hey, so I’ve been almost 17 days on wanikani and i have just finished level 3, the last free level, that means i am level 4 now, not free anymore. I am considering upgrading, but not sure which plan to choose. Lifetime is definetely too expensive for me right now, so is the annual but annual is at least affordable, and it is cheaper than monthly in the long run. I considered using a few months of monthly until they do a sale, because i’ve heard they did christmas sale, but that’s kind of a gamble plan as they can just not do the sale, so i don’t really like it. If you have any tips for me i’d be glad to hear!
The Christmas sale is nearly 100% certain. It was done for the last 10+ years and I would be super surprised if the sale wouldn’t happen this year.
That being said I think the only constant in the sale is that lifetime is off by some amount (100$?). I don’t think the yearly plan is a target of the sale. I’m not 100% sure since it is so long ago that I had to purchase one of them ^^.
If you want to upgrade at the Christmas sale all “unused” months from a potential yearly subscription will be deducted from the lifetime price as well.
E.g if you start yearly now and use 6 months until December of the yearly plan, then decide to go with lifetime. In that case the lifetime price will be reduced by 50% of what you paid for the yearly plan (89$ yearly payment → ~44$ reduction on lifetime price if 6 months left on the plan)
It is also really valid to keep paying monthly until then. Makes your decisions more flexible, and you can really see if you will actually stick with WaniKani in the long run. Yes you’ll pay 10$ more in case you decide to go with the lifetime in December, but that might be worth the additional flexibility?
Some people also go the route of paying 2 times for the yearly plan and see how far they get. According to many WaniKani participants the biggest gains can be had until around level 35-48 and it should be possible to hit that range in 2 years if you stick to it. Even if you don’t go at 100% full speed.
thank you! i think i will pay monthly until the sale and then i will decide if i keep wanikani or not. also i could see how well will my progress go, maybe i won’t even need the lifetime plan if make pretty good progress in this period of time
I upgraded!!!
Hope to see you get all the benefit you can from this and in a couple of years (or sooner!) have to change your username to kanjiantimaster606060. 
Congrats on upgrading! Wanikani is a lot of fun. Great resource for learning kanji and vocab
I hate lifetime subs in general and will never get the Wanikani one. It’s just too tough to know what’s going to happen in the future. Maybe another site pops up in the future that’s better. Maybe I decide that the later levels aren’t as helpful or I don’t want to go in their order and just use anki instead. Maybe I get hit by a cybertruck tomorrow. Too many variables.
Even the yearly is like, tough to know if you’ll use it the whole year. Japanese is a very tough language and it can be very on and off sometimes. You save a little bit possibly but the risk is too high imo with such a tough language. Especially early on it’s tough to tell
yes! Wanikani is so worth it specially when you’re just beginning!