The best books to learn Chinese, measured against the HSK word lists

Pick the book that fits your goal

No series is best at everything. Each of these is the best fit for one goal, by our count and its price:

Sources: Cheng & Tsui, Purple Culture and Google Play Books, US dollars, checked 11 October 2026. Shipping is extra.

The New HSK Course gets the exam slot because the exam's organisers helped make it. If the HSK is your main goal, our guide to HSK books goes much deeper.

Check where any book sits on the HSK lists

Textbook publishers rarely say how their words line up with the new HSK lists, so we counted. Pick a series and a book to see where its words fall, and how much of the exam's list you'll have met by the end:

The bars measure words only. Grammar, listening and reading practice matter as much, and no word list can show them.

A first year covers about half the HSK 1 to 3 words

Whichever series you choose, a first year of study leaves big gaps in the exam's early lists. In our count, a first year teaches between 53% and 60% of the HSK 1 to 3 words.

Here's how much of that list each series has taught by the end of its first year, which is two books, or three of the slimmer HSK Standard Course:

Source: our count of each book's lesson word lists against SayMei's HSK 3.0 word list. How we counted.

An easy compound is a word made of two words the book already teaches, like they, 他们(tāmen). Count those as known and a first year reaches about two thirds.

The rest are mostly everyday words. Cinema, 电影院(diànyǐngyuàn), and milk, 牛奶(niúnǎi), are both HSK 1 words, and neither is in the first-year Integrated Chinese word lists we checked.

So if the exam matters to you, pair your textbook with a word list built on the 2025 syllabus. If it doesn't, don't worry about the gaps: a course teaches what you need to talk about your own life.

Textbooks teach words the exam saves for later

A course is written around topics, not exam lists. In the first books of the three general courses, roughly one word in six comes from HSK 4 to 6.

Here's where each series' first book sits on the HSK 3.0 levels:

Source: our count, as above. The rest of each book's words are HSK 7 to 9 words or on no HSK list.

Integrated Chinese's first book follows students at an American college. It teaches dorm, 宿舍(sùshè), which the HSK holds back to level 5, and major, 专业(zhuānyè), a level 4 word.

The HSK Standard Course does the opposite: almost every word in its first book is an HSK 1 word. Neither approach is wrong. If you live in a dorm, you need the word for it this week.

Integrated Chinese is the college standard

Integrated Chinese is a four-volume course from Cheng & Tsui, a Boston publisher. Its publisher says Volume 1 is designed to cover the first semester of college Chinese, and the first two volumes come in Simplified or Traditional editions at the same price.

It's also the most expensive series here: the first textbook and its workbook cost $105.98 together, before an optional character workbook. The audio is a free download.

By its words, the whole series reaches about HSK 3. In our count, all four volumes teach two thirds of the HSK 1 to 3 words and half of HSK 1 to 4.

One caveat: we measured the third edition's word lists, the newest in the public catalog we used. The fourth edition on sale today updated its content, so its exact counts may differ.

• Choose it if you're in a college class, or you want Traditional characters with a full set of workbooks.
• Skip it if money is tight. The next series teaches a little more of the HSK lists for less.

New Practical Chinese Reader gives the most for the money

New Practical Chinese Reader comes from Beijing Language and Culture University Press. Its US distributor says the first book is designed to cover the first term of a three-year course.

In our count, its first two books teach the most HSK 1 to 3 words of the four series, about 60%. All six books teach 69% of the HSK 1 to 4 words.

The newest edition covers only the first two books so far. The other four are still sold in a revised earlier edition, which kept its texts and corrected minor errors.

Price depends on where you buy. Cheng & Tsui sells the first book for $53.99, while Purple Culture, an online Chinese bookshop, lists the same book for $21.76.

• Choose it if you're teaching yourself and want one long course, with six books that run well past the exam's beginner levels.
• Skip it if you want Traditional characters. Its Traditional edition dates from 2007, and Purple Culture lists it as out of stock.

The HSK course books are built for the exam

Two series follow the HSK's own word lists, and they're the cheapest textbooks here. They teach the words and grammar each level of the exam tests.

The HSK Standard Course, written for the old HSK, costs $13.26 for its first book on sale at Purple Culture. After three books, in our count, it has taught 59% of the new HSK 1 to 3 words.

The New HSK Course is the official series for HSK 3.0, the new exam that starts this December. Levels 1 to 4 are out, at $17.94 a textbook.

We couldn't measure the New HSK Course: its publisher doesn't post the word list. Our HSK books guide compares both series level by level and builds an exam stack.

• Choose them if the exam is your goal, or you want the cheapest complete course.
• Skip them if you need one series past HSK 4 on the new exam: the New HSK Course stops there for now.

A Course in Contemporary Chinese teaches Taiwan's Mandarin

A Course in Contemporary Chinese, 當代中文課程(Dāngdài Zhōngwén Kèchéng), is written by the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University. Its 2nd edition prints lessons in Traditional characters, with Simplified versions in an appendix.

Its first year teaches 56% of the HSK 1 to 3 words, close to the others. The difference is vocabulary: taxi is 計程車(jìchéngchē), while the HSK teaches the mainland word, 出租车(chūzūchē).

We measured the first edition's lists, the newest in the catalog. We couldn't check a current price, because the publisher's shop and Taiwan's big bookshops blocked our checks.

• Choose it if you'll study in Taiwan, or want Taiwan's everyday words and Traditional characters.
• Skip it if you're preparing for the HSK, which tests the mainland's words, unless you add a word list.

Assimil is hard to buy in English

Assimil courses are built around a short daily lesson with audio, followed by a "second wave" that sends you back over earlier lessons.

The English edition is the problem. On 11 October 2026, Assimil's own shop listed its English Chinese e-course and the audio for Chinese With Ease as no longer in stock.

The Chinese courses it still sells come with French, Italian or German instructions. We couldn't measure any of them, because no word list is public.

If you read one of those languages, it's worth a look. Otherwise, pick one of the textbooks above.

Start graded readers at about HSK 3

Graded readers are stories written with a limited vocabulary. Mandarin Companion grades its books by how many different characters they use, from 150 at its easiest level, Breakthrough, to 450 at Level 2.

We counted each book's different words against the HSK lists. If you know the HSK 1 to 3 words, you know about 96% of the different words in a typical Breakthrough book.

Here's how much of each reader you'd know at two HSK levels:

Source: our count of each book's word list, easy compounds counted as known. Journey to the West is Imagin8 Press's series. How we counted.

This is a strict measure. It counts each different word once, but story words repeat. Imagin8's own ratings count characters in the running text instead, and find that after HSK 2, readers know over 90% of them in most of its sets.

A chatbot we asked put Mandarin Companion Level 1 at HSK 1 to 2 and suggested a Level 3, which has no books yet. By the word lists, Level 1 suits a reader who knows the HSK 3 words. The ebooks we checked cost $7.99 each on Google Play.

Chinese Breeze, 汉语风(Hànyǔ Fēng), is the cheapest series, at about $4 a book from Purple Culture. Its levels start at 300 words. We couldn't measure it, because the catalog holds only each book's glossary.

Imagin8's Journey to the West, 西游记(Xīyóujì), retells one long classic as a series of short books. Its first book uses 512 words, but many are story words like demon, 妖怪(yāoguài), so save it for after Mandarin Companion.

• Choose Mandarin Companion if you want your first whole book, and you know most HSK 3 words.
• Choose Chinese Breeze if price matters most, or you want more levels to climb.
• Skip Journey to the West until a Mandarin Companion Level 2 book feels easy.

For reading apps and online libraries, see our graded readers guide.

Where you buy changes the price more than which book

Books printed in China often cost far less from an online Chinese bookshop. The same New Practical Chinese Reader set costs less than half as much from Purple Culture as from Cheng & Tsui.

Here's what a first textbook and its workbook cost, by series and shop. The same set is $33.45 or $89.98, depending on where you buy it:

Sources: each shop's product pages. Purple Culture's prices for New Practical Chinese Reader and the HSK Standard Course were sale prices that day.

Shipping changes the sum. Purple Culture's delivery to the US takes 5 to 40 business days, depending on the service you pay for, and it prices shipping at checkout.

Integrated Chinese is published in the US, so those savings don't apply to it. If you're in a class, ask whether a used copy of the same edition will do.

Where SayMei fits

SayMei doesn't sell a textbook. We make tools that work alongside one, and some free extras that suit any series.

• Word lists: our free HSK lists follow the 2025 syllabus, as PDF or CSV, with no sign-up. They fill the gaps the charts above show.
• Writing practice: free HSK writing workbooks cover every HSK 1 to 6 word on the 2025 list, with no sign-up.
• Reading: SayMei Stories has 166 graded books for $2.99 a month, and the first two chapters of every story are free.
• Speaking: lessons with Mei Lin, our AI teacher, cost $5.99 a month for 200 minutes, and you can try a lesson free first.

Where we lose: we have no printed course with grammar chapters, our stories stop at about HSK 4, and Stories has no offline reading. If you want a book on your desk, buy one of the series above.

What to do next

• Pick one series and finish book 1. Switching early costs you more than any small difference in word lists.
• Check your book in the tool above. It shows how much of the HSK list you'll still need to fill.
• Buy China-printed books from an online Chinese bookshop if you can wait for shipping.
• Start a graded reader once you know about 1,000 words. Mandarin Companion's Breakthrough books are the gentlest start we measured.
• Say every dialogue out loud. Your textbook's audio is a model to copy, not just to hear.

Not sure what level you're at now? Our free level test takes about five minutes.