Free Japanese Learning Resources That Are Actually Worth It

Free Japanese learning resources: what to use, and what is really free

The best free Japanese learning resources are a free kana guide, Jisho, a free grammar guide such as Tae Kim's, a Japan Foundation course, NHK's easy news and lessons, and Anki. Together they cover most of a beginner's path, and the part of each described below is free.

This guide covers free resources of every kind, including downloads, podcasts and official courses. Each was checked on 2 October 2026, and each entry says what is free and where the catch is. For websites only, free and paid, see The Best Websites to Learn Japanese in 2026.

Here is the whole list by job. The sections after it give the detail.

What 'free' means for Japanese learning resources

Not every free resource is free in the same way. Four kinds turn up:

• Free for good. The whole thing is open: Jisho, Tae Kim's guide, Tadoku's books.
• Free with an account. You sign up without paying: Minato, JapanesePod101's free level.
• Free sample. The start is free and the rest is paid: a free first lesson, a free first chapter.
• Free trial. Everything is open for a few days, then it stops.

This guide leans on the first two. Samples and trials are fine for testing a resource, but they are not a plan.

Free resources are generous but narrow: each does one job well. Pick one resource per job and stick with it. Hopping between ten tools feels like progress and isn't.

Free resources for hiragana and katakana

Start here, because almost every other resource assumes you can read kana. There are two sets: ひらがな (hiragana, “hiragana”) and カタカナ (katakana, “katakana”). If the difference is new to you, see What is Hiragana? and What is Katakana?.

Tofugu's Learn Hiragana is a free guide that teaches the signs with picture mnemonics, then gives you exercises and a quiz tool. It also offers downloadable charts and printable worksheets. A paid PDF book with handwriting practice is sold separately, and you don't need it. Tofugu says you should be able to learn everything "in a couple days. A week, tops.", and that some people read all the hiragana after a few hours. That is the fast end: How Long Does It Take to Learn Hiragana and Katakana? gives the realistic range.

Tofugu's Learn Katakana works the same way, with mnemonics, printable charts, worksheets and a quiz tool, all free, and an optional paid PDF book.

Whatever you use, the method matters more than the site. How to Memorize Hiragana and Katakana goes through it.

Kanji can wait a little. Learn kana and a first set of words, then look up any 漢字 (かんじ, kanji, “kanji”) you meet in Jisho, below. What is Kanji? explains what to expect.

Free Japanese dictionaries and example sentences: Jisho and Tatoeba

Jisho

Jisho is a free, widely used Japanese-English 辞書 (じしょ, jisho, “dictionary”). Its About page says the goal is a dictionary that helps you understand any Japanese text, not only look up one word.

It draws on open data. The main word list is JMdict, which Jisho describes as having roughly 170,000 entries. It adds JMnedict for names of people, companies and places, KANJIDIC2 for kanji readings and meanings, KanjiVG for stroke order, and example sentences from Tatoeba and the Jreibun project. Audio clips come from WaniKani.

In practice, you can search by kanji, by radicals, by handwriting or by voice, so you can find a kanji you can't read. It shows JLPT level information, stroke order diagrams and example sentences.

The catch: an entry lists every sense of a word, and a beginner can't always tell which one fits. Read the example sentences before you decide.

Tatoeba

Tatoeba is a free database of sentences and translations. It is named after the Japanese word 例えば (たとえば, tatoeba, “for example”), and it was started by Trang Ho in 2006. Volunteers add the sentences, and the data is released under Creative Commons licences.

For a learner, the use is simple: search a word, and read the 例文 (れいぶん, reibun, “example sentence”) that contain it, with translations. You can browse audio too. Because volunteers write the sentences, treat an odd-looking one with care and check it against a second source.

Free Japanese grammar guides: Tae Kim and IMABI

Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar

Tae Kim's site offers two free guides on 文法 (ぶんぽう, bunpō, “grammar”) and Japanese. The Guide to Japanese Grammar starts from the most basic ideas and builds up layer by layer. The Complete Guide to Japanese teaches grammar and vocabulary through examples and dialogues, but only its first five chapters are substantially complete. A book version of the grammar guide is sold on Amazon, and the website is free. Many learners use it as a first grammar book.

Tofugu's review adds a caveat: the explanations are simple and lean on direct translation, so they can lack depth on some points. When a point confuses you, read the same topic in a second source.

IMABI

IMABI is a free grammar site with about 450 lessons, from beginner to advanced, plus classical Japanese and Okinawan. It is run by Seth Coonrod, who says on the homepage that he is not a native speaker, and that native speakers give feedback for accuracy. The site takes donations.

It is more detailed than Tae Kim's guide, which makes it a better second source. The site is being rebuilt: as of 2 October 2026, 261 of 453 lessons had been redone, so expect some lessons in the old layout.

Which one first? Start with Tae Kim's grammar guide and keep IMABI for the "why does it work like that?" questions. Pair either with a listening resource (below).

Free Japanese courses: Japan Foundation, Marugoto and NHK WORLD-JAPAN

If you want someone else to decide the order of lessons, the best free courses come from public bodies.

Marugoto Japanese Online Course on Minato

Minato is the Japan Foundation's e-learning platform. Its Marugoto Japanese Online Course is a course for learning Japanese comprehensively, and the course site says registration to Minato is free and required. Minato uses the JF Standard, with six levels from A1 to C2. The Marugoto course offers A1 and A2, and a pre-intermediate A2/B1 level in English only, as self-study or tutor-supported.

On Minato overall, most self-study courses are marked free, and some tutor-support courses are marked as charged. You need an account for either. The interface comes in several languages, and the site lists community features for meeting other learners.

The Marugoto textbook site lists materials to download from Starter (A1) up to Intermediate (B1), and links to where the books are sold. It says audio files will need no login after a system migration on 19 October 2026 (the site is offline that day), only agreement to the Terms of Use.

Erin's Challenge! I Can Speak Japanese

This is the Japan Foundation's video-based resource. Its site holds lots of videos, with downloadable learning materials: basic and advanced skits, key phrases, vocabulary, culture quizzes, onomatopoeia lessons and bonus material such as syllabary charts. The site comes in Japanese and English, with no price or sign-up shown for the videos and downloads.

It teaches by situation more than by grammar rule, which makes it a good partner for Tae Kim's guide.

Easy Japanese from NHK WORLD-JAPAN

Easy Japanese is a 48-part series from Japan's public broadcaster, offered in 18 languages and aimed at A1 and A2 learners, as a February 2025 article describes it. The lessons follow an extended story, with skits and easy phrases for introductions, shopping and other daily situations, plus travel and culture notes. All the lessons are free, and the whole textbook or single lessons can be downloaded as PDF, with audio as MP3.

How these three fit. Minato gives you the most course-like path, Easy Japanese is the lightest, and Erin's Challenge adds video. You do not need all three: choose the one whose format you will actually open.

Free resources for reading Japanese: NEWS WEB EASY and Tadoku

You can read real Japanese much earlier than most people think, if the text is written for learners.

NHK NEWS WEB EASY

NEWS WEB EASY (NHKやさしいことばニュース in Japanese) is NHK's news in simple Japanese, at news.web.nhk/news/easy. NHK says it is for foreign residents of Japan and for children. Japanese language teachers and NHK journalists work together to decide what counts as understandable Japanese.

The catch is a few steps before you read. The page asks you to confirm NHK's terms, then to choose a usage type and your region. The terms say NHK ONE can be used by anyone, that households with a reception contract pay nothing extra, and that households without one must take a contract under the Broadcast Law if they use it. That is written for people in Japan, so read the terms yourself, especially if you live elsewhere.

A 2020 study guide and an undated Tofugu review describe these features, which may have changed:

• Every kanji has ふりがな (furigana, “furigana”) above it, and a button turns them off.
• Underlined words open a pop-up definition, in Japanese.
• Audio is available, slow and with a pause option, though Tofugu says it is machine-generated.
• The guide advises reading one article a day, starting with the newest.

It is news, so the topics are not for everyone, and you need to know kana first.

Tadoku's free books

Tadoku publishes free graded readers. The books run from Level Start and Level 0 to Level 5, in picture books, folk tales and other kinds. You can read them online or download them as PDF, and many have furigana and audio. You can filter by genre, such as animals, food, history or romance, and rating. The page also invites you to join the Tadoku Club or support the project, but reading the books doesn't require either.

The idea behind graded readers is to read a lot of text you mostly understand, instead of struggling through text that is too hard.

Free resources for listening: podcasts, NHK and JapanesePod101

Listening is the skill free resources cover least well. These are worth your time.

Nihongo con Teppei

Nihongo con Teppei is a podcast for beginners, made by a host called Teppei. It describes itself as a way to learn to speak Japanese naturally. Episodes are free to play online or download, and are also available through podcast feeds. Topics include pronunciation, kanji, travel Japanese, restaurant phrases and supermarket vocabulary. Check each episode for a transcript.

NHK WORLD-JAPAN Easy Japanese

Its 48 lessons also work as a listening course: the audio comes as MP3, and the PDF textbook lets you read along.

JapanesePod101's free account

JapanesePod101 is an audio and video course site. Its front page invites you to join for free, with thousands of lessons and no credit card needed. A review on Team Japanese (April 2026) says the free plan includes the first three lessons in each pathway, daily word lessons, downloadable workbooks, flashcards and PDFs, and a free Absolute Beginners course as a limited promotion.

Paid plans add more. The same review lists Basic, Premium and Premium Plus tiers, with Premium Plus adding one-to-one teacher feedback. It puts monthly prices at about 8 US dollars for Basic and 25 for Premium, falling to between 4 and 10 dollars on long plans and discounts. What is free there changes, so check the site before you decide. The Best Websites to Learn Japanese in 2026 covers the paid side in more detail.

Anki: the free flashcard program for Japanese vocabulary

Anki is a flashcard program that shows you a card again when you are most likely to forget it. You rate how well you remembered, and Anki schedules the next review. The desktop version is free on Windows, Mac and Linux, and AnkiDroid is free on Android. AnkiMobile for the iPhone is paid.

Anki also has shared decks: people publish them on AnkiWeb, so you can start from someone else's. Because anyone can share, quality varies.

What Anki does not do is teach. It trains memory for what you give it. It works best for words and kanji you have already met, from a course or a graded reader. For how many new cards a day is sensible, see How Many New Japanese Words Should You Learn a Day?

Free JLPT practice: official sample questions and workbooks

If you are heading for the 日本語能力試験 (にほんごのうりょくしけん, nihongonōryokushiken, “Japanese Language Proficiency Test”), start on the official JLPT site, run by the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services. It has two kinds of practice.

The sample questions for learners show one question for each type of test item, so they are a preview of the format.

The official practice workbooks (2012 and 2018, Vol. 2) are much bigger. For N1 to N5 the site offers direct downloads of the test items as PDFs (vocabulary, grammar, reading) and MP3 (listening), with answer sheets, answer keys and listening scripts. Each, the site says, has "almost the same number of questions as an actual test", chosen from tests since the 2010 revision. The printed books are sold by Bonjinsha. The listening audio includes works by third parties, so use it for study and don't repost it. The papers are not timed or marked for you, so set your own timer.

The site also lists the 2026 test dates: Sunday 5 July for the first test and Sunday 6 December for the second, with overseas testing possibly limited to one date depending on location. Check the official page for your city. Our own level pages, JLPT N5 and the others, list the words and kanji by level, and JLPT N5 Passing Score explains how the test is marked.

Where this site fits: free kana and quizzes

KanaMastery is a website for practising Japanese, not a textbook, and it is a website only. Its free plan has no end date. It includes every kana, the kana words and loanwords, every Japan quiz and community quiz, the first chapter and placement test of every program, the first seven chapters of JLPT N5 (100 words and 20 kanji), 20 reviews a day, the kana and N5 daily challenge, weekly leagues, and public kana, kanji and JLPT reference pages.

What is paid is KanaMember, which adds every chapter of all the programs from N5 to N1, every drill (verb forms, particles, keigo, listening, dictation, minimal pairs; the free content has drills too), the daily challenge up to N1 and up to 100 reviews a day. Every new account gets 14 days of everything with no card. After that, KanaMember is 5.99 euros a month, 44.99 euros a year or 149 euros once. The pricing page has the full table.

It is not a grammar course, so it works next to a grammar guide from the list above, not instead of one. It is not a place to read stories or talk to people either.

How to learn Japanese for free: a plan using these resources

You can build a complete free path from the list above. This is one order that works:

1. Weeks 1 to 4: kana. Tofugu's hiragana guide, then its katakana guide. Keep Jisho open for words.
2. Months 1 to 3: a first course and grammar. Choose one course (Marugoto on Minato, or NHK's Easy Japanese) and read Tae Kim's guide alongside it. Look up every new word in Jisho, and read its example sentences.
3. From about month 2: review. Put the words you have met into Anki, or use the free review of a practice site. Keep the daily number small.
4. From the first months: read and listen. Start with Tadoku's lowest levels and one NEWS WEB EASY article a day. Add Nihongo con Teppei on the way to work.
5. When an exam matters: practice papers. Download an official practice workbook for your level, work through it under a timer, and see what is missing.

None of this needs a card. The steps are in the same order as How to Learn Japanese: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners, which adds the why behind each stage. For paid options too, see The Best Websites to Learn Japanese in 2026.

Questions about free Japanese learning resources

What is the best resource to learn Japanese?

No single resource is the best, because Japanese needs several jobs done: reading kana, grammar, vocabulary, listening and review. If you want one place to start, a structured course such as Marugoto on Minato or NHK WORLD-JAPAN's Easy Japanese gives you an order to follow for free. Add Jisho and one grammar guide, and you have a full beginner setup.

What is the best free resource for learning Japanese?

For most beginners, the best free resource is a free structured course, with Jisho beside it. The Japan Foundation's Marugoto Japanese Online Course on Minato is free with a free sign-up, and covers A1 and A2. If you prefer to learn from a grammar book, Tae Kim's guide is free for good. For looking things up, Jisho is one of the best-known free dictionaries.

How can I learn Japanese for free?

You can learn Japanese for free by combining a few free resources, one for each job. Learn kana from a free guide, follow a free course or grammar guide, look words up in Jisho, review them with Anki, and read and listen with NHK and Tadoku. The plan above gives the order. The one thing free resources rarely give you is a person to speak with.

Is JapanesePod101 really free?

JapanesePod101 is only partly free: the free account needs no credit card, but it is a sample of the paid course. A 2026 third-party review, not JapanesePod101's own page, says the free plan has the first three lessons in each pathway, daily word lessons and some downloads.

Is JapanesePod101 worth the money?

JapanesePod101 can be worth the money if you like learning by listening and will use it most days. Try the free account for a few weeks first: if you open it daily, a paid plan may be worth it, and if you don't, the free NHK lessons and podcasts do much of the same work. Prices are in the listening section above.

Which is the best free app to learn Japanese?

The best free app here is Anki, which is free on computers and, as AnkiDroid, on Android, while the iPhone version, AnkiMobile, is paid. Most of the other resources in this guide are websites that work in a browser. For what Duolingo covers and what it doesn't, see Is Duolingo Enough for JLPT N5?

What is the 80/20 rule in Japanese?

In Japanese learning, the 80/20 rule is a common way of saying that a small set of common words and patterns gives you most of what you read and hear. It borrows from the Pareto principle: the economist Vilfredo Pareto noticed around 1906 that about 80 per cent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 per cent of the people. The numbers are only a rule of thumb: a real split is sometimes closer to 90 and 10, or 70 and 30, and this guide relies on no measured figure for Japanese. Use it as a reason to learn the common things first.

What does "I suki you" mean?

"I suki you" is not listed as a phrase in the dictionary, and it appears to be a half-English way of saying "I like you". The Japanese part is probably 好き (すき, suki, “liking”), and how natural the mix sounds to Japanese speakers is unchecked, so don't rely on it. For the real phrases, see I Love You in Japanese.

How do you say what the heck in Japanese?

The mild way to say what the heck is 何これ (なにこれ, nanikore, “what the?”), which the dictionary marks as colloquial and which fits best when you are looking at something odd. For disbelief, まさか (masaka, “by no means”) is the word. Both are casual, so keep them for friends. The stronger versions of the question are strong swearing, which this guide does not teach.

Is gaijin a racist term?

Whether gaijin is racist is disputed: some people find it negative and others say it is neutral, so avoid it and use 外国人 (がいこくじん, gaikokujin, “foreigner”). The short form 外人 (がいじん, gaijin, “foreigner (esp. one of European ancestry)”) literally means "outside person", and the dictionary marks it as sensitive. Wikipedia notes that 外国人 is the more neutral and formal word, used by the government and the media. As a learner, don't use the short form to describe someone, since it can offend.

What is the Japanese word for penis?

The standard dictionary words are 陰茎 (いんけい, inkei, “penis”), a medical term, and the loanword ペニス (penisu, “penis”). They are what a dictionary such as Jisho will show you, and they are not words for polite conversation. Slang for the body is a topic for a native speaker, and this guide leaves it out.

Sources

• Readings and meanings: JMdict (EDRDG, CC BY-SA 4.0), including its note that 外人 is a sensitive term.
• Jisho: About Jisho (data sources, search features).
• Tatoeba: About Tatoeba.
• Tae Kim: Tae Kim's Japanese Learning Guides (the two guides, completion, book); Tofugu, A Guide to Japanese Grammar by Tae Kim (undated review: strengths and weaknesses).
• IMABI: IMABI homepage (free, about 450 lessons, rebuild status, author's note).
• Tofugu: Learn Hiragana and Learn Katakana.
• Japan Foundation: Marugoto Japanese Online Course, Minato, Marugoto textbook site and Erin's Challenge! I Can Speak Japanese.
• NHK WORLD-JAPAN Easy Japanese: ZOOM JAPAN, Easy Japanese from NHK WORLD-JAPAN (February 2025 article: 48 lessons, free, 18 languages, A1 to A2, PDF and MP3; confirm on NHK's own page).
• NEWS WEB EASY: NHK NEWS WEB EASY (terms, usage type and region); Japan Student Services Organization, NEWS WEB EASY (page dated 7 May 2020); Tofugu, NHK News Web Easy (undated review).
• Tadoku: Free Tadoku Books.
• Podcast: Nihongo con Teppei.
• JapanesePod101: JapanesePod101 (free account, no card); Team Japanese, JapanesePod101 price (article dated April 2026).
• Anki: Anki (desktop and AnkiDroid free, AnkiMobile paid).
• JLPT: Official JLPT site, practice workbook downloads, sample questions for learners and summary of linguistic competence.
• Gaijin: Wikipedia, Gaijin.
• The 80/20 rule: Wikipedia, Pareto principle.
• The free plan and prices: the site's own pricing page.
• Facts that change (what is free, prices, dates) were checked on Facts on this page last checked on 2026-10-02..
• Reviewed independently; the points about 何これ and まさか, 外人, 陰茎 and ペニス, "I suki you" and the NHK terms are waiting for a native speaker's check.