JLPT kanji lists, N5 to N1
The Japanese-Language Proficiency Test grades reading and listening ability across five levels, from N5 (foundational) to N1 (near-native). The official kanji lists were dropped after the 2010 redesign, so the 2,211-character set below is the community-maintained reconstruction widely used by study tools, textbooks, and SRS apps.
Pick a level to see the full grid, a short note on what you can read with it, and where it sits in a typical WaniKani journey. To see exactly which of these you have already learned, head to the JLPT coverage tool and paste a WaniKani API token.
Pick a level
- JLPT N579 kanji
Numbers, days of the week, basic verbs and directions - the survival kanji every textbook leads with.
WaniKani teaches the whole list, 99% of it by level 10.
- JLPT N4166 kanji
Family, weather, common adjectives, and the verbs that show up in daily conversation.
All of it is on WaniKani, finished by level 27.
- JLPT N3367 kanji
The bridge to general reading. News headlines, manga, casual novels start here.
WaniKani covers every character, reaching 89% by level 30 and the rest by 51.
- JLPT N2367 kanji
The level Japanese employers usually ask for: business writing, broadsheet newspapers, university material.
No gaps here either, though only 83% has been taught by level 40.
- JLPT N11,232 kanji
Legal, medical, literary, and historical readings across native-aimed material.
The one tier WaniKani leaves unfinished: 79% of it by level 60.
How the JLPT levels stack up
N5 and N4 form a tight beginner set. The jump to N3 is the largest single step: the list more than doubles, and the characters start covering abstract vocabulary you actually see in printed material. N2 layers on professional and academic language, and N1 sweeps in specialist domains alongside rarer literary and historical readings.
The counts here are the new kanji introduced at each level; the test itself is cumulative, so N1 assumes everything from N5 up. That puts the full set at 2,211 characters. It overlaps heavily with the 2,136-kanji Joyo list without matching it: 247 of these are jinmeiyo name kanji that Joyo leaves out, and 172 Joyo characters appear on no JLPT list at all.