Cotobara is a Japanese vocabulary app built around one idea: you should spend your study time studying, not configuring a study tool. Sign up, answer three questions, and you are learning real JLPT vocabulary within a minute.
This post is the map. Each section is a short summary with a link to a deeper guide if you want the detail.
The vocabulary itself
Cotobara ships with 8,000+ curated Japanese words spanning JLPT N5 to N1. Every entry carries its reading, kanji, romaji, meaning, part of speech, pitch accent, and a frequency band that tells you how common the word actually is in real Japanese.
You are never picking a deck or importing a spreadsheet. The corpus is organized by level and frequency, so the words you see next are the ones that pay off soonest for your level.
→ Browse the full vocabulary catalog
Lessons: learn five words at a time
New words arrive in batches of five. You reveal each word's meaning, hear it pronounced, read its example sentence, and then take a short quiz — and the quiz doesn't end until you have all five right.
Your daily new-word limit is yours to set: 3 per day on the free plan, up to 100 on Premium. More is not automatically better, and the app will tell you when your pace is out of step with your accuracy.
→ How lessons work, and how to pick your daily pace
Reviews: recognition and recall
Every word you learn comes back as two cards, not one:
- Recognition — you see the Japanese, you type the English meaning.
- Production — you see the English, you type the Japanese reading in kana.
A word only counts as correct when you get both sides right without a slip. That is the difference between "I've seen this before" and "I can use this."
→ Recognition vs. recall in Japanese
A spaced-repetition schedule that gets out of your way
Cotobara's SRS moves each word up a ladder of nine stages, from a first review four hours after your lesson to a final 120-day gap before the word is Mastered and retires from your queue for good. Miss a word and it drops back down — further the higher it had climbed, because forgetting an advanced word means something different than fumbling a brand-new one.
→ Every stage, interval, and rule in Cotobara's SRS
Word breakdowns: why it means that
Most vocabulary apps give you a word and a gloss. Cotobara's entries also explain the word: the kanji breakdown, how the parts combine, a mental model for remembering it, real usage notes, etymology, and related words.
Learners who understand why 勉強 means "study" forget it far less often than learners who just memorized the pairing.
→ Why does this word mean that? Cotobara's word breakdowns
Reading support built into every screen
- Furigana rendered natively over kanji — toggle it off the moment you don't need it.
- Native-quality audio on every word, every example sentence, and every kana character.
- Hover-to-translate example sentences — point at any word in a sentence and get its reading and meaning, so a sample sentence is never a wall you can't get through.
- Type romaji, get kana — no Japanese IME required, on any device.
→ Furigana, native audio, and hover-to-translate sentences
A dashboard that answers "am I ready for the exam?"
The dashboard is built around JLPT readiness, not vanity metrics: per-level progress bars, a weekly accuracy ring with a nudge when your pace needs adjusting, your review schedule hour by hour, your streak, the words that keep tripping you up, and everything you unlocked recently.
→ Track your JLPT progress: the dashboard explained
Settings that skip what you already know
Set your starting level — including half-levels like N3.5 — and Cotobara stops offering you easier words. Set a rare-word filter and it skips vocabulary too obscure to be worth your reps yet. Turn furigana and autoplay audio on or off. That is most of the configuration there is.
→ Set up Cotobara for your level
WaniKani import — free for everyone
Already burning kanji on WaniKani? Connect your account and Cotobara imports your progress. Words you have already mastered there never come back as new lessons here, and words you have started keep the SRS stage they earned. Four filters let you decide exactly how much the two apps overlap.
→ How to use Cotobara with WaniKani · Why the pairing works
Still learning to read? Start with kana
Cotobara includes a full hiragana and katakana course — 16 lessons per script, each with audio, a walkthrough, and a quiz you must pass at 80% to advance. It's free, and if you already read both scripts you can skip it entirely at signup.
Your own layer on top of the corpus
- Personal notes on any word.
- Bookmarks with your own tags, so you can build your own lists.
- Alternative meanings — if the grader rejects an answer you know is right, add it, and it counts from then on.
- Mistake practice — a quick untimed flip-card loop over your recent misses that never touches your SRS schedule.
→ The vocabulary browser, bookmarks, and notes
What it costs
Free forever: 3 new words a day, unlimited reviews, the full SRS, JLPT progress tracking, the kana course, and WaniKani integration. Premium raises the daily limit to 100 and unlocks word breakdowns, personal notes, bookmarks, and custom answers. Every new account starts with a 30-day Premium trial, no card required.
Start for free — you'll be doing your first real review within a minute.