WaniKani finish-date projection calculator

The 90% rule

WaniKani advances you to the next level once at least 90% of your current level's kanji subjects reach Guru I (SRS stage 5). Radicals don't count toward that 90% - they unlock the kanji, but the threshold is kanji-only. So if a level has 30 kanji, you need 27 of them at Guru or above to level up.

Free WaniKani accounts cap at level 3; subscription tiers unlock the full path to level 60. The calculator above ignores account tier - it assumes you can reach the goal level you set.

The Apprentice-to-Guru path floor

From a fresh lesson, a kanji needs to pass four Apprentice reviews to reach Guru I. The SRS waits between those reviews are:

• Apprentice I: 4 hours
• Apprentice II: 8 hours
• Apprentice III: 23 hours (effectively a day)
• Apprentice IV: 47 hours (two days)

Add them up: 4 + 8 + 23 + 47 = 82 hours, or about 3 days 10 hours. That's the absolute minimum time from starting a new kanji lesson to having it at Guru I. The review that promotes Apprentice IV to Guru I is the level-up event; you don't need to wait afterwards.

Levels 1 and 2 are faster.WaniKani applies an accelerated SRS to subjects on those levels, halving the Apprentice waits: 2 + 4 + 8 + 23 = 37 hours, or about 1 day 13 hours. That's why your first two levels feel so fast and then everything slows down.

What slows real users down past the floor

The 82-hour floor assumes you do every review the instant it unlocks, never get an answer wrong, and have all your kanji unlocked from the start of the level. Real users hit three slowdowns:

• Locked kanji.Most kanji require their component radicals at Guru first. Until those radicals hit Guru, the dependent kanji isn't even available for a lesson. That stacks 3-4 days on top of the floor.
• Wrong answers.Each meaning or reading mistake drops the item back to an earlier Apprentice stage. A miss at Apprentice III adds at least a day to that kanji's path to Guru.
• Life. Sleep schedules, weekends, holidays, and skipped review batches all add days. The median user level (across the WaniKani community) lands at around 10-14 days per level, not the 7-day theoretical maximum.

How Wanilog projects your real finish date

The calculator above asks you to estimate your pace. The personalised projection page does it from your actual data: it reads your completed-level durations from the WaniKani API, takes the median (which resists outlier weeks), and projects that pace across your remaining levels to your goal. The math weighs recent levels more, so a sudden pace change shows up quickly in the estimate.

You can also drag a what-if slider on the projection page to see how a faster or slower pace shifts the finish date, and set a goal level lower than 60 if you don't plan to finish.