What Is the JLPT? Levels, Scoring, and US Test Dates

The JLPT — the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test, 日本語能力試験 (Nihongo Nōryoku Shiken, "Japanese-Language Proficiency Test") — is the most widely recognised Japanese exam in the world. It is also the one most consistently misunderstood, because most of what people "know" about it comes from a table that describes a test that stopped existing in 2010.

Here is the whole thing in one paragraph. Five levels from N5 to N1. Every question multiple choice. No speaking section and no writing section. Scored out of 180, with a minimum score you must clear in each section or you fail regardless of your total. In the United States it is offered once a year, on the first Sunday of December, for $135 at every level. As of September 2026, that is the exam.

Who runs it, and why that matters

Globally the JLPT is run by the Japan Foundation together with JEES (Japan Educational Exchanges and Services). That is why the paper is identical in every country and why a score means the same thing whether you sat it in Tokyo, São Paulo or Chicago. There is no separate "American JLPT".

In the United States the host is the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ), and registration runs through its portal at jlpt.us. If you find yourself on a site selling JLPT preparation courses, you are not on the registration site. The only one that matters is the AATJ portal.

The five levels, and what each one actually tests

The official framing divides the five levels into three groups, and the wording is worth reading closely:

• N4 and N5 measure understanding of basic Japanese mainly learned in class.
• N1 and N2 measure understanding of Japanese used in a broad range of scenes in actual everyday life.
• N3 is a bridging level between N1/N2 and N4/N5.

Notice what every one of those sentences has in common: they describe understanding. The JLPT measures what you can take in, not what you can put out.

One line from the official material is easy to miss and matters a lot: the table covers reading and listening, and "while not noted in the table, Language Knowledge, such as Vocabulary and Grammar, is also required." In other words, the level descriptor is not a syllabus. It is a description of the texts you will face, and the vocabulary and grammar to handle them are assumed on top.

What the JLPT does not test

This is the part that genuinely surprises people, including people who have already registered.

• There is no speaking section. No interview, no recorded response, no oral component of any kind.
• There is no writing section. You never produce a character. Every answer on the entire paper is a multiple-choice bubble.

It is a design choice rather than an oversight. A machine-scorable exam can be run simultaneously at dozens of sites worldwide with no examiners and no marking variance, and that is exactly how the JLPT keeps its price and scale. The trade-off lands on you: a JLPT certificate is evidence that you can read and listen, and evidence of nothing else. Plenty of people pass N2 and still freeze in their first real conversation. If speaking is the goal, the exam is not measuring the thing you care about, and you should treat it as a milestone on the reading-and-listening road rather than a verdict on your Japanese. The four skills are covered separately in listening practice, speaking practice, reading practice and writing practice.

The famous vocabulary table is a fossil

Search for "JLPT N5 vocabulary" and you will get the same numbers everywhere: N5 is about 800 words and 100 kanji, N4 is 1,500 words and 300 kanji, N2 is 6,000 and 1,000, N1 is 10,000 and 2,000. Attached to them, usually, are study-hour figures: 150 hours for N5, 300 for N4, 600 for N2, 900 for N1.

Every one of those numbers is real. Every one of them is also out of date, and none of them comes from the test you are sitting.

The JLPT's own FAQ is unusually blunt about this. The organisers explain that they concluded publishing test content specifications — lists of vocabulary, kanji and grammar — "was not necessarily appropriate", on the grounds that the goal of studying Japanese is to use the language to communicate rather than to memorise item lists. Today the JLPT publishes no vocabulary list, no kanji list, and no study-hour estimate at any level. There is no official syllabus to be behind on.

So where does the table come from? It is carried over from the old four-level JLPT that ran until 2009, where those figures were the official criteria. The Japan Foundation itself publishes the old criteria side by side with the new test in its own comparison document, and the new-test column in that document has no numbers in it at all. The correspondence is what produces the table everyone quotes:

Map 1級 to N1, 2級 to N2, 3級 to N4 and 4級 to N5 — the mapping the JLPT's own FAQ gives — and you get exactly the modern-looking table. The numbers were not invented by bloggers. They are simply the requirements of a different test, from a different era, with a different philosophy, still being quoted as if the organisers had published them last week.

N3 is the exception, and its numbers have no official basis at all. N3 has no pre-2010 predecessor; it was newly created in the 2010 reform. The figure you will see for it — roughly 3,750 words and 650 kanji — is a community interpolation extrapolated between the N4 and N2 rows, and third parties do not even agree with each other, landing anywhere from about 3,000 to 4,000 words. Treat any N3 count as an estimate with no official source, and treat the N5–N1 figures as order-of-magnitude planning aids rather than a checklist. For what to actually do with them, see JLPT prep.

Scoring, and the rule that fails people who scored well

Every level is scored out of 180. What differs is how the paper is divided:

• N1, N2 and N3 have three scoring sections: Language Knowledge (0–60), Reading (0–60), Listening (0–60).
• N4 and N5 have two: Language Knowledge and Reading combined (0–120), and Listening (0–60).

Passing requires two separate conditions. The official wording: your total score must be at or above the pass mark, and your score in each scoring section must be at or above the sectional minimum. If even one section falls below its minimum, "examinees are determined to have failed, no matter how high the total score might be."

This is the single most practical fact about the JLPT and almost nobody explains it. Scoring 150 overall with a 15 in Listening is a fail. A candidate who gives up on one section to pour everything into the others is not making a trade-off; they are losing. The sectional rule was adopted with the current scoring system in July 2010, and for N4 and N5 from December 2010.

How and where to sit it in the US

Registration is through AATJ at jlpt.us. The details below are as of September 2026 and the fee and site list are worth re-checking each year, because they change.

The fee is $135 for every level, N1 through N5. AATJ lists the same figure at all five levels, and university testing pages that host the exam quote it identically. Some third-party sites still circulate much lower numbers — GyanMirai lists roughly $60 for N5 rising to $90 for N1, and Kanjidon quotes $60–75 — but those are outdated and appear only in aggregated search results rather than on any official page. Budget $135.

In the United States the test is offered once a year, on the first Sunday of December. AATJ's FAQ states it plainly: "No July test is offered in the U.S." Japan itself has two sittings a year, in July and December, and that is the source of most of the confusion — people read a Japanese schedule and assume it applies to them. The 2026 US date is Sunday, December 6, 2026. Registration opened on August 18, 2026, staggered by level, and closed on September 16, 2026 or earlier if seats filled; by September 9 most sites had already sold out.

There are 21 test sites in 2026, twelve east of the Mississippi and nine west. East: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Miami, Middlebury (Vermont), Newark, New York (Lehman College), Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Washington DC. West: Boulder, Fayetteville (Arkansas), Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Monterey Bay, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle. The list is confirmed each July, so a site that existed last year may not exist this year.

Four rules catch people out every cycle:

• No refunds and no transfers. Once you have registered, that money is spent.
• No late registration and no waiting list. When registration closes, it closes. There is no appeal.
• No on-site registration. You cannot turn up on the day and sit the exam.
• You cannot sit two levels. All levels are administered at the same time on the same day, so a double attempt is structurally impossible. Pick one level and commit to it.

That last one is the reason the level decision is the real decision, and it is worth making it early — registration opens in mid-August and the popular sites fill within weeks.

Common mistakes for English speakers

• Preparing for a speaking test that does not exist. No part of the JLPT assesses production of any kind. If your study is built around conversation practice, you are training a different skill from the one being measured.
• Building a study plan on the 800-words-and-100-kanji table as if it were a syllabus. It describes a test retired in 2010. Use it as a rough scale, not as a checklist that, once completed, guarantees anything.
• Assuming there is a July sitting in the US. There is not. If you miss the December registration window, your next attempt is more than a year away.
• Planning to take N5 and N4 in the same year. You cannot sit two levels on one day, and the US offers only one day per year.
• Ignoring the sectional minimums until the score report arrives. A strong total with one collapsed section is a fail, and the collapse is usually in listening because it was left until the last month.
• Treating a pass as proof of general ability. The certificate is real and it is worth something, but it certifies reading and listening comprehension only. The honest inventory of what each level gives you is in JLPT prep.

If the typing-speed part of exam preparation is what worries you, that is the part this site is actually built for. Practice mode makes you type real Japanese sentences word by word in romaji and shows you immediately which word you got wrong, which is the same loop the JLPT listening and vocabulary sections reward. Start with the interactive kana table if you are still shaky on the syllabaries, keep the romaji converter open for readings you cannot place, and read JLPT prep for the level-by-level plan.