Hi All,

Some kanjis are unique and at low risk of confusion with others, but others are easily confused: they look very much alike (few strokes only vary), their meaning is so close and sometimes their yomi are also similar.

Is there any list of most confusing kanjis one can rey on to specifically train on those?

https://niai.mrahhal.net/similar

You search for a kanji, and it will give you others that are kinda similar to it.

https://lingaku.com/jpn/chars/radicals

This is a list of kanji by radicals. Having a common component makes kanji similar. So it is somewhat related to your request, I suppose.

I typed in 美, 実 did not come up.

I typed in 実, 美 did not come up.

I type in 待, it does get 持, but not 侍.

I type in 持, it does get 待, but not 侍.

I type in 侍, and a bunch of kanji that look nothing like it appear.

Like, it's not completely worthless, but this thing feels like it was programmed in half an afternoon with AI and hasn't actually been tested.

sometimes their yomi are also similar

This is often by design. A lot of characters have a phonetic component that hints at its (on'yomi) pronunciation. One thing that helped me distinguish between similar-looking characters is writing them out. Every time I look up a kanji, I (air) write it once. Doing so helped me focus on the details in the character, so I learned to recognize the little differences.

this is from before ai.

There's an appendix in the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course book that lists sets of "look alike" kanji.

unfortunately once you get to a high enough level there is a lookalike for just about every kanji and you just gotta be able to know the difference. 随・髄、日・曰、墾・懇、郊・郭、侍・待、 all of these are just from what i have been studying recently. i really recommend learning vocab words and the kanji in them rather than every kanji and its independent readings. also kanji looking similar and often being read similar is intentional, after some time you might get to the point where you can correctly guess how a kanji you’ve never seen before is read

Those similar kanji are often used in completely different vocabulary, so the probability of mixing them up in real life is not that high.

士　土

候　侯

末　未

柿　杮

柿　杮

In this case, 杮 is extremely rare to the point that it's effectively not even Japanese. It's not even on Kanken 1kyuu. (This is my first time to even see/hear of this one.)

A lot of websites such as wanikani display this information on their UI directly

You can try this one

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PikaPikaGems/kanji-heatmap-data/refs/heads/main/raw/similarity/dkanjistat.json

It is the dataset that is used to search for similarity like here

There are also other datasets like
https://lars.yencken.org/datasets/kanji-confusion/

I also learned about that one a couple of months ago and I have never seen in in the wild (or even if I have, I assumed it was kaki). I don't think I have even heard the word こけら itself in real life. No chance of mixing up those two in reality.

The most similar I've come across recently is 練る and 縛る, although context can usually help you out a lot with this pair.