WaniKani used to offer a lifetime subscription at discounted cost ($60) once you reached level 60, but I don’t know if that’s still available. It made sense in my case because I reached level 60 in about a year, and that was so fast that I still had thousands of items to review and ultimately burn. For most people who are going at a more sane speed, they’re probably better off going with the lifetime subscription before then. You’ll have to do the math to see if this option is more cost-effective (if still available).
I’m still here burning items (more like eternally banging my head against leeches), and a lifetime subscription means I should have access to any future content they release that falls under the WaniKani subscription. I’m a pretty frugal/cheap person, but I was happy to pay that amount for lifetime and to support them for creating the best tool I’ve used in my Japanese studies.
It’s 1927 days since I signed up, so lifetime has saved me A LOT of money: here’s my level-up chart. I’m not even done burning every item. To answer your second question, I still encounter unfamiliar kanji now and then, but thanks to WK it doesn’t happen often enough to be a hindrance when reading. I’m currently reading 海辺のカフカ (Kafka on the Shore) by Murakami and it’s a breeze.
Honestly, I am not still sure; but I have already invested $359.37.
For 1 more year, probably I would still be here, but I might stop if UserScripts stop working. As far as licensed contents are concerned, I might really consider RTK or the like (and choose vocabularies myself, or perhaps web-scrape Goo if necessary).
Anki might handle backlogs better, with adaptive intervals, and limits on number of review items per day.
Also, it’s not only about the number of Kanji, but sometimes about vocabularies with extra distinct qualified Kanji readings; and sometimes extra Kanji meanings.
I’m in a similar situation to you in that I started eleven months ago and I’m 36 levels in. I have decided not to purchase a lifetime subscription… My plan is to renew the subscription for another year and finish Wanikani off as best I can in that time. Then I’ll move onto other methods of studying Japanese.
Worth it in my opinion. I’ve been using it since 2019, and for two of those years I put it on vacation mode because I went to Japan to study at a language school (I was ironically too busy studying Japanese to study wanikani).
Even after the school there was still a good chunk of kanji that I didn’t know and I still felt like I was drowing while reading N2 material and up. So here I am, continuing on. Once I get up to 60 I expect Wanikani will continue to be useful for me, as I’ll probably reset to the 20’s again to reinforce those more common characters.
I’ve yet to come across a more efficient way of learning kanji, even physically being in Japan and learning from Japanese Language teachers still was not as efficient as Wanikani. It’s nice knowing that I can continue using this method for as long as I need to, because to me learning Japanese is definitely a lifelong commitment.