10ten Reader vs Yomitan vs immit: Which Popup Dictionary Should You Use? (2026)
You're reading an article in Japanese, you hover a word you don't know, and a little popup window tells you what it means. That single move, the hover lookup, is the backbone of how most intermediate learners read native Japanese text on the web. The question is which tool you put behind it.
Three names come up most often: Yomitan, 10ten Reader, and immit. Each one is a browser extension that does the hover-and-define part, turning a string of Japanese words into instant dictionary definitions. Where they split is what happens after you find the word. This is a comparison from someone who used Yomitan plus Anki for months before helping build immit, so I'll be specific about what each tool is good at and where the gaps are. No tool here is bad. They're built for different kinds of reader.
If you want the most customizable popup dictionary and you enjoy configuring your tools, Yomitan is the community standard for good reason. If you want a clean, lightweight popup with almost no setup and you already have a separate way to remember words, 10ten Reader is the simplest drop-in. If you want lookup and spaced-repetition review to live in one tool so you don't have to bolt Anki onto the side, immit is built for that loop.
That's the whole decision in three sentences. The rest of this post is the detail behind it.
Yomitan is the open-source successor to Yomichan, and it's used by over 100,000 learners. It's free, it's deeply customizable, and the immersion community trusts it by default. You hover a word, you get an instant lookup while you read, and you can wire it into a vast ecosystem of external dictionaries (JP-EN, a monolingual Japanese-Japanese dictionary, specialized sets, frequency lists) by importing dictionary files from custom sources yourself.
Yomitan's real strength is depth. It deinflects conjugated verbs and adjectives out of the box, so 食べました resolves back to 食べる (immit does this too). It can show pitch accent information when you install the right dictionaries, and it provides kanji definitions and reference materials alongside the word entry. It handles name entries for people and places, has on-demand audio playback for definitions, and you can drive most of it from the keyboard once you've learned the shortcuts.
The Yomitan popup appears on hover and disappears when you move away, which keeps reading uncluttered. Inside that popup is where the Anki integration lives: a button sends the current entry to Anki as a flashcard while you browse.
This is also where the honesty comes in. Yomitan does not have its own spaced-repetition system. The "create SRS flashcards while browsing" workflow means Yomitan hands the card to Anki, and Anki handles the review schedule. So the full setup is the Yomitan add-on for lookup, plus Anki installed, plus AnkiConnect bridging them, plus a card template you've configured. For people who enjoy that configuration as part of the hobby, it's powerful and worth it. For people who want to read Japanese rather than maintain a tooling stack, the setup is a real tax.
10ten Japanese Reader, formerly Rikaichamp and itself a successor to the old Rikaikun line, is the minimalist's pick. It's an actively maintained browser add-on that works on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari, and across various platforms including mobile devices. It will update automatically, refreshing its dictionaries twice a week, so the data stays current without you doing anything. ChatGPT and Reddit threads both name it repeatedly as the closest no-fuss replacement for Yomitan.
It does a lot in a small footprint. It recognizes a wide range of grammatical forms, including irregular verbs, ぬ verbs, causative-passive constructions, and continuous forms, and it picks the better match when a string of characters could resolve more than one way. It displays pitch accent information for words and provides kanji definitions with reference materials and kanji components. It handles vertical text and SVG images, works inside Google Docs, supports non-English dictionaries, and you can trigger it from a context menu or the toolbar. It even converts Japanese era years to Gregorian years and square measurements (down to square meters) as you hover, which is a nice touch when you're reading news or recipes. It won't do automatic translation of whole pages, and it doesn't try to; it's a word-level reading aid, not a machine translator.
For flashcards, 10ten lets you copy entries to the clipboard in tab-delimited format, which you then import into Anki or another SRS app. So like Yomitan, it's lookup-first: the review step lives in a different tool. 10ten is preferred when you want strong kanji and grammar recognition without extensive setup, and you already have a home for the words you save.
immit is a popup Japanese-English dictionary with FSRS review built in, and it ships as a Chrome extension, with an optional desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux. You hover a word, conjugated or not, the definition appears right there, you save it with one click together with the sentence it came from, and the review scheduling happens inside immit. No Anki, no AnkiConnect, no card template to configure.
The structural difference from the other two tools is that immit doesn't stop at lookup. With Yomitan or 10ten, the path is hover, find the word, send it somewhere else, review it somewhere else. With immit, the same tool that shows you the word also brings it back to you later. Spaced repetition improves long-term memory retention by scheduling each word to return just before you'd forget it, and immit's wedge is that this review loop is built into the dictionary instead of bolted on. That's the workflow continuity idea: discovery and retention in one place, instead of two tools stitched together.
A few specifics worth naming honestly:
immit's lookup is word-focused. The popup shows the headword, its reading (furigana on the headword), part of speech, definition, an example sentence, and a pronunciation audio button you can click to hear the word. It supports JP-EN, EN-JP, monolingual JP-JP, and EN-EN directions, and it works on any web page, on YouTube captions, and inside input fields. It works offline, because the dictionary lives on your device.
It also ships a second lookup surface most people don't know about: the Pocket Dictionary, a pinned dictionary window that stays in the corner of the page while you read. You can type a word to search it without leaving the page, and you can review flashcards right there during a reading break. It's a dictionary you read alongside, not one that takes over the screen.
immit is free: lookup, save, review, and sync are all included, and there is no paid plan. An account is only needed if you want sync and review on your phone through the web app.
If you want to try the loop yourself, you can add immit to Chrome free; the desktop app is optional.
The pattern in that table is the whole story. Yomitan and 10ten win on lookup depth and customization. immit wins on having the review step built in. Pick based on which of those two problems is the one actually slowing you down.
Choose Yomitan if you read intensively, you want to mine vocabulary into a finely-tuned Anki deck, and configuring your stack is part of the fun rather than a chore.
Choose 10ten Reader if you want a fast, clean popup with strong kanji and grammar recognition, minimal setup, and you already have an SRS habit you're happy with.
Choose immit if the part that keeps breaking for you is the handoff: you look words up fine, but they never make it into review, or your Anki deck has become a graveyard you dread opening. immit closes that gap by keeping lookup and review in the same place.
There's no single winner here, and anyone telling you there is hasn't watched enough people actually use these tools. The right popup dictionary is the one that fixes your specific bottleneck in language learning.
There isn't one best for everyone. Yomitan is best if you want maximum customization and external dictionary support. 10ten Reader is best for a lightweight, low-setup popup with strong grammar recognition. immit is best if you want lookup and spaced-repetition review in a single tool with no Anki setup. Match the tool to whichever step in your reading workflow is slowing you down.
Neither is strictly better. 10ten is lighter and needs almost no setup, with strong kanji and grammar recognition out of the box, and it runs on Safari and mobile platforms where Yomitan's reach is thinner. Yomitan is more customizable and supports a much larger ecosystem of external dictionaries and custom sources, at the cost of more configuration. 10ten suits casual reading without setup; Yomitan suits intensive vocabulary mining.
Not on its own. The Yomitan popup can create flashcards while you browse through its Anki integration, but it sends them to Anki, and Anki handles the spaced-repetition scheduling. So the SRS lives in Anki, not in Yomitan. You need both tools, plus AnkiConnect, for the full loop.
Yes. With Yomitan or 10ten Reader you can look words up without any SRS at all, though you'd then have no review system. immit is built for this case specifically: it has FSRS review built in, so you can save words and review them without ever installing Anki.
Yes. Hover lookup, one-click save, FSRS review, and offline use are all free with no account. A free account adds sync across devices and review on your phone through the web app. There is no paid plan.
Yomitan runs on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. 10ten Reader adds Safari and mobile platforms on top of those. immit is currently a Chrome extension (plus an optional desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux); a Firefox build isn't available yet. If Safari or Firefox support is a hard requirement, 10ten or Yomitan is the answer today.
No. That's the core difference. Yomitan expects you to import dictionaries from custom sources and, for flashcards, set up Anki and AnkiConnect. immit ships with a production-grade dictionary built in and the SRS already wired up, so there is nothing to wire up between install and first lookup.
