People often line up Bunpro and Cotobara as alternatives, but they mostly cover different halves of the language. Bunpro is a spaced-repetition system for grammar; Cotobara is a spaced-repetition system for vocabulary. Understanding that split makes the choice easy.
What Bunpro is for
Bunpro takes the JLPT grammar points — every particle, conjugation, and set pattern — and drills them with fill-in-the-blank SRS, cross-referencing popular textbooks and resources. If your weak spot is grammar (は vs が, てある vs ている, keigo), Bunpro is purpose-built for it.
It does include vocabulary decks, but grammar is unmistakably its center of gravity.
What Cotobara is for
Cotobara is built around vocabulary as the main event, not a side deck:
- A curated, JLPT-aligned corpus ordered by level and frequency.
- Real example sentences with native audio and hover-to-translate glossing on every word.
- A recall-focused review engine — lessons, reviews, and mistake review tuned so words stick.
- Mastery and exam-readiness views by level.
- WaniKani import, so kanji you've already burned never clog your queue.
Grammar and vocabulary are not substitutes
You cannot grammar your way out of not knowing words, and you cannot vocabulary your way out of not knowing grammar. A JLPT reading passage needs both at once:
- Grammar is the skeleton — how words connect.
- Vocabulary is the flesh — what the sentence is actually about.
Most serious learners run a grammar SRS and a vocabulary SRS side by side for exactly this reason.
How to combine them
A clean daily routine looks like:
- Bunpro (or your textbook) for the grammar point you're on.
- Cotobara for the vocabulary of your JLPT level — with sentences that let you see new grammar in the wild.
- A kanji tool like WaniKani if you still need reading practice — Cotobara imports it so nothing overlaps. See How to use Cotobara with WaniKani.
The bottom line
If you can only add one tool and grammar is your gap, get Bunpro. If words are what fail you when you read or speak, get Cotobara. Most people eventually want both — they're two halves of the same goal. For why recall matters so much on the vocabulary side, see Why you can recognize kanji but can't recall words.
Start Cotobara for free — curated JLPT vocabulary with native audio and spaced repetition.