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 (Oct 2026)	Free core; Pro about $6/month or $40/year	$10/month after a 10-day trial, no free tier
Dual subtitles	Netflix, YouTube	Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Viki and more
Dictionary	Popup, plus the Lexa AI dictionary (stronger on Pro)	Popup with word status colouring and AI explanations
Saved words	Free: only inside PhrasePump. Pro: everywhere, plus Anki export	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 still does the main job: two subtitle lines and a click on any word. Pro adds machine translation of subtitles, saving words from anything you watch, and Anki export.

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

The honest downside: on the free tier you can barely save words, and on Pro they still 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.

What you get for free, as of October 2026

Language Reactor's free tier is narrower than it used to be. Its Pro page now says free users save words only inside PhrasePump, its practice feature. Saving from Netflix and YouTube subtitles, highlights across the extension, and Anki export are Pro. The Lexa AI dictionary and the Aria chat partner are free in a basic version; Pro gets a stronger model and chat memory. Checkout shows your local currency.

Migaku has no free tier. In October 2026 its pricing page lists a 10-day trial, then $10 a month (20% off yearly), $15 a month for Early Access, or $499 once for lifetime. Every plan covers the same 11 languages, with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

So a fair test costs nothing. Language Reactor's free tier tells you whether you like watching with two subtitle lines. Migaku's trial tells you whether you'll actually do the reviews. Ten days is enough to answer the second one.

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.