Comparison

Shakelance vs Yonda

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Shakelance

Features
Read full description

Unlock the secrets of the Japanese language with our innovative learning app designed for aspiring N4 and N5 proficiency learners. Tailored for your proficiency levels. Enhance your language skills and track your progress. Start today, whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your skills, our app offers an easy way to practice your writing. - Adaptive Learning: Receive texts adjusted to your skill level, ensuring a challenging yet achievable learning path. - Translation Practice: Submit your translations and receive instant corrections with detailed explanations to accelerate your learning. Embark on a journey to fluency with our app โ€“ where learning Japanese is not just a task, but a delightful adventure. Download now and let the language mastery begin! - Progress Tracking: Stay motivated by monitoring your daily practice stats and track your improvement over time. - Cultural Insights: Immerse yourself in Japanese culture through context-rich texts, enhancing both language and cultural understanding.

About

Yonda

Features
Read full description

You didn't start learning Japanese to clear flashcards. You started because there's something you want to read. Yonda's Scan & Read turns that something โ€” the manga volume on your shelf, a novel, a menu, a street sign, a newspaper โ€” into your curriculum. Photograph up to five pages. Yonda reads them (vertical text, furigana, real reading order), checks every word against what you already know, and builds a lesson out of only the kanji and vocabulary YOU are missing. You study it with serious spaced repetition, pass a 100% comprehension exam, and then read your own pages โ€” furigana you can toggle, a tap-gloss on every word colored by your mastery, and translations that unlock only after you've proven you don't need them. That last part matters. Translation apps read Japanese FOR you, which is why you can point a camera at manga for years and never learn to read. Yonda refuses to do the reading until you can. HOW IT WORKS 1. Photograph real Japanese โ€” up to 5 pages per scan. 2. Fix any misreads in a 30-second review. The OCR is good; you make it perfect. 3. Yonda diagnoses the gap: exactly which kanji and words you don't know yet, based on your own study history. 4. Study a lesson built from just that gap. Wrong answers get an explanation on the spot, not a red X. 5. Pass a clean-sweep exam. 100%, no partial credit. 6. Read your pages. They join your My Scans shelf โ€” a growing library of real Japanese you've conquered. Words from your scans keep coming back in long-term reviews, so what you read stays read. THE ENGINE UNDERNEATH Yonda is a full Japanese course, not just a scanner. โ€ข Kana, kanji, vocabulary, and grammar on a path from zero to N1. N5 is polished today; higher levels are in active development. โ€ข FSRS spaced repetition โ€” reviews arrive when you're about to forget, not on a corporate schedule. โ€ข Wrong-answer options drawn from real confusability data, never random, so tests actually test. โ€ข AI conversation practice for when you want to use what you've learned. WHAT YOU WON'T FIND โ€ข No streak guilt. No hearts, no lives, no mascot crying at you. โ€ข No ads, anywhere. โ€ข No selling or sharing your data. Scan photos live in a private bucket, visible only to you, and are deleted when you delete the scan. Honest limits: scanning needs an internet connection, and you should know kana before your first scan (the free N5 course starts there). Japanese is hard. Yonda doesn't pretend otherwise โ€” it just makes every hour count. Free: the full N5 course plus one trial scan, forever. Pro is coming soon. Questions and bug reports are read by a human โ€” support@irons.la.

Screenshots

Shakelance3 screens
Yonda4 screens

Verdict

The call

Shakelance and Yonda are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters โ€” price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them โ€” neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Shakelance versus Yonda: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterShakelanceYonda
PriceFreeFree
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod โ€” betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS13.013.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size25 MB25 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperJulio ImazioJeremy Irons

In-app purchases

None

Shakelance

No in-app purchases

None

Yonda

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Shakelance free?
Shakelance is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Yonda free?
Yonda is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Shakelance or Yonda have ads?
Neither Shakelance nor Yonda shows ads.

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