For those who took both JLPT and Bunpro practice tests this December, what were the results on both?
I’m super curious to see how they compare one to another in practice.
I’d love to hear how it went for you all!
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I tried the N4 test on BP in November and got 90/99 (90.9%). I took the N4 JLPT in December and got 171/180 (95%). I was really intimidated by the listening section but somehow I did best on that section in both tests. I’m thinking of applying to the N3 test next year.
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Bunpro N2:
I took 3 practice tests, ranging from 71% pass to 80% pass. I finished the reading sections with time to spare, generally getting at 75ish% pass in the reading.
Real N2:
I passed with 97/180, and ran out of time for the reading. The real reading sections were SIGNIFICANTLY longer. Like 3x as long. I don’t necessarily think they were harder, but it was hard to gauge without sufficient time.
My strongest section was listening (about 40/60 iirc).
Random reflection: even though the reading and vocab parts are done together in N2, you still receive separate grades for those sections. It would be helpful if the Bunpro tests also reflected that- still take it as one section, but grade it as 2.
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Bunpro N3:
Took all five and scored an average of 85%
Real N3:
Passed at 118/180, did the worst on reading at 33/60, rest were 40+/60.
I got majorly caught off guard by the difficulty of the reading sections and ran out of time/panicked a little bit. Also if I paid better attention and knew grammar would be grouped with vocab and not reading for grading I wouldnt have spent so much time making sure my grammar was correct (since that was my weakest in bunpro tests).
Listening was very equal to the bunpro tests, I did space out on some of the questions as I did in the practice tests and also got distracted at the end when other groups left their rooms and we could see them through the glass door.
Vocab and Grammar were also similar but bunpro tests were much kinder since the answers werent as close together. Especially in vocab the real test would be like:
しゅ、しゅう、じゅ、じゅう
Where the bunpro questions were much more different.
As this was my first JLPT I was pretty nervous going in, the real test is just much more time consuming since you have to fill out the blobs/erase and have to stay concentrated overa a much longer period of time (due to two breaks at the N3).
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Took the N4 this year. Did the practice test the night before and got a 55 / 99 or 55.6%. I passed the test with a 90/180. I’d say it was pretty comparable to the actual test and is probably why I was able to take it without too much nervousness.
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Me whenever trying to actively listen while walking or on the train
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I found the N1 practice test I did on Bunpro to be significantly easier than the real thing (though I did pass ギリギリ). From what I’ve read on here, it seems like the lower levels are pretty close to the real difficulty and the higher you go the easier they are compared to the real test.
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I think what mettere is the difference in points.
For example if most people say “I passed Bunpro test with 75% and then real with 55%” we could assume that getting 75% on the Bunpro test is about as difficult as getting 55% on a real one (at least for that year dicembre test)
No, I can assure you that the content of the Bunpro N1 test was significantly easier than the real one to the point where I wouldn’t say it’s good preparation for it except for getting familiar with the format.
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Did pass N1 on Bunpro, ギリギリ didn’t pass the actual one. Same as other people say here, Bunpro has significantly easier questions.
I would add that the japanese way of doing tests is quite outdated and provokes nervousness to a big degree and this will factor into your performance enormously. You will take time filling out sheets with a pencil, it will be clumsy and you will lose focus constantly. The bunpro API makes it way more convenient than it is. You have no time at all to review your stuff, treat the first read and answer and the first hear and answer as the de-facto thing you will be submitting
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I mean if most people who score 170 on N2, score 110 on N1, we can say that N2 170 is roughly equal to 110 on N1, and it doesn’t matter if it’s much easier.
Here I use the same logic
How many points did you get on JLPT?
Something about 10% short of passing points. There was also some major happening the day before and I didn’t get proper sleep. I basically blame something other than JLPT for my failing in the reading sections in particular.
For reference I was passing Bunpro N1 tests with about ~75 points at the time.
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That doesn’t make sense, the N2 isn’t supposed to simulate the difficulty of the N1.
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A detailed feedback post I left about the N4 mock tests: Bunpro JLPT Tests! New Feature, Sep 20th 2025 - #231 by BreadmanNin
The general consensus seems to be that Bunpro’s N5 and N4 tests are very accurate, while the N3/2/1 tests seem to be too easy. Bunpro staff themselves have posted about wanting to increase the accuracy of their N3/2/1 mock tests in future releases.
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I think you are confusing correlation with the intended purpose of the tests, which is to simulate the real tests and thereby help people be adequately prepared for them. Even if I happened to pass both the mock and the real test, I actually wasn’t adequately prepared for it, even though my bunpro scores made me feel I was suitably prepared. It could have easily gone a lot worse for me considering my score was only 7 points over the line. I’m not blaming bunpro - I’m extremely grateful for these practice tests - just pointing out that it DOES matter if they are a lot easier. I look forward to more accurate tests in the future if possible 
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Want to weigh in by saying I don’t think it’s bad to have scaling difficulty on the N3 to N1 tests. Being able to kind of progress up a ladder of difficulty is value that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
If they add 5 more to each level as planned, it’s an opportunity to add more difficult tests and order them by difficulty. (i.e. N3, 1 Star to N3 5 Star or something like that)
I’d even go as far to say as adding a level between N2 and N1 with the highest frequency vocab and grammar would be substantial, especially considering the amount of kanji required doubles.
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Oh that’s a good idea!
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Another point is that the topics of the reading sections in the bunpro tests were very similar. So you would get comfortable reading about a certain topic like “Living on your own for the first time” or about your バイトand then on the real N3 I got hit by the text about the electricity generating floor panels at a train station, farming companies or like reading to your kids class or whatever that was.
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Yeah, that’s a good point- I noticed this too. Several of the readings were about the same topic across tests. To be fair, they were topics that routinely appear in JLPT ime, but more diversity is good.
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