Migaku vs Language Reactor: which one is worth it?

Migaku and Language Reactor do the same visible thing: dual subtitles on Netflix and YouTube, a popup dictionary on every word. Watching them side by side for ten minutes, you'd struggle to say why one costs ten dollars a month and the other is free.

The difference isn't in what happens while you watch. It's in what happens to the words afterwards.

Side by side

	Language Reactor	Migaku
Price	Free core; Pro about $5.95/month or $39.95/year	About $10/month, 10-day trial, no permanent free tier
Dual subtitles	Netflix, YouTube	Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Viki and more
Dictionary	Popup, plus an AI dictionary on Pro	Popup with word status colouring
Saved words	A list; export to Anki on Pro	Built-in SRS with cards created in one click
Reviews	None built in	Migaku Memory, on web and mobile
Reading web pages	Limited	Works on live pages
Languages	Dozens	11
Depth	Broad and light	Deep for Japanese (parsing, pitch accent), Chinese, Korean
Setup	Install and go	Some tuning; power-user friendly

Choose Language Reactor if

You want to understand shows, and reviewing vocabulary isn't the point. The free tier already does the main job: two subtitle lines, a click on any word, a saved-words list for later. Pro adds full machine translation of subtitles and Anki export if you decide to get serious.

It's the right first tool for anyone, in any language, who isn't sure yet how far this goes.

The honest downside: saved words go nowhere unless you export them and run Anki yourself. Most people don't, and the list quietly becomes a graveyard.

Choose Migaku if

You've already decided this is a multi-year project and video is your main input. Migaku's whole design is the pipeline from "heard a word" to "reviewed it three days later" with nothing manual in between. For Japanese, the parsing quality alone justifies the price to a lot of learners.

The honest downside: the monthly bill, and the fact that it's built around streaming. If you don't watch much, you're funding features you don't touch.

Is Migaku better than Language Reactor?

At the thing Migaku charges for, yes: turning what you watch into a review system. At the thing Language Reactor is free for, no: they understand a show about equally well.

So the real question is whether you'll do reviews. If you won't, Migaku's advantage evaporates and you should keep the free tool. If you will, Migaku saves you the Anki plumbing that Language Reactor Pro leaves to you.

The gap both leave open

Both are video tools. Both treat reading as a side feature, and neither does much with the articles, forum threads and news you read between shows.

That matters more than it sounds. Reading is where vocabulary volume comes from, and subtitles are short.

Mossglen (full disclosure: ours) covers the reading side. It's a free Chrome extension: any article becomes a clean reading view, tap a word for the meaning and it's saved with its sentence, reviews run on FSRS with no card-making step. It handles YouTube too, so it can replace either tool there, but it doesn't touch Netflix. No account needed, 8 languages (EN, ES, FR, DE, IT, PT, JA, KO).

A common pairing: Language Reactor for shows, a reading extension for everything else, zero subscriptions.

Deciding in one line

• Understand shows, no review habit yet → Language Reactor, free
• Video is the plan, you'll review daily, Japanese/Korean/Chinese → Migaku
• You read more than you watch → a reading extension, with Language Reactor on the side

Leaving Migaku? The alternatives, sorted by why you're leaving. Leaving Language Reactor, or waiting for it to come back up? Its alternatives, by what you need. Comparing with a text-first tool instead? LingQ vs Migaku and Language Reactor vs LingQ. And for the method underneath all of this, how learning a language by reading works.