What a level means

Every language in Lingara has levels 1 to 9. The picker looks identical whichever language you choose, and that uniformity is a deliberate lie of convenience: behind it, the nine levels mean rather different things depending on which language you are learning. This page is what is actually underneath.

Each language has a framework

Every target language carries a framework — a named proficiency scale — and a list of labels, one per native band of that scale. Four frameworks are in use:

HSK, for Mandarin and Traditional Chinese, with nine labels: HSK 1 through HSK 9.
JLPT, for Japanese, with five: N5, N4, N3, N2, N1 — note that JLPT counts down, so N5 is the beginner band and Lingara’s level 1 maps to it.
TOPIK, for Korean, with six: TOPIK 1 through TOPIK 6.
CEFR, for everything else, with six: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.

Where a level sits inside its framework’s labels, it is that label. Level 4 in Mandarin is HSK 4. Level 3 in French is B1. Level 2 in Japanese is N4. The number in the picker is an index into a real, published scale, and the vocabulary you are shown is the vocabulary of that band.

Above the framework, the levels are invented

The arithmetic is where it gets interesting. Mandarin has nine labels and nine levels, so all nine are real. French has six labels and nine levels. Japanese has five.

Levels above a framework’s last label are synthetic: there is no published band to draw them from, so they are generated as graded steps beyond the top of the scale. There are three such bands, indexed by how far above the ceiling a level sits, and they say different things:

One step above the top asks for low-frequency vocabulary a native adult meets in formal, academic and professional registers — words a reader at the top band would recognise but rarely produce — and explicitly rejects anything a learner at the top band is expected to know already.
Two steps above asks for rare, literary and technical vocabulary with nuanced connotation: items an educated native reader knows but seldom uses in speech.
Three or more steps above share the highest band, because there is no fourth register to invent. The level number still travels with the request, so a level 8 and a level 9 are not identical, but they are asking for the same kind of word.

So in French, levels 7, 8 and 9 sit above C2. In Korean, 7 to 9 sit above TOPIK 6. In Japanese, levels 6 through 9 sit above N1 — four levels above the ceiling, of which the top two share a band. In Mandarin and Traditional Chinese, none of them do: HSK 9 is a real HSK 9.

The bands are computed from the framework’s own labels rather than hard-coded, and the exclusion rule names a floor two labels below the top — “reject any word a B2 learner is expected to know” rather than “reject C2 words”. That choice is practical: a bar that names B2 is one a model can apply consistently, because B2 word lists are well defined, whereas C2 lists are fuzzy and the instruction quietly becomes meaningless.

Which levels you can pick

The level picker runs 1 to 9, but the top of it depends on your account:

Not signed in, the ceiling is level 3.
Signed in on the free plan, the ceiling is level 4 — the four free levels the pricing page refers to.
Signed in with Plus (including during your trial), the full 1 to 9 range is open.

The rule is one piece of code shared by every screen that offers a level, so the settings screen, the plan generator and the vocabulary page cannot disagree about what you are allowed to choose. One consequence worth knowing: a developer build with subscription checks bypassed is still treated as anonymous-free when logged out. Being signed in is part of the condition, not an afterthought.

Choosing one, honestly

The temptation is to pick the level you would like to be at. The scheduler makes this expensive in a specific way: every word in a plan becomes a flashcard, and a plan above your level produces a deck of cards you will grade Again, which resets their intervals and pulls their ease factors down toward the floor. A week of that is a daily deck full of words you have no hook for.

Start lower than feels right. The early levels of a language you partly know move fast — the words are familiar, the Goods and Easys push their intervals out quickly, and they stop appearing. That is the system working. Being shown words you half-know is precisely where spaced repetition earns its keep, and being shown words you do not know at all is where it stops.

If you are genuinely unsure, the vocabulary page is the cheap test: generate a list at a level and read it. Recognising most of it means go up. Recognising none of it means go down, whatever the framework’s own description of that band claims about you.

Levels across two languages

Levels are per language, not per account. Studying Mandarin at level 4 and Spanish at level 2 at the same time is normal, and progress in each is tracked separately. Changing the language you are learning does not erase anything in the language you were learning before.

Because frameworks differ, “level 4” in two languages is not a claim that your ability in them is equal. It is HSK 4 in one and B2 in the other, and those are not the same distance from where you started.

What a level is not

A level in Lingara is a setting that decides which vocabulary you are shown. It is not a test result, it is not a certification, and it does not correspond to having passed anything. If you need a real HSK, JLPT, TOPIK or CEFR statement, those come from the bodies that run them. What Lingara offers is practice material pitched at a band, and a picker that admits the band is the same shape in every language even when the scale underneath it is not.