I built the literal Duolingo Killer
Details
- External ID
- 46043972
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- I built the literal Duolingo Killer
- Website domain
- vercel.app
- Launched
- Nov. 25, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 11
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.5447598253275109
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hi Everyone,I recently wanted to learn Japanese with duolingo but it kept giving me repetitive lessons. So I built an app that gives a variety of lessons from anime.You can try it out here:https://kanjieight.vercel.app/Thanks everyone.
Enrichment
- Theme
- music creation and learning tools
- Vertical
- Education
- Function
- Vertical SaaS
- Audience
- B2C
- AI stance
- —
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- language learning app
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes This is a full-stack educational web application combining video/subtitle synchronization, flashcards, and an LLM-assisted curriculum, all easily generated using modern web frameworks.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Duolingo, Netflix for language learning
Concerns raised: Copyright/fair use issues with anime content, Unsubstantiated claims (2.7x faster learning, Yale/USC research links missing), Paywall with no free demo or trial content, False App Store ratings (claims 4.8-4.9 stars but not listed on any app store), Website appears AI-generated, lacks authenticity
Feature requests: Free clip or demo before requiring payment, Login option without Google sign-in
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 115 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #50 of 116 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 27 days after the earliest competitor.
- Cadence Spanish · hn · 2026-01-14 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Itsumo: Make yourself fun and interesting academic language lessons · hn · 2026-04-08 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Learn Japanese contextually while browsing · hn · 2025-12-17 · 92 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- I speak 5 languages. Common apps taught me none. So I built lairner · hn · 2026-02-13 · 35 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Open-source alternative to Duolingo for learning anything · hn · 2026-05-27 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- DAG-based Kanji learning through components · hn · 2026-05-07 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Jordle · hn · 2025-12-16 · 11 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Kotatabi · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.