Renshuu vs Anki: which one actually gets you through the JLPT (2026)
Short answer: if you want someone else to decide what you study next, use Renshuu — it ships a JLPT-graded curriculum and a scheduler already wired together. If you want total control and are willing to spend an evening on setup, use Anki, because nothing else lets you tune the algorithm, the card types and the content independently. If you are already reading real Japanese and want to keep the words you meet, use Anki with sentence mining; nothing on Renshuu replaces that. And if your problem is that you pick the right answer in a review but freeze when you have to produce a sentence, neither of them is your fix, and the last two sections say why.
This page exists because searching "renshuu vs anki" returns Reddit threads, both projects' own forums, and app listicles — and no page that lines the two up side by side. We build a JLPT study app, so we are not a neutral party. The honest version is below: what each one is genuinely better at, and the part where we say what we do not do.
They are not the same kind of tool
Most of the confusion in those Reddit threads comes from comparing a scheduler with a course.
Anki is a spaced-repetition engine with nothing in it. It decides when you see a card. What is on the card, how it is worded, whether it asks for recognition or production — all of that is yours to supply, either by writing cards or by downloading a shared deck someone else wrote.
Renshuu is a Japanese course with a scheduler inside it. The kanji, vocabulary, grammar and sentence content is already there, already graded by JLPT level, and the app decides what comes next. You give up the tuning knobs and get to start studying in the first minute.
So "which is better" is really "do I want to own the content decisions or hand them over?" Both answers are defensible, and they are defensible for different people.
The comparison
| Anki | Renshuu | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | General-purpose SRS, open source | Japanese-specific study site and app |
| Price | Free on desktop, on Android (AnkiDroid) and for AnkiWeb sync. iOS is the exception: AnkiMobile is a one-off 4.99, and it funds the project | Free tier covers the graded schedules and quizzes and is unusually generous; a Pro subscription adds extras. We could not read the current Pro price logged out, so we are not quoting a figure — check their site |
| Content included | None. You write cards or import a shared deck | Kanji, vocabulary, grammar and sentences, graded N5–N1 |
| Scheduling | Ships the FSRS algorithm — opt-in since v23.10 — and optimises it against your own review history; tunable per deck | Its own scheduler, no knobs to turn |
| Question formats | Whatever you build — typing, cloze, audio, image occlusion | Several formats generated from the same item, including production and handwriting practice |
| Grammar | Only if your deck has it | Built in, with example sentences per point |
| Setup cost | Real. Deck choice, card design, options presets, add-ons | Near zero. Pick a level, press start |
| Your data | A file you own; exports and syncs forever | Lives in their account |
| Best for | Sentence mining, custom decks, people who like tuning | Beginners, JLPT-track learners, people who quit Anki once already |
What Anki is genuinely better at
Three things, and they are not small.
Sentence mining. If you are reading manga, novels or subtitles, the strongest habit in the hobby is capturing the sentences you personally failed to understand and reviewing those. Anki plus a browser dictionary is the standard rig for it, and no curriculum app can do this by definition — your sentences are not in anyone's syllabus.
Control. Card templates, interval modifiers, leech thresholds, separate presets per deck, thousands of add-ons. If you have a specific complaint about how reviews are scheduled, Anki is the only one of the two where the complaint is fixable.
Permanence. Your collection is a file. It survives the app changing its pricing, its owner, or its mind. Ten years of reviews is a real asset and Anki is the only one of the two that hands it back to you.
What Renshuu is genuinely better at
It removes the decisions that kill people. Most abandoned Anki accounts did not die of scheduling; they died of setup. Which deck, whether to build my own, what to do about 200 leeches, why are there 400 cards due. Renshuu has already made those calls, and for a beginner that is worth more than any algorithm difference.
One item, many question shapes. A vocabulary entry can come back as recognition, as production, as kana typing, or as a handwriting prompt. In Anki you get that only if you build the note types for it, and most people do not.
Grammar is actually there. Grammar is the weakest part of every shared kanji deck, and it is the half of the JLPT that decides pass or fail for a lot of people. If grammar is your gap, also read our comparison of Bunpro alternatives — Bunpro is the direct competitor on that axis, not Anki.
A community that answers. Its forums are small enough that questions get real answers, which is not true of the big kanji apps.
The honest trade
Anki's price is your time and taste. Renshuu's price is that you study in their order, at their granularity, and their scheduler is a black box. If you are the sort of person who enjoys a settings screen, Anki will reward you and Renshuu will feel like a cage. If opening a settings screen makes you close the app, that is a fact about you worth respecting, and Renshuu is the answer.
For kanji specifically, neither is the obvious pick — that fight is mostly WaniKani's, and we wrote about it in WaniKani alternatives.
Where we fit, and where we do not
We are not an SRS and we will not pretend to be one. BetterLingo has no deck library, no import from your dictionary, no handwriting recognition, and no ten-year track record — it is small and it is new. If you want spaced repetition, take one of the two above.
What both of them share is the limit that made us build something else: they grade you against a stored answer. You either matched the card or you did not. That is fine for vocabulary and it is nearly useless for the part of the exam where you have to produce Japanese, because the interesting mistakes are the ones nobody wrote a card for — the wrong particle, the transitive verb where the intransitive belongs, the passive that should have been causative.
So BetterLingo marks written answers. You write the sentence, and it tells you what is wrong and which grammar point you missed, rather than checking a string. The marking is done by a language model against the point being tested; it is right often enough to be useful and wrong often enough that you should read it as a second opinion, not as a teacher. Two places to try it without an account: the free Japanese grammar checker, and the graded reading stories.
The 30-second version
- Starting out, or restarting after quitting Anki: Renshuu.
- Reading real Japanese and want to keep what you meet: Anki.
- Want to change how reviews are scheduled: Anki, it is the only one where you can.
- Want grammar included rather than assembled: Renshuu.
- Can recognise the answer but cannot produce the sentence: neither — you need something that reads what you wrote.
- Running both is normal and not redundant: Renshuu for the syllabus, Anki for your own sentences.
Next steps
Pick one of the two and start today; the difference between them is far smaller than the difference between studying and comparing study apps. When you get to the point where you can pass a review but not write a sentence, come back and put your Japanese in front of something that reads it.