Shirabe vs MaruMori

MaruMori is doing the hardest thing in this space: an actual, complete, human-written Japanese course. Grammar explanations, ordered lessons, reading exercises, a polished path from kana to competence. Writing that is enormously more work than building software, and they’ve done it well.

The blunt version first. MaruMori’s grammar course exists and Shirabe’s grammar layer is planned, not shipped. If you want to be taught Japanese, MaruMori teaches and we don’t.

The difference is that a course and a dictionary are answers to different questions.

A syllabus versus the Japanese in front of you

A course decides what you learn and in what order. That’s its value: you don’t have to make decisions, and the sequence has been thought about by someone who knows more than you do. For grammar, which is finite and builds on itself, that’s exactly right.

For vocabulary it’s a ceiling. The words you need are decided by what you read, and no syllabus can predict that. Every course learner eventually hits the same wall: the lessons are going fine, and the manga is still hard, because the manga doesn’t use the course’s words.

Shirabe starts from the other end. There’s no syllabus. You read something, look up what you don’t know, save it, and review it. Your vocabulary list is generated by your actual life.

Neither approach is complete on its own. That’s why a lot of people end up running both.

The dictionary is free, and it’s the front door

MaruMori gates early: you meet a paywall not long after kana.

Shirabe’s dictionary is free permanently and needs no account. Search, kanji, radicals, readings, pitch accent, audio, examples, in English and Spanish. That’s the public front door and it stays open. What’s paid is the study system: saving words, reviews, progress, AI.

Which means you can use Shirabe as your dictionary while doing MaruMori’s course, and pay us nothing until you want the saving loop too.

Spanish, properly

MaruMori is English-first. Its course is written in English, and learning through it means learning Japanese through your second language.

Shirabe is multilingual at the dictionary level: Spanish entries are real content, not a translation pass. For a Spanish-speaking learner that’s the single biggest difference on this page, and it’s not one a roadmap closes quickly.

FSRS and your own material

• FSRS scheduling, self-optimising against your history: fewer reviews for the same retention.
• Any word, from anything you read, saved with reading, pitch accent, audio and an example sentence attached.
• Anki import with scheduling and review history intact.
• Derived progress: known words, kanji you can read, and how much of a given text you’d understand.
• Personal dictionary uploads that follow your account across devices.

Where MaruMori wins

The grammar course. Complete, human-written, well sequenced, with exercises. This is the thing they’re best at and we have no answer to it today.

Guided structure. If you don’t know what to do next, MaruMori always tells you. Shirabe hands you a dictionary and expects you to bring material.

Onboarding polish. Their first-hour experience is excellent, and it’s the thing we most admire and are most explicitly learning from.

All-in-one. One subscription covering grammar, vocabulary and kanji on one path.

Who should use MaruMori

• You want to be taught, in order, by a course.
• You’re early and don’t yet have material of your own to study.
• Grammar is your gap.
• You want one tool and one path, and you don’t want to assemble anything.

Who Shirabe is for

• You already read or watch Japanese and want to study the words in it.
• You want a free dictionary that doesn’t gate you after kana.
• You learn through Spanish.
• You want FSRS and honest progress numbers.
• You have Anki decks to bring.
• Your grammar is broadly fine and vocabulary is the wall.

Using both

This is a genuinely sensible stack, and the most common honest recommendation we can make: MaruMori for the grammar course, Shirabe for the dictionary and the vocabulary. Learn the grammar in order, because grammar has an order. Learn the words from what you’re reading, because words don’t.

Our dictionary is free, so adding it to a MaruMori subscription costs nothing until you want the reviews.