Bunpro vs LingoDeer (2026): grammar drill or full beginner course?

Short answer: LingoDeer teaches you Japanese from zero in ordered lessons with audio, and stops being useful somewhere around N4. Bunpro does not teach you the language at all — it drills JLPT grammar points you have already met, and keeps being useful all the way to N1. They solve different halves of the same problem, and plenty of people use LingoDeer first and Bunpro after.

I build BetterLingo from Japan and use both of these. This page names what each one is better at instead of pretending one wins, and says plainly what BetterLingo is not, near the bottom.

First: Bunpro is not Bunpo

These are two different apps with names one letter apart, and search results mix them constantly. Bunpro is a browser-first JLPT grammar SRS with a large explanation library. Bunpo is a mobile lesson app closer in shape to LingoDeer. If you compared "Bunpo vs LingoDeer" and came away thinking they were nearly the same product, that is why — this page is about Bunpro.

What they actually are

LingoDeer is a structured course. Ordered units, native audio on every sentence, grammar notes written in English, and exercises that build sentences from word tiles. It assumes you know nothing — it will teach you kana, then basic sentence order, then te-form, in that order, and it decides the order for you.

Bunpro is a review engine organised around JLPT grammar points, N5 to N1. Each point has a short explanation, links out to how other sources explain the same point, and a set of cloze sentences you type answers into. It schedules each point's return with spaced repetition. It does not teach vocabulary systematically, it does not teach kana, and it expects you to bring some Japanese with you.

What LingoDeer is better at

  • Starting from zero. Bunpro's N5 deck assumes you can already read kana and know what a particle is. LingoDeer assumes nothing, and that gap is the single biggest reason beginners bounce off Bunpro.
  • Audio. Every LingoDeer sentence is voiced by a native speaker. Bunpro has audio on many sentences but listening is not what it is for.
  • Order. A curriculum someone sequenced beats a grammar list you pick from at random when you do not yet know enough to pick well.
  • Feeling like a course. Lessons end. There is a next unit. For a lot of people that is the difference between studying and not studying.

What Bunpro is better at

  • Coverage past N4. LingoDeer's Japanese content thins out fast at intermediate level. Bunpro has full N3, N2 and N1 grammar decks, which is most of what a JLPT-focused learner needs.
  • Retention. A course teaches a point once; an SRS brings it back on the day you were about to forget it. If you have ever finished a grammar unit and lost it a month later, that is the problem Bunpro exists for.
  • Production, not recognition. Bunpro's cloze answers are typed in Japanese. LingoDeer's word tiles let you recognise the right answer without being able to produce it.
  • Explanations with sources. Each Bunpro point links out to how Tae Kim, Imabi, a textbook and others explain the same grammar. That is genuinely useful when one explanation does not land.

Where each one fails

LingoDeer fails when you outgrow it. There is no N2 path, and its review system is light — you can complete every unit and still not hold the grammar under exam pressure. It is also subscription-priced for content you finish.

Bunpro fails when you have no foundation to review. Reviews pile up, the queue turns into a chore, and typing a cloze answer you half-remember teaches you less than you think. It is also a grammar tool wearing the shape of a whole study plan — vocabulary, listening and reading are on you.

So which one

Absolute beginner, no textbook, want to be told what to do next: LingoDeer. Come back to this question at N4.

Working through Genki or Minna no Nihongo already: Bunpro, alongside it. Your textbook supplies the order and the vocabulary; Bunpro supplies the retention.

N3 or above, or sitting the JLPT this cycle: Bunpro. LingoDeer does not go where you are going.

You already used both and grammar still collapses in the exam: the missing piece is usually output that gets corrected — writing your own sentences with a target grammar point and finding out where they are wrong.

What BetterLingo is, and is not

BetterLingo is a JLPT practice app that marks written answers — you write the sentence yourself and get told what is wrong with it, rather than picking from four choices. That is the gap this page keeps arriving at.

It is also small and new. It is not an SRS: no deck library, no card editor, no dictionary import, no import of your Anki collection. It does not have LingoDeer's audio course or Bunpro's grammar explanation library, and it will not replace either as your main study system this year. If you want a beginner course, use LingoDeer; if you want a JLPT grammar SRS, use Bunpro.

Next steps

If you want to see whether your grammar survives contact with a blank line rather than a multiple choice, try a few written answers and read the corrections. Our Bunpro alternatives page covers the wider field, and ところ grammar is an example of the kind of point that survives a course and still fails under exam pressure.