of them ask: can you produce this, unprompted, and is what you produced actually correct?
That gap is why people finish an entire JLPT grammar list and still freeze when they have to write or say something. Recognition is a genuinely easier task than production, and practising the easy one does not automatically deliver the hard one.
BetterLingo's answer is that you write the full answer in Japanese and it gets marked — not against a fixed answer key, but for whether what you actually wrote works, with the reason when it does not. Free-form answers, N1–N5, plus the ordinary quizzes, SRS and kanji practice you would expect.
Where we lose, plainly:
- We are new and small. Bunpro, WaniKani and Renshuu have years of community, shared decks, forum threads and third-party scripts. We have none of that.
- Bunpro's grammar explanations are hand-written and better edited than ours.
- WaniKani's mnemonic system for kanji is genuinely excellent and we have nothing equivalent.
- If you want a proven system with a decade of users behind it, that is a real reason to pick one of them over us today.
Where we think we win: if you can already pass a multiple-choice grammar question and still cannot write a sentence you are confident in, we are the only one on this list that will look at what you wrote and tell you what is wrong with it. The full study system — quizzes for all five JLPT levels, SRS, kanji, and daily graded writing — is free, with no card required.
The 30-second version
- Free replacement for Bunpro: Renshuu. Complete free tier, wider coverage, denser interface.
- Maximum control: Anki plus a shared grammar deck. Free, but you become the curriculum designer.
- You want lessons, not drills: Bunpo, or a textbook such as Genki or Tobira.
- One app for grammar, vocab and kanji: Renshuu or Marumori.
- Your real problem is kanji: WaniKani. It teaches no grammar.
- Your real problem is producing Japanese, not recognising it: you need something that marks what you write. That is what BetterLingo does, and it is free.
- Stay on Bunpro if the explanations are what you value and reviews are the only thing that went wrong — that is a settings problem, not an app problem.
Related reading: Japanese particle practice (fill-in-the-blank, with reasons), causative vs causative-passive, and ところ grammar.