Unfortunately, running WaniKani isn’t free for us. In fact, it’s kind of unexpectedly expensive!

There are servers, databases, employees, contractors, office rent, video games, bottles of 17-30 year old Japanese whiskey, fabulously fancy dinners on rented train cars, rare pepe cards, and yakuza protection money to pay for. We are also saving up for a yacht. It’s a 160-footer and it has a small orange grove on top. Anyways, my point is: there are expenses. I know you all think it’s just fun and games here at WaniKani, but we run into the same economic issues as the next guy. While you keep that in mind, I want to let you know there will some be pricing changes on WaniKani, which will take effect sometime in the next hour or two. Your monthly and yearly costs are going to change. Base price will now be $9/month, $89/year, and $299/Lifetime (Lifetime is the same, actually).

Here are the nitty gritties:

If you purchased a monthly or yearly membership sometime in the last 30 days, you will get a credit applied to your account. It will be a prorated amount refunding you for the change in price (prices are going down, in case you were fooled by my tone), so your credit will depend on when you made your payment. It’s a proration. This credit can and will be used on your next payment. tl;dr, if you got your membership in the last 30 days, you’re getting some free money and the next month/year will be the new, lower price.

If you are on a discounted pricing plan (for being a part of the alpha or beta, for example), your monthly/yearly costs will come down too, since your coupons are percentage based. It will be [blank] percent (where blank is how much of a discount you’re getting) off of the new base rates. You should see that on your next payment.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them here, or send us an email (hello@wanikani.com). And, consider upgrading so we can get our yacht sometime in the next century? Maybe?