The Best Apps to Learn Chinese in 2026 (Honest Comparison)

By the HanziWise team · Published 2026-09-25

There is no single "best app to learn Chinese" — there are six good apps that are best at six different jobs. This review tells you which job each one does, what it costs, where it falls short, and the stack we actually recommend. No affiliate links, no sponsored placements: we don't take commissions on these picks, so the opinions below are free to be honest. Prices are approximate as of late 2026 — check current pricing before subscribing.

How we judged these apps

Four criteria, in order of importance. Curriculum quality: does the app teach — with explanations — or just drill? Skill coverage: listening, speaking, reading, and writing are different skills; most apps secretly cover only two. Retention design: is there real spaced repetition, or just a streak counter? Value: what does the free tier actually include, and what does the paid tier cost per month of serious use? Every verdict below comes back to these four.

The quick answer

HelloChinese — best structured course for beginners

What it is: A full Mandarin curriculum designed for English speakers, from absolute zero to roughly HSK 4. Lessons mix listening, pinyin, grammar explanations that actually explain, character drills, and a speech-recognition engine that scores your tones word by word.

What using it feels like: The tone trainer is the standout — you speak a syllable, it shows your pitch contour against the target, and it catches flat third tones that most apps wave through. The character lessons teach stroke order by having you trace on the touchscreen in the correct sequence, and it fails you when you cheat the order. That part is genuinely good.

Where it falls short: Writing happens on glass with your finger. There is no way to print a practice sheet, no grid-paper work, and no proportion training — so users typically finish units able to recognize and trace, but not write from memory on paper. The free tier is usable but throttles you; Premium (~$9/month or ~$60/year) is the real product.

Best for: beginners who want one app to carry them for a year. Our verdict: the default recommendation for serious starters.

Duolingo — best free habit-builder (and that's all)

What it is: The gamified everyone-knows-it app. Its Chinese course teaches vocabulary and sentence patterns through short tap-and-match exercises.

What using it feels like: Frictionless and fun for the first month. Then the cracks show: grammar is never really explained, exercises lean on word-bank tapping instead of production, and "writing" Chinese means selecting characters from tiles — you can finish entire units without ever producing a character yourself. Tone feedback is lenient to the point of uselessness.

Where it falls short: Depth. It's a 30-foot-wide, one-inch-deep course. Fine for tourism phrases and keeping Chinese warm; not a path to HSK 3.

Best for: casual learners, kids, and anyone whose real goal is "15 minutes a day, keep the streak." For a detailed head-to-head, see HelloChinese vs Duolingo.

Pleco — the dictionary you will install eventually anyway

What it is: The Chinese-English dictionary. Not a course — the reference tool the entire serious-learner community standardizes on.

What using it feels like: Look up any character or word and get definitions, example sentences, audio, stroke order diagrams, and decomposition into components. The free tier covers everything most learners need for years. Paid add-ons (OCR camera lookup, document reader, enhanced dictionaries, ~$10–100 one-time) turn it into a reading machine.

Where it falls short: It teaches nothing by itself — it answers questions, it doesn't pose them. Its flashcard add-on works but feels dated next to Anki.

Best for: everyone, from month one onward. Install it today regardless of what else you choose.

Skritter — best app for actually writing characters

What it is: A dedicated handwriting trainer. You write characters on the touchscreen; it grades each stroke's shape and order, and schedules reviews with spaced repetition.

What using it feels like: Brutally honest in the best way. Skritter knows when your 横 slants or your stroke order is wrong, and it will make you redo the stroke. Its SRS scheduling means characters come back right before you would have forgotten them. The vocabulary decks cover major textbooks and HSK.

Where it falls short: Price (~$15/month, ~$100/year) — the steepest on this list — and the same glass-screen limitation as every app: no printable grids, no pen-on-paper proportion work. We recommend pairing it with printed worksheets: trace on paper with our Worksheet Generator, and use Skritter for stroke-order feedback and scheduling.

Best for: learners who specifically care about handwriting — HSK candidates, students with written exams, and anyone living in China who fills out forms.

Anki — best for never forgetting vocabulary

What it is: The open-source spaced-repetition flashcard system. Not Chinese-specific, but the shared deck ecosystem (HSK decks, textbook decks) is enormous.

What using it feels like: Utilitarian. Cards come due on a schedule tuned to your memory; you grade yourself honestly; retention compounds. Twenty minutes a day with a good deck is how thousands of learners hold 5,000+ words in their heads.

Where it falls short: Setup friction (deck quality varies wildly), zero instruction, and it trains recognition far better than production. Do recall with a pen — write the answer before flipping the card — and pair it with the memory methods in our memorization guide.

Best for: intermediate learners maintaining a growing vocabulary; free on desktop/Android, ~$25 one-time on iOS.

ChineseSkill — best budget alternative to HelloChinese

What it is: The other Chinese-specific course app, covering similar ground: pinyin, tones, grammar, characters, listening games.

What using it feels like: Lighter and slightly rougher than HelloChinese, but the curriculum is solid through HSK 3, it includes basic character-tracing drills, and Premium runs cheaper (~$6/month). Its pinyin chart with audio for every initial/final combination is a genuinely handy reference.

Where it falls short: Less polish, weaker speech recognition, thinner grammar explanations, and the same no-printable-worksheet gap.

Best for: beginners on a tight budget who find HelloChinese too expensive.

The stack we recommend

• Serious beginner: HelloChinese (course) + Pleco (dictionary). Add Anki at month three.
• Casual learner: Duolingo for the habit + Pleco for lookups. Upgrade to HelloChinese when you get serious.
• Writing-focused learner: Skritter for stroke-order feedback + free printable worksheets from HanziWise for pen-on-paper grid work — the combination covers what neither does alone. Our Chinese writing practice guide has the full method.
• Budget learner: ChineseSkill + Anki (free) + Pleco (free) + our free worksheets. Total cost: $0.

One honest footnote about every app on this list: none of them will hand you a sheet of grid paper. Writing Chinese well still ends where it always has — pen, paper, and fifteen focused minutes a day.

What we deliberately left out

A few popular names are missing on purpose. Tutor marketplaces (italki, Preply) are services, not apps — though a weekly tutor is the single best upgrade once you can hold a basic conversation. Immersion readers and graded-reading apps (Du Chinese, The Chairman's Bao) are excellent but belong to a reading-tools comparison, not this one. And AI chatbots are promising conversation partners but not curriculum: they will talk with you happily at whatever level you already have, which is exactly the problem. If you want us to cover any of these categories in a future review, the contact page reaches a human.

Frequently asked questions