I bought lifetime about 3 years ago now after previously being on a yearly subscription and yes absolutely, and I didn’t even get it during the sale. For people that want to speed through and get everything done in around a year and move on, no lifetime isn’t worth it, but for everyone else I say absolutely if you can afford it. I’m coming up on 6 years on WK so that’s a lot I’d have been spending if I was sti on monthly or yearly. Plus it’s nice knowing taking my time isn’t costing me money.
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Worth it. I resisted for more than a year, but now I’m on my 3rd? year and still happy with it. Might even do it over again when I finish if I ever finish
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- It’s worth it depending on how long time you’re planning to take to complete WK. And by complete I merely mean reaching lv 60. But, there’s a different interpretation for that, which affects the follow-up question: if your goal is not to just reach lv 60 but also to burn all items you’ve unlocked or at least get all items to Enlightened, that adds months to the time after reaching lv 60.
After all, unlocking lessons is just the first step of learning and burning the items is how you complete the process - several months later.
So, a lot of people end up using WK after reaching lv 60 and there is defo a worth in keeping doing those reviews if you wanna learn these kanji and vocab.
But, it’s also not necessary to burn everything to have gotten plenty out of WK already.
In the end, you’ll have to make the decision on that.
Myself, I only had monthly + a yearly sub and then eventually the subscription ended and I started doing other stuff but WK. That’s one way of doing it, which is probably the cheapest option. But, with lifetime you don’t have the same need to complete WK in a set time span, it’s okay to reset levels etc etc. so it’s a less stressful path for sure.
- Yes, I do feel there’s a lot I still don’t know. After all, there are more than 50 000 kanji out there. I only know a drop in the sea of Japanese.
That being said, I think WK is a real game changer and that I’m having a lot more fun reading for sure. It’s more relaxed and that’s simply to do with knowing how to read more kanji! (so I don’t have to look stuff up at every sentence)
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Yes and yes. As you are at level 4 you should expect more than one year to complete all levels. There are some people doing it in about one year but they are few and I don’t know if their knowledge is really persistent. I reached level 60 in January this year and had a little less than 5000 “live items” (non-burned items) and about 280 daily reviews back then. Now I am down to 2300 “live items” and about 70 daily reviews.
As you see above I have still a lot to memorize, so I encounter still some unknown (or forgotten) kanji in my readings. But on the other hand the knowledge of kanji can make you guess the meaning (and often the pronunciation) of words that you have never seen before.
Of course kanji is not everything. You also have to learn some grammar and non-kanji vocab.
I’m slow af I started in 2017, am level 35ish, and would have paid a lot more than that yearly even with a 50% discount so yeah
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- Yes.
- Yes, but more crucially, I also feel like I know a lot of kanji.
It’s probably worth noting that by asking in this forum you are probably msinly going to get responses from people who use/would recommend wanikani given that it is the WK forums so at least the majority of people here are likely to be active users lol.
That said, I’m not sure whether or not I would recommend it. I do agree with others that getting lifetime lifts a huge mental burden in terms of not having to worry about pace. That is a massive plus. However, to give my own personal experience, I bought lifetime last Christmas after using WK for a couple of months thinking ‘yeah! I’ll definitely be using this for at least two years’ and then within about six months ended up finding other tools that work better for me/found that WK wasn’t that helpful to me anymore so I’ve been vacation moding since then.
Thought it doesnt seem likely now, maybe one day I’ll end up feeling the need to complete WK(in which case lifetime will really pay off), and I’ve got more than enough out of the levels I did + forums/bookclubs etc that I still feel like I’ve got plenty of value out of the lifetime fee. But I’m lucky enough that I could decently comfortably afford it - if I’d had to sacrifice other important things for the purchase I might not feel the same. So yeah, lifetime is certainly nice to have but depending on your learning priorities/style it isn’t guaranteed that you will end up using it all the way to the end so I guess depending on how long you have already been using it and what your priorities for the future are with learning Japanese it’s worth considering that when making a choice.
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I started using WK at the end of December last year, so I opted not to get lifetime since I was still working my way through the free levels, though I did consider it. I hadn’t yet truly committed to learning Japanese, though, and I wasn’t sure that I would manage to stick with it, so I decided to follow WK’s own advice and not pay for a subscription until I finished level 3.
Naturally, about when I reached level 4 at the beginning of this year and decided to take the plunge with an annual membership, I started to get really, really into language learning, and I learned how to properly use WK effectively and started studying grammar and using other resources, and I basically immediately regretted not buying lifetime while it was on sale. I should have trusted my own desire to learn the language and went for lifetime from the get-go, as soon as I realized that WK was working for me.
But, well, you never really know how things will turn out. Maybe WK will be the perfect resource for you. Or maybe it won’t be. Maybe you’ll reach level 60 over a period of 2+ years and get your full money’s worth. Or maybe you’ll burn out or give up within a couple months. It’s a gamble whether or not you decide to go for it.
I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned so far is that doing WK is a long-term commitment, and we rarely know exactly what our lives will look like six months from now, or a year from now, or two years from now. But I think if you have a good gut feeling about it and you’re able to afford it, it’s probably worth buying lifetime. That’s what I wish I’d done!
But I do have the benefit of hindsight now, and I know that WK’s method works very well for me, and that I have the willpower and the dedication to put in the work every single day. I’ve successfully managed to keep up my daily WK habit on holidays when I was very busy. I’ve kept it up when I had to adjust suddenly to a new work schedule. I’ve kept it up while attempting to write a 50k word manuscript in one month. I’ve kept it up when I felt incredibly depressed and struggled to motivate myself to do anything. All of those points were times where, if I was less dedicated, I might have burned out and walked away. In December 2020, I didn’t yet know that I had that dedication inside of myself.
I can’t fully answer your questions, because I’m not even halfway through WK, but I can say that WK is what made me feel like I could actually learn Japanese, and I’ve massively benefited from all of the levels I’ve done so far. I see WK kanji every single day in manga and on twitter and in wrestling shows, and I am in fact able to read them a majority of the time. WK taught me to love kanji, and to love language learning, and that in itself is something incredibly valuable to me.
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It quite depends on you. Do you want to learn as many Kanji as possible in a comfortable manner? Then definitely!
That being said, the general consensus is that WK has diminishing returns after level 40 or something along that frame. So if you want to save as much money as possible, taking a year subscription and then the monthly one if needed until around level 40 might be the best bang for your buck. Then you can add the other Kanji as you go to an Anki deck or the like.
I personally love Kanji as a part of Japanese, so it was a good decision for me. I have been level 60 for around 3 months now and I still get around 600 reviews a week and have reviews scheduled until the 09th April of 2022 for now which will still go up. So plenty of stuff to do even after level 60! Not to mention that there are constantly new updates (for the time being at least).
Another bonus is that I can always resurrect items if I find a reading I forgot while immersing. I maybe even consider resurrecting all Kanji at some point to practice them writing by hand.
So whatever floats your boat man. There is no definitive answer to that question.
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Yes
It’s a worthy investment and you don’t have to worry about recurring costs. That said not everyone can afford it.
Everyone has pretty much already said this, but if it is financially feasible for you: yes. If you can’t eat or buy gas for your car to get to work for a month: no, no leisure is at that point.
By the time I finished the free levels it happened to be right near the holiday sale so I got lifetime. Life happened (of course) and 2 years later I’m still not very far (but I’m still plugging away!) so lifetime was a good idea for me for sure. At the rate I’m going I would have spent so much more on an annual fee and I do think it is useful and worth continuing to use for it’s own merits not just a thing I use because I already paid.
Someone said, don’t listen to the speed runners. Well, I’m one of them and I’m definitely getting the lifetime subscription when it becomes available on the 20th.
As has been said, even if you reach level 60 at the fastest speed (which takes around a year), you’ll still need another 6 months to burn every single item. More importantly, you never know when life gets in the way and need more time to finish Wanikani, so I agree that having that pressure off your back is a perk of the lifetime subscription.
Lastly, something I don’t think has been mentioned, there’s always the possibility of extra levels being added in the future. With a lifetime subscription, you can get back on Wanikani to learn the new levels.
Of course, you can learn Kanji in other ways, but I personally prefer the way I’m learning them through Wanikani. I feel like they stick better. For example, I’ve noticed that almost immediately after learning a Kanji with Wanikani, I will encounter it in my reading and it feels great when that happens. If I simply look up the word/kanji, I don’t really learn it. It’s more like, “oh that’s what that means”, and then “poof” gone!! With the SRS, because you’ll encounter that word/kanji several times throughout the process, it sticks better. At least that’s the case for me. YMMV.
Good luck!
I wish there was a discount for yearly subscription, late january my account expires.
I cant buy lifetime because currency from us dollar to my country money is freaking expensive right now 
A lot of people mentioned how long it takes to go to lv 60, but it also depends if you feel like you’ll be using WK to the end.
Some people drop off once WK provided enough kanji knowledge for them to just do their own thing, or as they got accostumed to language, they found better resources. There’s diminishing returns on the upper levels, as kanji become more and more obscure. Nothing useless, of course, but certainly not as a relevant. Something to keep in mind.
I don’t see myself using WK to level 60, but I bought lifetime anyways. I have a passionate hatred of subscription services, you see. I hate not feeling like I truly own a product I’m paying for. I’d rather plunge the lifetime and know I can always use WK.
Not only that, but I’m not interested in rushing. Life can get in the way, and WK isn’t my only studying tool. It’s been a year, and I’m still level 13, so you can see why lifetime was worth it to me.
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you could maybe reach out to the team since you already invested in WK?
I’m lucky i live in a country with similar buying power but i always think about all the people from places where the typical budget for a similar lifestyle is much lower, making the cost of an app like this incredibly expensive compared to how other things work out like foods or houses.
Our currency is going down too, especially these last few weeks. 1 dollar was equal to 8,5 turkish liras before and it became 15 last month. They say it’s gonna hit 20 on new year.
But I had bought some dollars beforehand to be able to pay on christmas sale and even if I could use that much money for something else, I thought to myself I planned and wanted this all year. I’m not gonna deprive myself of this. And bought lifetime.
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Waiting for this year’s sale.
Hi there, I’ve seen all the comments about the sales being worth it, but I was wondering if the same would apply to me.
I’m pretty much lvl 37 (1 kanji left to go) and I got there in 1 year and half a month. That would mean about 1 year and a half left to get to lvl 60 and burning everything. I’m currently using the monthly subscription, which would then be more economical (with a bit less than €160 needed).
That being said, I don’t know if I would stop wanikani at this point or if I’d get more benefits for going at it for a while longer (like say a reset). I don’t know either how far actual practice will have gotten me by then.
Could a few people give me their inputs regarding that? Thanks anyway and merry christmas.
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Probably still worth it. What if you later on slack on the studies and need to go back and go over kanji in the later levels that doesnt occur that often and are therefore not too familiar to you? But you’ve already learned them and it will be quicker the second time around I guess.
If you still are going to sink $160 anyway, might aswell go the whole way. Not even a guarantee that you continue with the same pace, especially when you get to the 45+ and notice how there are plenty of kanji that are hard to come by with your current level through immersion.
Idk. Just my 160 cents.
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