I’ve been learning Japanese for a while now (Good 3 years) and I’d say I’m pretty good (able to read a few manga quite well). Over this time I have used a large variety of language learning apps and methods. However, I found the 2 that worked best for me is Wanikani (I got to level 22 before burning out and restarting, I wish I didn’t do that now but oh well) and MaruMori.io .
I’ve decided to properly decide to go for one of them but idk which one to choose so can someone give me their thoughts to help me decide.
Thanks!
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Well, as this is WaniKani forum, I expect most people here would recommend WaniKani…
Likewise, if you post this question on MaruMori forum, most people there would probably recommend MaruMori 
All I can say is that WaniKani does work. It has worked greatly for me and for a lot of other people here. I would go so far as to say that buying WK subscription was one of the best investments I’ve ever made.
However, I know some people who do prefer MaruMori, for example, @JasnahCaesar さん always recommends it. I personally didn’t have much experience with MaruMori, becasue by the time I found about it I had already invested too much effort into WK to switch to another resource, but I did like it.
I got the impression that WK is more specialized while MaruMori is more universal – it also teaches grammar. Both approaches have their pros and cons. I found WK simpler to use, but MaruMori had a more game-like feeling. This is just my subjective impression though – and, as I’ve said, I’m much more familiar with WK than with MaruMori.
I think that overall only you can decide which resource works better for you.
One advice though: even if you choose MaruMori, I still recommend using this forum. This is a great community and one of the best places on the Internet. Whether you have some Japanese related questions or participate in a book club or just want to click some POLLs in the POLLthread, this is a great place! 
Anyway, best of luck with your choice and your studies! 
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I haven’t used MaruMori myself, but it looks like it’s an “all-in-one” platform that could potentially teach grammar, kanji, vocab, etc.
WaniKani is purely for learning kanji (and quite a lot of vocabulary, but mostly those that involve kanji).
If you had no Japanese knowledge, and you were only going to use one language-learning tool ever, I’d say go for the one that gives you the all-rounder knowledge, i.e. MaruMori.
But you say you can read manga, so you must have some amount of grammar knowledge. So I think what I’d ask myself in your position is, “What am I having the most trouble with when trying to understand Japanese? Do I not understand the kanji I’m running into? Do I not know what all the verb conjugations mean?”
Basically, if your priority is studying kanji, WaniKani is very effective for that and I’d recommend it. But if you feel you’re lacking in your grammar study, you will need some way of studying grammar. In that case, if you decide to stick with WaniKani, you have to be okay with finding some alternative method of studying grammar, even if it’s just googling whatever you don’t understand.
So I’d decide based on whether you want an all-in-one platform or a specialized tool for studying kanji.
Also, I agree that the WaniKani community is a good resource whether or not you use WaniKani itself.
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Hey thanks for your response!
Just wondering what are your thoughts on NativShark as well?
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I haven’t tried NativeShark, so I don’t know, sorry 
MaruMori has a better overall approach, and they also update frequently and you can see their roadmap on their website. Plus, they’re also working with kitsun, which is similar to WK. Maybe they’ll have a holiday sale and you can compare the prices there and see.
Mostly, it’s about what works for you and what kind of goals you have when it comes to your Japanese.
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marumori!!! 1000000000%%%%%
nec is regularly maintaining and improving and still adding features
vs removing them
no need to wait 19days for new stuff
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I use NativShark.
Phase 1 is a little rough. The pacing is a lot of things to be introduced for later, so a person can be aware, but not to make the student master it. This can make some people uneasy as most other courses that teach grammar try to use some kind of drilling to really get things down. This is done on purpose though as a lot of the concepts are meant to be repeated, but it’s definitely an adjustment during phase 1.
The course really comes together in phase 2, as those topics are repeated more in depth. It covers a lot of grammar, collocations, colloquialisms, and cultural aspects. It doesn’t follow a JLPT order so it can be a little hard to figure out how far to go along if someone wants to also do the JLPT It also has a decently active discord community (though I believe MaruMori does as well, but I could be wrong).
It’s flashcard driven for the reviews (so no exercises like bunpro, and no minigames like MaruMori) and all of the flashcards have native speakers and not TTS. They use different VAs to get some different styles. Some of them speak very fast, others less so. It’s done on purpose to built up an ear for speaking and listening to actual conversations (because real people don’t always speak as clearly as people from learning podcasts or even anime), but that also be a little rough for beginners at first because of how fast it is.
Price wise, the monthly is definitely quite expensive. Annual is the best value.
Kanji wise, it does have integration to auto-archive cards you already have in WK, or you can just manually archive whatever Kanji cards you want, so you don’t have to worry about different meanings and mnemonics across the sites.
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Keep your money and keep on reading. For me the only point of all these language-learning platforms is to bootstrap your knowledge to the point where you can start engaging with the language and learn organically, if you can already do that then don’t bother IMO.
If you want SRS then mine your own kanji/vocab from the stuff you’re reading.
I used WaniKani from basically the very start of my Japanese language learning journey and found it really valuable, but I would never recommend it to somebody who’s at a level where they can read manga. Why get weird artificial practice instead of real-world practice?
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