I need to decide if I should buy lifetime now, or stick with the monthly. If I really lock in the monthly is worth it but I dunno if that’s really reasonable to expect. Then again the anvil hanging over my head of making my money’s worth is a great motivator.
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Max speed is just more than 11 months. I got it in 14 months, but didn’t start from zero knowledge. Yearly might be reasonable, considering if you are OK with stopping barely before the end, like 40s. If you buy lifetime before 1st year of yearly ends, you could still get proration.
Monthly is too easy to fall off and give up, imo. Yearly may be easy to burn out altogether.
I am uncertain about lifetime, having tried to get lifetime at some point (but stay yearly and then unsub), but it seems that lifetimers usually don’t regret it. (Not sure about learning outcomes though. I am generally pessimistic.)
Is it necessary to reach level 60? Where usually are people at 1-year mark, or 2-year?
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Took me about 1.5 years but it was intense.
Also keep in mind that the first half of the course is massively more important and useful than the rest. If money is tight I would advise to speedrun the first 30 levels or so and then move on. You should be able to learn kanji on your own by that point.
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I’m really glad I bought lifetime. I started WaniKani at the end of August last year and was probably at around level ten when the discount offer came up in December. I hadn’t been making any “fancy” rearrangements of what to learn when, just doing the standard 15 lessons a day. This summer things got a little out of hand - I was busy and just not retaining lessons well - and I had over 300 Apprentice items at one point. This was about a year in, I was at level 30 or so. So I changed my settings and have done only five lessons a day since. I enjoy WaniKani again and don’t feel it’s such a chore. Having lifetime means I’m relaxed about this slower pace; at this point I feel like I should spend more time on listening and grammar to balance my knowledge.
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I suppose it depends on how fast you are going through it, how useful you find it and whether you aim to finish all levels or not?
If you are taking a fixed number of lessons daily, it’s easy to figure it how long it would take based on how many levels you plan to complete.
I’m still at it and estimate I will complete all lesssons in 2.5 years total. I started with a yearly subscription then switched to lifetime (during the first winter sale) as it’d take me at least 3 full years to burn everything, although at the moment (L44) I am contemplating resurrecting some items.
polv is right in that going through it at full (or near-full) speed is likely the most effective in terms of learning, however as simias pointed out it can become very intense.
Some people abandon WK in the 40s levels and that’s fine too. In my case, it’s still the best learning tool and I plan to complete it, although I’ve reduced speed lately, like AnitaRoo.
I’ve been using BunPro and JPDB in parallel for vocab, but neither of those is nearly as effective as WK is - the review accuracy here is considerably higher than on those. YMMV 
Anyway, yeah… I think lifetime is worth it, especially when discounted 
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I’m looking at two years to get this done but I spent a lot of time doing textbooks so it makes sense to get the lifetime plan when its on sale like it is now. Its actually an insane deal because Kanji tend to be one of the biggest blockers in the language. If you could read kanji, then its just vocab and grammar that stand in your way. Which okay its still big but you can at least read them. When before it was next to impossible to even guess at the reading of the symbols.
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I ended up buying 2 yearly subs and did level 4 to 60 in 15 months with no Japanese learning background.
I don’t regret it, because I don’t think I would have been able to stay motivated long-term without that big, fast return on investment.
But the investment was utter savagery that put me off SRS for years. Which will have slowed down other, post-WK gains.
The pressure to perform on a limited time frame was certainly a factor, so I get that reasoning. Not wanting to waste money meant I took less that 3 weeks of review breaks in 2 years.
So while it was useful for me, it was not easy. And even while happy about making progress, it was aggressively unfun, 7 days a week, 3 times a day, for 2 years. Not counting the grammar, reading and listening needed to make sure you can use the knowledge and retain it.
So, I suppose, consider your available time, study wishes and overall routine. What is your current speed? Is it sustainable? If hypothetically,you do your current speed to 60, would you spend more, or less money? How likely will life get in the way, requiring more time to finish WK?
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Look over the average level 60 celebration post. I’d advocate for lifetime. Japanese learning does not cope well with time pressure. Unless you have unlimited time you will feel the need to branch out to put those skills to test (or you will probably forget a lot) and that means less time for WK which teaches in itself a very limited subset of the language.
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It is, but it works both ways… I mean, imagine the following situation:
You’ve studied for more than half a year. Then something happened and you fell off the streak. First, you skipped a day, then another, then another… Reviews have piled up too much. Already having enough on your plate with work and life, you just can’t bring yourself to do those reviews and keep postponing them for tomorrow…
But in the meantime you are still paying for subscription…
Doing a reset would mean paying again for all the months you’ve spent earlier…
And if you decide to cancel subscription for a while – then it would be hard to resume it, because if you are going to pay again, you need to be sure you’d be able to tackle the huge pile of reviews that have accumulated…
I really hope you’d never find yourself in such a situation, but anything can happen. It might be something completely outside of your control…
If you have a lifetime subscription – then if you need a reset – you can do it without feeling like you’ve wasted money.
If you have a lifetime subscription – then if you paused, you can resume studying without worrying about paying money again.
Also, if you have a lifetime subscription – then you wouldn’t have to worry about having to pause if you wouldn’t be able to continue paying for a while…
And also, investing into lifetime – can itself be a good motivator. It was for me. Before I bought WK lifetime subscription, I wasn’t sure if I really want to learn Japanese. By purchasing a lifetime subscription, I became committed to learning Japanese. And though I fell off many times, this feeling of commitment helped me to always restart again (sometimes with reset, sometimes without) – and thus I’ve managed first to get to level 60 and then to the point of being able to read my favorite manga in Japanese!
That being said, everyone is different, so, ultimately, only you can know for sure what would be the best for you.
In any case, best of luck with your studies! 
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I’m about 10 months in, bought a year subscription to start, and just bought the lifelong with the sale. I went pretty quickly through the first 20 levels, and got my kanji up to approximately where my grammer. vocab knowledge is. I kinda burned myself out (and I wasn’t even going top speed), so I decided to buy lifetime to allow myself the ability to slow down without feeling guilty (and I trust myself to continue to make progress on wanikani). And that way, I’m able to spend less time on wanikani and more time on other things like grammar and reading.
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I think setting a goal is 60 is worth it but you could set a goal of 40 and slow burn the rest. While doing a lot of reading. Trying to one shot wk by going fast mode is where a lot of users burn out, crash, and run away. Could just get lifetime and durtle the scenic route? Enjoying the views. Letting meanings fully absorb.
Or you could throw caution to the wind and let your heart lead your mind and try to reach the moon.
Which is it going to be?
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I started studying Japanese last December, heard of WaniKani for the first time, did the trial and bought it on sale, as a complete beginner.
Yes it’s not a small amount of money, but by buying the lifetime I kinda started with the attitude of getting my moneys worth, but I also saw it into an investment into myself.
Learning is good for you after all..
I’ve not skipped a single day of WaniKani since. I didn’t do lessons everyday, but I always did at least something.
I’m happy I bought the lifetime, there’s no time pressure, but there is pressure to not have wasted my money. 
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Took me 6 months and I’m on lvl 2
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I ended up buying the lifetime subscription because I’m going at a relatively slow pace and not worrying much about how long it takes me to get to level 60. However, since I had already done 11 months of WaniKani monthly before that (I bought my first monthly sub in January 2025), it won’t make much difference financially unless I spend another 2 years on WaniKani.
In my opinion, the Lifetime subscription is a little pricey given that I frequently see people saying they went through WaniKani in under 2 years, but I don’t know how many other people finish or move on to something else once they get to around level 40. There could be a lot of people finishing in 3 years or more, taking breaks, etc.
I can’t say how long it would take to get to level 60 since I haven’t done that, but if I do lessons until I have around 80 items in Apprentice, then do all my reviews every day, I think I can level up once every 3-ish weeks. At that rate, it would take me about 2.5 more years to get to level 60.
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I paid monthly, made it to 60 in about 16 months, then got a lifetime and reset back to 1. Getting to 60 again is much less stressful now, but has taken over 2 years since resetting.
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I agree with what everyone here has already said! I got lifetime and I’m on track to finishing in a month weeks when I started poking around with kanji last November. I’d say it’s worth it, not only because you get so much flexibility with your learning speed, but also because I’m not going to be done with WaniKani once I hit level 60 - as long as I’m learning Japanese (and learning is a lifetime process), I’m always going to want to come back, review, start over at level 1, check out burned items, use it like a dictionary, etc.
I think if you’re seeing your learning as being a lifelong process and not a sprint, then it really helps demonstrate some of the best parts of getting the lifetime sub. Not to say there aren’t pros to the monthly sub depending on your learning style, but for me personally lifetime was a great choice and I haven’t regretted it once.
Best of luck with your Japanese learning journey!
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I personally bought lifetime because I hate having active subscriptions. One payment, done. I knew I was going to stick with WK, so it was worth it for me. Even as a student and it was after the sale had ended. I even waited a month after reaching lvl 3 (end of free content) to get my student loan for the month so I could pay.
I effectively reached lvl 60 after a year. Burned all items after 2+ more. It’s okay to stop way earlier. You don’t need all 60 levels to get into native content. There was a time when WK only had 50 levels after all.
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I was in the same boat as you, I’m going at a speed that would technically get me to 60 in a year and a half.
However, I ended up buying the lifetime upgrade because I don’t think I’ll end up going at this speed the whole time. There’s a lot of reviews and, as other people have said, it’s a big daily commitment. I’ve read lots of people saying that the first 30-40 levels are more important than the last couple of levels, so I’ll probably go at this speed until level 20, and then little by little start swapping WK with more reading and listening. My goal is getting to 60 in 2027, so the lifetime upgrade makes sense.
This too, I like 1 time purchases way more than subscriptions. I’m sad that Satori doesn’t have lifetime. 
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