N5 and N4 hand you nouns you can point at. A station, a package, a doctor. N3 is the band where the vocabulary turns abstract and connective: the cause, the effect, the circumstances, the reason a thing was postponed rather than cancelled. It is the least photogenic level and the one that changes the most, because these are the words that hold sentences together rather than fill them.
People notice the shift as a sudden drop in effort. Drama dialogue stops being a wall of sound. Workplace small talk becomes followable, then joinable. The announcement about the delay says why.
The web app carries 1,208 items banded N3: 852 vocabulary words, 338 kanji, 12 buildable sentences, 3 signs, and 3 reading passages, plus 4 of the app's 20 tracked grammar patterns (〜たら, 〜ながら, 〜はずです, and the looks-like 〜そうです). Vocabulary and kanji are the bulk of this band; the sentences, signs, and passages that N5 and N4 carry in quantity are thinner here, and the page says so rather than rounding up.
Banding is strict. An N3 word counts toward N3 and never toward your N4 or N5 numbers, so a full-looking bar is a bar you actually filled. The JLPT levels guide lays out how the community-estimated targets for each level compare.
Real entries from the N3 band, with the notes they ship with:
N3 kanji arrive attached to vocabulary you are already learning rather than as a separate list. 情 and 報 turn up together because 情報 (information) is the word that needs them, and 情 immediately explains 感情 as well: feelings and facts share one character, since both are things hearts trade in. 確 and 認 arrive as 確認, the workplace heartbeat, the ご確認ください in every second email. 原 and 因 arrive as 原因. 政 and 議 arrive because the news uses them daily.
Each kanji is gated behind the words that motivate it, so you meet a character after the vocabulary that gives it a reason to exist, not before.
There is no placement test and no unit order to complete. New material arrives as probes: answer correctly and the item is credited and scheduled far into the future, miss it and it becomes the lesson, at no penalty. Arriving at N3 from a class, a textbook, or five years of half-remembered study works fine, because the app discovers what you know by asking instead of by form.
The home screen offers a "Practice a situation" row: Signs & stations, Restaurants & bars, Shopping & the register, Prices, and Errands & paperwork. Choosing one narrows what gets served to that slice of life, at whatever level you have reached, without creating a second review backlog. Scheduling and pacing stay global. It is a lens on the same queue, which is why a focused session can be a whole study session rather than an extra chore.
Knowing a word is not one skill. Yokoso tracks four rungs per item: recognizing it, reading it, recalling it, and producing it. Receptive rungs come first and production comes last, and the ladder is per item, so a word you can read but not yet produce is honestly shown as exactly that. N3 is the band where the difference starts to matter, because passive recognition of abstract vocabulary is much cheaper than being able to reach for it mid-sentence.
A read-only WaniKani import carries your kanji and vocabulary across and re-syncs daily, so anything you have already learned counts here immediately instead of being quizzed at you from zero. Nothing in the app is locked, there is no review cap, and there is no paid tier. Optional supporter contributions unlock nothing, because nothing is locked.
Practice N3 free on the web, no signupYokoso runs in a browser, works offline, and can go on your home screen with its own icon in about a minute: here is how, and why the web version is usually ahead. It is also on the App Store, where updates land once App Store review clears.
If N3 vocabulary is still landing hard, the N4 material is the bridge that comes before it. If it is starting to feel routine, N2 is newspaper and workplace Japanese, and N1 is the formal written register beyond it.
Yes, every learning feature, permanently. No ads, no streaks, no locked lessons and no review cap.
No. The JLPT is administered by the Japan Foundation and JEES, and it has not published official vocabulary lists since 2010. Yokoso tracks coverage against community-estimated level targets and labels them as estimates.
No. It is the daily practice layer: vocabulary, kanji, grammar transfer, and applied reading, scheduled by spaced repetition. Pair it with a textbook's structure and real mock exams as the test approaches.
No. Bands describe the material, not a gate. The queue serves what you are ready for, and a focused session on an N3 situation works whether or not the N4 band behind it is complete.
Yes. Progress lives on your device, and syncs across your own devices when you choose to turn that on.