Shirabe vs jiten

jiten is the closest thing to Shirabe that exists, and pretending otherwise would insult your intelligence. Native vocabulary tracking, FSRS reviews, deck mining, a reader extension, media coverage, Yomitan dictionary support, Anki import: that’s our feature list too. It’s free and open-source on top of it.

So this page is a genuine “two reasonable answers to the same question” comparison, and the honest differences are narrower than on any other page here.

Spanish, as a first-class language

This is the clearest difference and the hardest one to close.

Shirabe is multilingual at the dictionary level. Spanish entries are real content: definitions, examples, the interface, the guides. Not an English dictionary with a translation layer bolted to the side.

If you learn Japanese through Spanish, that changes every lookup you’ll ever do. If you learn through English, this section is worth nothing to you, and you should weigh the rest of the page accordingly.

Hosted and finished versus free and self-directed

jiten is open-source. That means it’s free, you can read the code, you can run it yourself, and it can’t be taken away from you. Those are real, durable advantages and we won’t pretend they’re not.

The other side: somebody has to keep it running, keep the dictionaries current, keep the extension working after a browser update, and decide what gets built. In an open-source project that’s a maintainer’s spare time. In ours it’s the thing we’re paid to do.

That’s the trade. You’re choosing between something free that you have some responsibility for, and something paid that comes finished: with the audio corpus generated, the pitch data validated and licensed, the dictionary packs maintained, and the extension shipped to both stores.

Neither answer is obviously right. It depends on whether you’d rather spend money or attention.

Where the polish shows up

Concretely, the places we’ve spent effort that a comparison table flattens:

• Cards that arrive complete: reading, pitch accent, audio, example sentence, all from the dictionary, no assembly.
• Pitch accent scoped properly: word versus name entries are distinguished, so 橋 the bridge and Hashi the surname don’t share an accent pattern.
• Server-side personal dictionaries: upload a Yomitan dictionary once and it follows your account to every browser and device you sign in from. Nothing to re-install.
• A guidebook and a 30-day path for people who don’t yet know what to do with an SRS.

Where jiten wins

It’s free and open-source. That’s not a footnote. No subscription, no company that can pivot or shut down, and you can fork it if you disagree with a decision.

Media coverage. jiten’s per-title coverage is strong and, in places, ahead of ours.

Self-hosting. If you want your study data on your own machine, we don’t offer that and jiten does.

Yomitan dictionaries. We both support them; jiten got there first and its handling is mature.

Grammar: neither of us

Shirabe’s grammar layer is planned, not shipped. Pair with Bunpro, Renshuu or MaruMori if grammar is the gap you’re filling.

Who should stay on jiten

• Free matters more than finished.
• You want open-source software you can inspect, self-host, or fork.
• You read English comfortably and gain nothing from Spanish.
• You’re already set up and happy. Switching costs real time for a marginal gain.
• You want to contribute to something rather than subscribe to it.

Who Shirabe is for

• You learn Japanese through Spanish.
• You want the finished, hosted version and would rather pay than maintain.
• You want the dictionary to be the front door, free and public, with studying growing out of it.
• You want personal dictionaries that sync with your account rather than living in one browser.
• You want someone whose job it is to fix it when it breaks.

The honest summary

If you’re an English speaker who values free and open-source above all, jiten is an excellent choice and we’d rather you use it than nothing.

If you learn through Spanish, or you want the polished hosted version with the media and audio work already done, that’s us.