The best apps to learn Chinese, by goal

Your stack depends on your goal

Most learners need three or four apps, one for each job. Which ones depends on what you want Chinese for.

Say you want to read, have 20 minutes a day and won't spend a cent. You'd get Mandarin Bean for stories, Pleco to look words up and Anki to keep them.

At 30 minutes a day, every goal's stack fits under $20 a month. Here's what we'd pick, next to a version that costs nothing:

Sources: each app's website or US App Store listing, checked 7 October 2026. Our picks at a budget of $25 a month, billed monthly; Anki's iPhone app is a one-off $24.99.

Start with the free version if you're not sure you'll stick with it. Once you've studied for a few weeks, pay for the one app you open most.

Your week won't look like ours, so build your own. Pick a goal, the time you have each day and a budget:

Notice that every budget keeps every job. Money buys a better app for a job, never a job you'd otherwise skip.

Chatbots agree on three apps

We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity for the best app for a beginner, and for the best free one, with web search on. Three apps came up in almost every answer.

Here's how often each app was named in their 34 answers:

Source: our sample of answers to "best app to learn Mandarin for a complete beginner" and "best free app to learn Chinese". Method under How we compared.

The chatbots are right about the core. Learners on r/ChineseLanguage say the same thing: start with a course, then add Pleco, flashcards and a reader.

Further down the list, SuperChinese and Pimsleur each came up in roughly a third of answers. SayMei came up in none.

What the answers skip is the job none of those three does well, which is speaking. And when we asked what a full set costs, one answer offered a range of about $20 to $50 a month, not a price.

Our tool adds up the real prices instead, for your goal and your budget.

Start free, then pay for one app

Every goal has a stack that costs nothing. The free tools aren't toys, either: Pleco and Anki stay useful long after your first course.

Most core jobs have a strong free option. Here's what $0 gets you in the apps people use most:

Sources: each app's website or US App Store listing, checked 7 October 2026.

Paying buys polish and structure, not access. Here's what each goal costs at 30 minutes a day, from the free stack to our top pick for every job:

Sources: prices as in the stack table above, billed monthly. The tool shows the stacks in between.

If you'll pay for one app, make it the one that plans your learning: the course, or your reader once you're past the basics.

Once you've chosen it, the billing matters too. Most paid apps cost far less per month on a yearly plan, but you pay up front for an app you might drop. Here's the same app on its two plans:

Sources: each app's website or US App Store listing. Yearly price divided by 12.

So try before you commit. Hack Chinese gives you 21 days free without a card, and Speak and Skritter give you 7.

Pay monthly for the first month, then switch to yearly if you're still opening the app every day. Yearly plans renew on their own, so set a reminder before the year is up. SayMei has no yearly plan.

Courses: HelloChinese first, Duolingo for free

A course decides what you learn next, so you don't have to. For most beginners the best one is HelloChinese, and the best free one is Duolingo.

HelloChinese

The fullest beginner course we found. Its units follow the HSK levels and mix listening, speech recognition and handwriting. It teaches Simplified or Traditional characters and works offline, its App Store listing says.

The free part is small. On r/ChineseLanguage, one learner finished it "in a matter of days", and another hit the paywall after about four levels.

• Pick it if: you're starting from zero and want one course that covers everything.
• Skip it if: you need it free, or you want to study in a browser.
• Price: Premium is $11.99 a month or $69.99 a year.

Duolingo

The most complete free course we found. Duolingo's Chinese course teaches Simplified characters, and we found its words cover most of HSK 1 to 4.

It's weak where Chinese is hard. Most answers are picked rather than recalled, speaking means reading a line aloud, and none of the screens in our review trains tones.

• Pick it if: you want a free daily habit to build around.
• Skip it if: you want HSK levels, Traditional characters or real speaking practice.
• Price: free with ads; Super removes them, from $9.99 a month.

SuperChinese

The course that runs furthest up the HSK levels. Its main course goes from zero to HSK 5, and every line you say gets a pronunciation score, marked character by character.

The CHAO plan adds role-plays with an AI tutor on top of the same course. Our HelloChinese vs SuperChinese guide compares the two courses in depth.

• Pick it if: you're aiming at an HSK level beyond the basics.
• Skip it if: you need Traditional characters, which its pages don't mention, or a browser version.
• Price: PLUS is $11.99 a month; CHAO, with the AI tutor, is $24.99.

Pimsleur

The pick for a trip. Pimsleur's Mandarin course is 30-minute audio lessons that you answer out loud, hands-free and offline. It starts with survival phrases.

It's built for listening and speaking, not reading and writing, so it suits travellers more than future readers. Our Pimsleur Mandarin review goes deeper.

• Pick it if: you want some spoken Chinese before a trip.
• Skip it if: you want to read and write.
• Price: $19.95 a month for one language on its website, after a free trial.

Pleco and Anki: free tools you'll keep

Two free apps outlast every course: a dictionary and a flashcard app. Install them on day one.

Pleco

Pleco is the dictionary learners recommend most, and its core is free. It comes with two dictionaries, handwriting input for characters you can't type, and audio. Once it's set up, it works offline.

Look up a word, and Pleco shows the tone that changes its meaning: buy, 买(mǎi), is one tone away from sell, 卖(mài).

The paid add-ons are one-off purchases. The Basic Bundle costs $29.99 and adds camera look-up, flashcards and stroke-order animations.

Anki

Anki is the free flashcard app that learners on r/ChineseLanguage keep recommending. It shows each card just before you'd forget it, and you can download shared HSK decks instead of making your own.

It's free on computers, the web and Android, and the official iPhone app is $24.99 once. The real cost is your time, because you choose and set up the decks yourself. Our guide to Anki and the Chinese flashcard apps compares it with Pleco, Skritter and Hack Chinese.

Hack Chinese

If you'd rather pay than set things up, Hack Chinese estimates the words you already know, then teaches the HSK words you don't. It's $18 a month, or $12 billed yearly.

It runs in a phone browser, with no app. It doesn't teach handwriting, and it says plainly that you can't become fluent with it alone.

Start with Pleco and Anki. Pay for Hack Chinese only if setting up Anki is what stops you.

Reading: Du Chinese, or Mandarin Bean for free

Graded readers turn words you've drilled into words you understand. They're stories written for your level, with audio and a tap-to-translate dictionary.

Du Chinese is the reader we'd start with: more than 3,000 stories and articles, each with native audio. A beginner story such as "I'm a Cat" uses just 150 characters.

It costs $14.99 a month, and some lessons are free, says its pricing page.

If you'd rather spend nothing, Mandarin Bean keeps all its graded readings free, with audio recorded by Chinese teachers. For the news at your level, The Chairman's Bao costs $11 a month.

We compare the reading apps side by side in our full guide to Chinese graded readers and story apps, our own SayMei Stories among them.

Start reading earlier than feels comfortable. Our guide to learning Chinese through stories explains what the research says about learning from them.

Handwriting needs its own app

Course apps let you trace characters, but writing from memory is a separate skill. Spotting 谢(xiè), the "thank" in thank you, is easy. Writing its 12 strokes in order, from memory, is not.

Skritter is built for that job. You write each character on the screen, and it grades every stroke as you go. Its decks follow the HSK levels, the new HSK 3.0 lists included.

It costs $14.99 a month, and guest accounts keep a few decks free.

Two free extras help. Pleco animates the stroke order of 500 characters for free, and our worksheet generator prints practice sheets for any word, such as character, 字(zì).

You may need less handwriting than you think. By HSK 6, the new syllabus asks you to read about 1,940 characters but write only 700, as our HSK 3.0 guide explains.

Speaking is where apps fall short

Course apps have you read lines aloud. Answering a waiter who asks 几位(jǐ wèi), "how many of you?", takes something that talks back: an AI tutor or a person.

Here's what each kind of speaking practice costs:

Sources: italki at the median Chinese teacher's $20 an hour, from our read of its directory; other prices from each app's website or US App Store listing.

Free conversation is easy to find. Gemini Live talks with you in Mandarin in Google's phone app, and HelloTalk pairs you with native speakers. Neither plans a lesson or corrects you unless you ask.

Structured speaking costs money. Speak is a speaking-first course from zero to B1, SuperChinese CHAO adds role-plays to its HSK course, and SayMei gives you spoken lessons sorted by HSK level.

A tutor on italki costs far more, but a trained ear hears tone habits that apps miss. One caveat: we found no public test showing that any AI app reliably checks your tones.

We compare nine AI tutors in the best AI apps to learn Chinese, and human tutors in online Chinese tutors compared.

Where SayMei fits, and where it doesn't

Our lessons: short spoken lessons with an AI teacher, in your browser. SayMei leads on one job, and it's the wrong pick for several others.

It's the cheapest way to get spoken lessons sorted by HSK level: $5.99 a month for 200 minutes, as our pricing page shows.

Each lesson takes 5 to 10 minutes and practises one grammar point. Mei Lin plays the waiter or the hotel clerk, and corrects you as you go.

• Pick SayMei if: you want speaking practice that follows the HSK levels, cheaply, with nothing to install.
• Skip it if: you want a full course, a dictionary or free unlimited flashcards. HelloChinese, Pleco and Anki do those jobs better.
• Skip it if: you want hours of talk a day. 200 minutes is about 6½ minutes a day, and ChatGPT Go allows far more for $8.
• Skip it if: you need an app or offline use. SayMei runs only in a browser, and it gives corrections rather than pronunciation scores.

Some of what we make is free with no account. Our HSK vocabulary lists have every word with pinyin and audio, plus a CSV you can import into Anki.

Apps that didn't make our stack

A few well-known names didn't make the stack, for different reasons:

• ChineseSkill is close to HelloChinese, at $11.99 a month. Pick it if you want its separate Taiwan Mandarin or Cantonese course.
• LingoDeer teaches many languages, Chinese among them, from $14.99 a month. It costs more than HelloChinese and comes up far less often in recommendations.
• Talkpal, Langua, Pingo and Praktika are AI conversation apps, covered in our AI tutor comparison.
• Babbel doesn't teach Chinese. Its 14 languages don't include it.

We didn't review apps for children; they need their own comparison.

What to do next

• Pick your goal first. It decides which extras you need, so set it in the tool above.
• Install the free three. Duolingo or HelloChinese's free lessons, plus Pleco and Anki, cover the basics.
• Pay for one app after a few weeks. Choose the course or reader you open daily, and go yearly once you're sure.
• Start speaking in week one. Practise with free AI chat, and get corrected by a tutor or spoken lessons.
• Add the specialist your goal needs. Du Chinese to read, Skritter to write, SuperChinese for the HSK.

If speaking is your goal, compare the AI tutors side by side in our guide to the best AI apps to learn Chinese.