JLPT guide
How many kanji does each JLPT level need?
The JLPT stopped publishing its lists in 2010. Every count you have read since is reverse-engineered.
The honest answer first: nobody knows exactly. The JLPT published kanji and vocabulary lists until 2009 and stopped when the test was redesigned in 2010. Every figure you will see quoted since — including the ones below — is reverse-engineered from past papers.
The figures everyone quotes
| Level | Kanji | Vocabulary | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|
| N5 | ~100 | ~800 | ~100 kanji |
| N4 | ~300 | ~1,500 | ~300 kanji |
| N3 | ~600 | ~3,500 | ~600 kanji |
| N2 | ~1,000 | ~6,000 | ~1,000 kanji |
| N1 | ~2,000 | ~10,000 | ~2,000 kanji |
Those are cumulative, not per level: N3's ~600 includes N5's and N4's. The step people feel most is N4 to N3, which roughly doubles both columns at once — that jump has a guide of its own.
Counting kanji is the wrong measure anyway
A kanji is not a unit of knowledge. 生 is an N5 character and it is read せい, しょう, い, う, は, き and なま depending on the word it is in. Knowing that 生 means "life" will not get you through 生ビール, 芝生, 生糸 or 一生懸命.
What the exam tests is words. That is why the vocabulary column grows faster than the kanji column, and why a candidate who has drilled 2,000 characters in isolation can still fail N1 reading.
What this site holds
The study lists here are built from the same JLPT level data the glossary uses:
Each list carries the reading, a meaning and the stroke order for the kanji, and you can cover the answers and test yourself down the page.
The measure that actually tells you something
Sit a paper. On this site every question carries the meaning of every word in it, so a paper you cannot yet pass still tells you what you are missing — which is more than a number of characters will ever tell you.