Question 1

Is the app actually free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The placement test, Hangul, and lessons for your first 250 words plus 1,000 reviews are free — no credit card required. A subscription lets you continue vocabulary lessons and reviews beyond those limits. Features such as custom mnemonics are available to free users too.

Question 2

Why don't you show romanization?

Accepted Answer

Two reasons. (1) Korean romanization is awful and not representative of the actual pronunciation. (2) Hangul is undisputedly the easiest writing system in the world and you can literally start reading it in 20 minutes (our Quick-Start does exactly that).

Question 3

Do I need to know how to read Korean before I start?

Accepted Answer

No — but you will within the hour. Hangul is the first thing the app teaches: the Quick-Start walks you through the alphabet with visual mnemonics in about 20 minutes, and there are full references for consonants and vowels. Vocabulary lessons open up once you can read.

Question 4

I don't know any Korean. Where do I start?

Accepted Answer

Go ahead and click get started and the app will help you sign up and hop straight into the Hangul Quick-Start. About 20 minutes later you can read the alphabet enough to begin vocabulary lessons.

Question 5

What if I've already studied Korean for a while?

Accepted Answer

Choose the placement test at the end of the intake quiz. It's adaptive — harder as you nail questions, easier as you miss them — and drops you in around the level you actually know. If you see words you already know popping up in your lessons and reviews just mark them as burned.

Question 6

How is this different from Anki / Duolingo?

Accepted Answer

This is built from the ground up for Korean. Duolingo gamifies and skips the part where you actually learn anything. Anki is an empty box you have to fill yourself, and the shared Korean decks are often outdated. We give you a curated 8,000-word path with native-speaker audio, mnemonics, and a growing collection of example sentences — scheduled by FSRS, the same algorithm Anki power users install by hand, except ours ships fitted on our learners' review data and then refits to your memory automatically.

Question 7

Is the review scheduling AI?

Accepted Answer

It's machine learning, done properly. The scheduler is FSRS — an open, published memory model — with parameters fitted on real review data from our learners, then refit to your memory specifically once you've logged enough reviews. It predicts when you'll forget each word and schedules the review just before. No LLM deciding your study plan, no black box: 21 numbers we can show you.

Question 8

What is spaced repetition, and what is FSRS?

Accepted Answer

Spaced repetition is a learning technique that helps you memorize Korean vocabulary more efficiently. It presents words at increasing intervals based on how well you know them — from a few hours for a brand-new word up to months once it's locked in. FSRS (the Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler) is how we pick those intervals. It's a published memory model that tracks the difficulty and memory stability of every word you study, predicts the moment you're about to forget it, and books the review just before — instead of marching everyone through the same fixed schedule.

Question 9

How do the burn stages work?

Accepted Answer

Burn stages represent your mastery of each vocabulary word:

- Novice (1-4): New words you're just learning
- Student (5-6): Words you're getting comfortable with
- Scholar (7): Words you know well
- Master (8): Words you've mastered
- Burned (9): Words permanently learned

A correct answer moves a word up one stage and a wrong answer knocks it back — the higher the stage, the harder the fall. FSRS sets the wait between those reviews, and burned words leave your queue for good.

Question 10

How long does it take to learn 8,000 Korean words?

Accepted Answer

At the default cap of 25 new words a day, the full 8,000-word path takes a bit under a year — and you're reading Hangul on day one. Most people don't go flat out: the honest lever is showing up daily for the reviews, because a word only sticks if you meet it again right before you'd have forgotten it. Learn fewer words a day and the path stretches; skip reviews and it stretches a lot more.

Question 11

What answer formats are accepted?

Accepted Answer

The system is flexible with answer formats to accommodate different ways of expressing Korean meanings: - Verb/Adjective forms: "to be difficult" accepts both "difficult" and "to be difficult". Likewise "to be beautiful" accepts both "beautiful" and "to be beautiful". - Case sensitivity: Answers are not case-sensitive - Extra spaces: Leading and trailing spaces are ignored - Spelling mistakes: Minor spelling errors and mixups (within one Damerau–Levenshtein distance) are tolerated with a warning and do not affect your burn progression. - Multiple variants: Some words have multiple variants such as the topic marker "은/는". The system accepts any of these variants as correct answers, so "은", "는", "은/는" and "은는" are all accepted answers.

Question 12

Do you cover grammar too?

Accepted Answer

The app currently includes a searchable grammar reference for particles, conjugations, and other common patterns. You will also meet grammar in the example sentences available for many words. Full grammar lessons are coming soon.

Question 13

Do I need to learn Hanja?

Accepted Answer

No, and nothing in the app requires it. But roughly half of Korean vocabulary is Sino-Korean, so we show you the Hanja behind those words when it helps — once you know 學 is the *learn* character, 학생, 학교, and 학년 stop being three things to memorize and start being one. Treat it as free leverage, not homework.

Question 14

Can I use this to study for TOPIK?

Accepted Answer

It helps, though it isn't a TOPIK course. The word order is frequency-first, built from Korean corpora and government-published learner wordlists, so the early thousands overlap heavily with the vocabulary TOPIK expects — and vocabulary is the part of the test you can most reliably grind. There's no TOPIK-only track or mock exam yet.

Question 15

Are iOS and Android apps coming soon?

Accepted Answer

Yes — iOS and Android apps are coming soon. Until then, the web app works on phones and can be added to your home screen.

Question 16

How can I track my learning progress?

Accepted Answer

Your progress is tracked automatically as you review. Your dashboard shows:

- Number of words at each burn stage
- A year long heat map of your learning activity
- Total words learned and burned
- Your current level and learning streak

Question 17

Do I need a subscription to use the app?

Accepted Answer

You do not need a subscription to get started. You can learn your first 250 vocabulary words and complete 1,000 reviews for free. Premium subscribers gain access to: - Vocabulary lessons and reviews beyond the free limits - Our official Discord voice chat rooms - Priority support See pricing for the current plans.

Question 18

How do I cancel my subscription?

Accepted Answer

From your profile, in one click — no email, no retention maze. Cancelling stops the renewal and you keep full access until the end of the period you've already paid for. Lifetime purchases never renew, so there's nothing to cancel.

Question 19

Found a bug, or want a feature?

Accepted Answer

Tell us. Use the feedback button at the bottom of any page, or bring it to the Discord — that's where announcements land and where most feature requests start. Subscribers get priority support.

Questions? Fire away.

Questions? Fire away.