HelloChinese review: what Premium and Premium+ actually get you

Strong for starting out and reading, weak for talking

HelloChinese does a beginner's jobs well and leaves out the hardest one: speaking freely. We read its listing, its release notes and a year and a half of learner threads, then scored each part:

Sources: HelloChinese's App Store listing and release notes, and learner threads on r/ChineseLanguage. Each row is explained below.

If you want a course that gets you reading and writing, we think HelloChinese is one of the strongest. If you want to talk, plan on a second tool from day one.

The course now runs past the new HSK 4

HelloChinese's main course is a path of short lessons from zero to upper intermediate. In August it grew again, and HelloChinese says it now covers 2,500+ words and 430+ grammar points.

That's the new course, which learners started getting in April 2025. The old course, built on the HSK used before 2021, is still in the app, and the team says it will stay.

We set the new course's size against the word lists of the new HSK exam:

Source: HelloChinese's August 2026 App Store release notes; the 2025 HSK syllabus that the new exams use from 13 December, counted in our HSK 3.0 guide. HelloChinese doesn't publish its word list, so this compares sizes, not the words themselves.

One caveat if you're aiming at the exam. HelloChinese's team said its stories and new course follow the 2021 HSK standard. The new exam's own syllabus uses smaller lists at every level. Its HSK 1 has 300 words, where the standard has 500.

So we'd treat HelloChinese's HSK labels as a guide, not as exam levels. For a beginner, the course is still a long road: roughly the first four levels of the new exam.

Each unit pairs new words with a story

The new course alternates two kinds of unit, as learners describe it. A content unit teaches a handful of new words and grammar, then drills them. A "pit stop" unit follows, and it's the clever part.

Each pit stop has three parts:

• A chapter of one running story, written with the words you just learned.
• A speaking lesson, which HelloChinese added to every pit stop in October 2025.
• A spaced review that brings back older words before you forget them.

Teacher Talks explain what drills can't. One learner's example: why you can say "my mom" as 我妈妈(wǒ māma), without the 的(de) in 我的妈妈(wǒ de māma).

Some practice rounds target the mistakes English speakers make. In one question the team described, you have to resist translating the "is" in "the restaurant isn't at the front". Chinese uses 在(zài), "to be at", for where something is, so 是(shì), "to be", is the trap.

The flip side is repetition. Several learners say every level runs the same exercise types with new words, and one switched apps near the end because of it.

We'd set a pace you can keep. One learner who did a pair of units a day, a little over an hour, called it a simple daily goal.

Speaking practice means repeating set lines

HelloChinese checks your pronunciation with speech recognition. You say a set line into the microphone, and each character turns green or red. A learner adds that you can then play your recording next to the model's.

We'd call that pronunciation practice, not conversation. In a July thread, a Premium+ user called it pronunciation practice and shadowing: nothing asks you to form your own sentences.

HelloChinese's App Store images now promise more. This one is headed "Practice Speaking with AI", yet it shows the same read-aloud drill, with one character marked red:

One Premium user reported AI conversation lessons in the first unit, which you can skip. The team said in 2025 that it was building voice conversation practice, and was wary of letting AI judge spoken answers. We found no page that says what has shipped.

We also found no public test of how well it judges tones. Speech recognition guesses the most likely word, so a slip can pass. Say "sugar", 糖(táng), with a level tone, and you've said "soup", 汤(tāng).

A review of 15 studies found that speech-recognition practice helps learners' individual sounds a lot, but their pitch only a little. Even a native speaker in the July thread said the exercise sometimes marks them wrong.

We see a similar limit in listening. HelloChinese offers 2,000+ clips of native speakers, but learners describe them as a few seconds long and sometimes noisy. The story audio is better listening practice.

Our advice: use the drills to tune your sounds, and find conversation elsewhere. Our guide to learning tones shows how to train your ear.

The graded stories are the best part

HelloChinese's graded stories are the feature learners praise most, and we'd call them its best. They're short stories written at your level, with audio, and HelloChinese says it has more than 1,000.

Its team says people write, review, record and translate every story. A learner who read almost all of them counted about 900, in 70 series from HSK 1 to HSK 5. They called the library worth every cent.

Here's a story page from HelloChinese's own listing:

We like two touches for beginners:

• Pinyin you can turn down. Show pinyin above every character, or just the tone marks, which one learner called a godsend for remembering tones.
• Reading from the start. Each pit stop adds a chapter of a story, so you're reading from early in the course.

The catch is the price. Some stories are free, but the full library comes with Premium+, which costs about twice as much a year as Premium.

If reading is your main goal, we'd compare it with dedicated reading apps first. Our comparison of graded readers covers 12 of them, and our stories guide lists free ones by level.

Writing characters is built in

HelloChinese teaches you to write characters, not just recognize them. You trace each one stroke by stroke on a grid:

We think that's worth having. In one experiment with adult learners, writing characters by hand built memory for their shape and meaning, while typing pinyin built only their sound.

Premium+ adds a separate Characters course that teaches the parts characters are built from, by theme, according to FluentU's review. You can learn in Simplified characters or in Traditional, the script of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and courses work offline once downloaded.

If you want to read and write Chinese, not just get by in speech, we'd count this as a real strength.

Premium covers the course; Premium+ adds the stories

We found two paid plans on top of a short free start. Premium opens the course, and Premium+ adds the stories. Here's what each includes:

Source: HelloChinese's US App Store listing, checked 11 October 2026. The App Store doesn't name Premium+ plan lengths; they and the plan contents come from FluentU's review, updated January 2025, whose prices match today's.

If you're sure you'll stay, pay yearly. We added up a year of Premium, by how you pay:

Source: HelloChinese's US App Store listing. The sale price is one the App Store lists at exactly 30% below the yearly plan.

We'd wait for a sale if you can. The App Store lists three prices at exactly 30% off regular plans, and learners report 30% sales around Chinese New Year and Black Friday.

Don't count on the free version for long. Learners say the new course's free lessons end after about four, early in HSK 1. Switching to the old course gets you its whole HSK 1 section free, they say.

Two more things before you pay. There's no lifetime plan. And purchases through Apple or Google are final, HelloChinese's terms say: only yearly plans bought from HelloChinese directly come with a 30-day refund.

Work out the cheapest way to pay for the time you'll actually use it:

For six months of Premium, two 3-month plans cost least. In a sale, a yearly plan beats even that.

Reviews from before August 2026 are out of date

HelloChinese has changed more since 2025 than its reviews have. We dated each change from its own release notes, so you can date what you read:

Source: HelloChinese's App Store and Google Play release notes and listing; the April 2025 date comes from the first learner thread about the new course.

When we searched "HelloChinese review", the top results dated from 2021 to May 2026, and none mentioned the August course.

Two of them quoted $8.99 a month, a quarter below today's $11.99.

Who should use HelloChinese

We'd pick HelloChinese if:

• You're starting from zero. The pinyin course and short lessons make the first months gentle.
• You want to read and write. Characters, handwriting and the story library are its strengths.
• You like a clear path. One course runs from beginner to upper intermediate, with review built in.
• You study on your phone. It works offline, on iPhone, iPad and Android.

We'd skip it, or pair it with something else, if:

• You want to speak soon. Repeating set lines won't prepare you for questions you didn't expect.
• You're already past HSK 4. The course ends about there.
• You're preparing for the exam. HelloChinese doesn't advertise exam practice, so add mock tests.
• You want something free. A keen learner can reach the paywall within days, learners say.

The best alternatives for each goal

No single app does everything. If HelloChinese isn't the right fit, here's what we'd pick for each goal:

Source: each company's US App Store listing or pricing page, checked 11 October 2026; italki's median from our tutors guide, 8 October 2026.

For a closer look at the two apps people compare it with most, read HelloChinese vs SuperChinese and Duolingo vs HelloChinese.

Where SayMei fits

SayMei is built for the part HelloChinese leaves out: talking. In a lesson, Mei Lin, your AI teacher, asks you questions out loud, waits for your answer and corrects your tones and grammar as you go.

SayMei Premium is $5.99 a month for 200 minutes with her.

For reading, SayMei Stories costs $2.99 a month, with pinyin over every character, for about HSK 1 to 4.

We'll be plain: SayMei loses to HelloChinese on plenty. It runs in a web browser, with no app and no offline mode. Its handwriting practice is printable worksheets, not an in-app course, and its stories stop around HSK 4.

If you want one app that walks you through characters and grammar, HelloChinese does that better. Many learners would do best with both: a course for structure, and someone to talk to.

What to do next

• Start with the free lessons. A few days will show you whether the pace suits you.
• Pay yearly, or wait for a sale. Monthly plans add up fast over a year.
• Buy Premium+ only if you'll read. The story library is what the extra money buys.
• Practise talking somewhere else. Repeating set lines won't prepare you for a real reply.
• Plan your next step after HSK 4. Line up a reader or a course for when HelloChinese runs out.

If you're weighing HelloChinese against its closest rival, read HelloChinese vs SuperChinese.