# Kaeru - Learn Japanese & Kanji — user reviews > 18 indexed App Store user reviews of Kaeru by Rozemyne Ltd, rated 3.90/5 from 29 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kaeru-learn-japanese-and-kanji/id6740145807/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kaeru-learn-japanese-and-kanji/id6740145807.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 15 · 4★ 4 · 3★ 3 · 2★ 5 · 1★ 2 ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Hard to use *2026-08-13* Using the paid version. Frustrating to use as this app doesn't help with reviewing the words learned and simply keeps repeating the same Kanji ### 1/5 — Needs a free trial *2026-07-15* App requires a subscription before accessing any content. There are too many (bad and good) of these language learning apps for me to blindly throw money at one. **Developer response:** Thanks for the feedback - totally fair point with so many apps out there. Good news: we do offer a free trial so you can try before committing, and you can cancel anytime during it. If you hit a paywall without the trial option, email support@kaeru-jp.app and we'll help sort it out. We know this model is not suitable for everyone, but if you would like to explore more please hit us up and our support team will try to come up with solution ☺️ ### 1/5 — UI leaves a lot to be desired *2026-07-13* The app has a clean interface making you think it’s easy to use but far from it. If you want to just use it as a review before you dive into your exact it’s tedious since it makes you record the word without the ability to just automatically swipe and if you skip it makes it seem like you don’t know the word. There’s no easy access to review JLPT material but rather everything is scattered across decks in one location. Organization feels sloppy despite the clean looking interface. Feels like a trick **Developer response:** Thanks for the thoughtful feedback. Sorry the review flow and deck organization feel clunky — the "skip vs. don't know" distinction and scattered JLPT material are fair points we're weighing. If you email support@kaeru-jp.app with how you'd like to review, it really helps us prioritize. 🙏 ### 1/5 — Scam *2026-06-13* App has no real free trial period and forces you to cash in right away after setting up profile. Tiring, unprofessional and just a money grab. **Developer response:** Thanks for the feedback. We understand that this setup can feel frustrating 🙏 We offer a free trial so users can try the app before paying. On the App Store, Apple may still require a payment method to activate the trial — this is handled by Apple, and we never receive your payment details. ### 1/5 — No trial without locking in payment *2026-05-04* We need to stop this sleazy practice of making people commit to a payment to try an app. It is the developers’ responsibility to impress us with the quality of the app without asking for us to gamble in return. Response: I don’t misunderstand the system - I just reject it. You are putting the user in a position to have to remember to cancel a payment when you haven’t yet demonstrated your product. It’s lazy and unacceptable. Do better. **Developer response:** Hi, thanks for the feedback - but we want to clear up a misunderstanding. Kaeru’s free trial doesn’t lock in any payment. You can start it, use the full app, and cancel anytime in your Apple ID Settings before it ends - Apple won’t charge you, and there’s no commitment. This is the standard Apple trial model, not a sleazy practice. We chose a subscription with a free trial because it lets us keep the app ad-free, sell no user data, and keep shipping new content. We understand it’s not for everyone, and that’s a fair preference - but “gambling” isn’t an accurate description of how it works. ### 1/5 — No way to skip premium trial *2026-04-04* As per title. It is mandatory to try the premium service. This let me think that there are no free features at all hence the placement as free on the App Store is misleading. **Developer response:** Hi Bafionon, thanks for the feedback. Kaeru is a subscription app with a free trial. The trial doesn’t charge unless you continue after it ends, and you can cancel anytime in Settings. We know this model isn’t for everyone, but it lets us keep investing in content and features without ads or data selling. If you’d like to give the trial a real try, we’d love to have you - and if not, we appreciate you checking it out ### 2/5 — I wanted to love this app *2026-08-05* Has some potential, but the daily exercises have some inaccuracies that shouldn’t be there and the vocab training with kanji acts very strangely. Some cards have just a kanji and no associated task or prompt. The English translations are off and the voice readings are also frequently different than what’s written. And some sentences don’t make sense in Japanese or English. I also get annoyed by constantly being rated at 80% in pronunciation when my individual scores during the test are above 90%. I’m glad I only got a month subscription. Going back to Bunpo and Wanikani. ### 2/5 — Not great *2026-06-14* This app is kinda confusing, it doesn’t give the Japanese translation for the kanji and just wants you to practice the stroke order which I personally don’t find necessary. And the kanji flashcards also don’t show the Japanese translation. The pronunciation part is also not really useful - perhaps if you’re doing N5 but not after that. It doesn’t seem to intro grammar either ? **Developer response:** Thanks for the detailed feedback. A couple of clarifications that might help: the kanji flashcards do show the English meaning — just tap the card to flip it. In the Daily Journey we deliberately focus on stroke order and meaning rather than showing a kanji's Japanese reading, because a single kanji usually has multiple readings that change depending on the word it appears in — so teaching one reading in isolation tends to mislead more than help. If you do want to study readings, the Library has precompiled kanji decks with reading previews, and you can also build your own deck from the specific kanji you want to focus on. Grammar is introduced gradually through the Daily Journey, with a more comprehensive grammar section in the Library whenever you want to go deeper. Hope that points you in the right direction! ### 2/5 — Kanji writing needs improvement *2026-04-28* I think that this app has potential. However it is annoying that the screen shakes whenever a stroke is considered wrong on a kanji. It really is distracting and hard on the eyes, especially when the stroke is mostly right but is just judged as incorrect by the algorithm. Letting the stroke fade into the background and ticking up a small counter for error strokes could be better. Shaking the screen is disruptive. **Developer response:** Hi Freezeyxdwdt, thanks for the thoughtful feedback - and good news: 1.4.6 just shipped with the screen shake significantly toned down for incorrect strokes. Should be much less disruptive now. Your suggestion about fading strokes and a small error counter is interesting too - we’ll keep iterating on the feedback design. Give the update a try and let us know if it feels better! ### 2/5 — Super cool concept, unstable app *2026-03-25* This app is really neat, but doesn’t work. It crashes every time I’m working on writing practice, and is unusable for anything other than flashcards. **Developer response:** Hi - this one's fixed. The crash came from the app's first-time setup getting interrupted before the kanji data finished unpacking, which left writing practice without the data it needed. The latest version checks for that on launch and finishes the unpack automatically, so writing practice should just work now - no reinstall needed. Sorry it was rough before - give the update a try and let us know if anything else trips up: support@kaeru-jp.app ## Most praised reviews (8 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Review *2026-05-16* The app is great!! Straight to the point and works pretty fast My favorite is the fact that the app does not attack you with notifications the way DuoLingo does **Developer response:** Thank you for your feedback! We are happy that you like Kaeru. If you have any questions or suggestions please send us a word on support@kaeru-jp.app ### 5/5 — Amazing *2026-05-11* Really easy to use, engaging and beginner friendly. Exactly what I was looking for as a complete beginner in Japanese. 10/10 would recommend to anyone wanting to pickup Japanese without too much time and effort investment. **Developer response:** Thank you for your review. If you have any questions or suggestions please don’t hesitate to reach to us via support@kaeru-jp.app ### 4/5 — Please add kun/on yomi to kanji flashcards *2026-07-12* I like that everything is in one app but on kanji practice I don’t want to just learn the English translation. Similar to grammar it would be nice to see in an example sentence along with kun/on yomi rather than just the page before the flash cards. I like the reading comprehension exercises as well but wish there was a dedicated section for this also. **Developer response:** Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! Love the idea of showing kun/on yomi and example sentences right on the kanji flashcards, plus a dedicated reading comprehension section. I've passed both suggestions to the team. If you have more ideas, email support@kaeru-jp.app ☺️ ### 4/5 — Need an option to look up unknown words *2026-04-23* There should be an option to select unknown words in the story and at the very least see the furigana. I can’t record the story if I don’t know the reading. Also when searching in the dictionary, there’s no way to close the keyboard. It stays open and the only way to exit the dictionary is a force quit. This has the potential to be a great resource, but these two issues are a huge problem for me. **Developer response:** Hi PC812 - update on your first point: the latest version puts furigana above the kanji in reading practice, so you can read a story and record it without getting stuck on a reading. Full tap-to-lookup on individual words isn't there yet, but it's still high on the list. And the dictionary keyboard that wouldn't close - if that's still happening after you update, let us know at support@kaeru-jp.app so we can make sure it's sorted on your end. Thanks again for flagging these, really helpful. ### 3/5 — Poor Functionality *2026-07-14* I was happy to try the app for a bit and it was working fine but now whenever I open it, it hangs on the kanji loading page. I deleted the app and reinstalled, same issues. Consistent across my iPhone and iPad. It’s a shame. **Developer response:** Thanks for the thoughtful feedback - sorry the kanji loading page is hanging on both your iPhone and iPad. That's not expected, especially after a reinstall. Could you email support@kaeru-jp.app so we can dig into it? Your iOS version and any error details would really help us track down the cause. 🙏 ### 3/5 — Great idea but buggy execution *2026-05-15* The screen crashes when I try to write the kanji. I am asked to practice stroke but I don’t know how to say that 14 stroke kanji, so have that functionality. I will try this app for the next three months and support you in your journey of building it **Developer response:** Hi ¥vonne_ - good news on both fronts. The writing-practice crash is fixed: it came from the initial setup getting interrupted before the kanji data finished unpacking, and the app now catches that on launch and finishes the unpack itself - no more delete-and-reinstall. The kanji's on-yomi/kun-yomi readings also show right in the deck now, where they used to be hidden, so you always know what you're writing. Update to the latest version and you should be set. Thanks again for sticking with us through it! ### 3/5 — Buggy but very comprehensive *2026-04-27* Pretty comprehensive learning app for Japanese! There are a few critical bugs that need ironing out but so far learning with this app has been enjoyable. I think once the bugs are fixed, the price of admission is worth it. **Developer response:** Thanks so much for the kind words and for sticking with us through the rough edges! Stability is a top priority right now - we’re shipping fixes regularly and would love to hear which bugs hit you hardest so we can make sure they’re on our list. Feel free to email support@kaeru-jp.app anytime. Really appreciate the recommendation ### 3/5 — Accuracy needs improvement *2026-04-19* The good: it mirrors what I’d be doing in class for learning the words, reading and listening to the passage for comprehension, and learning the kanji through writing all in a neat little package. But lacks things like grammer deep dives or conversation practice. The bad: already there’s errors, such as 「空き」 it says “あき”but the voice says “つうき”. So which one is it? It doesn’t say, so I may be learning the wrong word the whole time. The kanji stroke thing is so Janky, that it makes it extremely frustrating since it adds this annoying shake animation. Enough to make you want to quit the app. Lastly, making me sign up for a subscription to even know what the app is like, for a 3 day trial and forced to pay for a whole year seems like a scam. Let me try before I buy? If you’re a good app, people would sign up. No need to trap people into the app. **Developer response:** Really appreciate you taking the time to write this out - the 「空き」 catch especially. Quick update: we’ve just shipped 1.4.4 with the fix. To pick it up, update to 1.4.4 and re-download the Kaito voice package (Settings → Voices). The audio will then match the written reading. The stroke shake is actually intentional - it’s how we indicate a stroke went in the wrong direction or order. I understand it can feel harsh though. Would you want an option to turn it off entirely? Easy to add. On the subscription: whether to subscribe is completely up to you, and that’s exactly why we offer the 3-day trial first. If it doesn’t click during the trial, cancellation through the App Store takes seconds. That’s pretty standard for subscription apps, and we’d rather someone try it and walk away than feel stuck. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-28.*