Renshuu vs MaruMori (2026): free forever, or all-in-one?

Short answer: if you want a complete Japanese course that walks you from zero to N3 without you designing anything, pay for MaruMori. If you want a genuinely usable free tool with the deepest customisation in the space, use Renshuu. They are not really competing for the same person.

I build BetterLingo from Japan, and I look at these two more than is healthy, because people ask which one to leave for us. Usually the honest answer is: neither, keep it. So this page is written the way I would answer it in a thread — what each one is actually for, where each one beats the other, and the one narrow thing we do that neither of them does.

The one-line difference

Renshuu is a study system: schedules, custom lists, kanji, vocabulary, grammar, games, and a free tier that is not a trial. MaruMori is a study course: an ordered path with lessons written for you, grammar explanations, reading, and SRS bolted to the path so you never pick what to review.

Choosing between them is really choosing whether you want to be handed a sequence or handed a toolbox.

Where Renshuu wins

  • The free tier is the most generous in Japanese learning. This is not a grudging concession — Renshuu's free plan does more than most paid apps, and it stays free. If money is the constraint, the comparison stops here.
  • Custom schedules and lists. You can drive it off a textbook, off a JLPT level, off your own vocabulary list, and it will build the review queue around that.
  • Human-made content and an involved developer. Content is written by people, and the community around it is unusually patient with beginners.

Where MaruMori wins

  • The course is more complete than what Renshuu asks you to assemble — and more complete than our content, to be clear. Grammar, kanji, vocabulary, listening and reading sit on one ordered track.
  • Zero setup decisions. You open it and there is a next lesson. For anyone who has quit Japanese once already because they spent a week configuring Anki instead of studying, that is worth the subscription on its own.
  • Grammar explanations you can actually read, in-line with the item you just got wrong.

How to choose in one question

Ask yourself: have I ever abandoned a study tool because I got tired of maintaining it? If yes, MaruMori. If instead your complaint is that apps never let you study the exact list you care about, Renshuu.

Budget breaks the tie the other way: Renshuu free beats MaruMori unpaid by a wide margin, and there is no shame in running Renshuu for a year before paying anyone.

What BetterLingo does, and what it is not

We are small and new. We do not have MaruMori's course, we do not have Renshuu's free tier, and we have no mature SRS deck library — if you want a deck ecosystem, both of these beat us, as does Anki.

The narrow thing we do: you write an answer in Japanese and it gets marked, sentence by sentence, rather than you self-grading a flashcard. Recognition apps ask "did you know this?" and you are the judge. That is the gap most people notice at N3, when they can read a grammar point and still cannot produce it under time pressure. Our JLPT practice quizzes include written-answer questions for exactly that reason.

That is a supplement to one of the tools above, not a replacement for it. Anyone telling you a two-year-old app replaces a full course is selling something.

Related comparisons

If you are still shortlisting, the same treatment for the neighbouring pairs: WaniKani vs MaruMori, Renshuu vs Anki, and Bunpro vs MaruMori.

Next steps

Pick the one that matches the question above, use it for a month, and add written production only once recognition is boring. If you want to try the production half, the quizzes are open without a card.