Pleco review: what's free, what's worth paying for, and the alternatives (video)
Pleco is a free Chinese dictionary with one-time add-ons. Every add-on price, iPhone vs Android, a calculator for what to buy, and the best alternatives.
Chapters
- 0:00Start
- 0:21The short answer
- 0:47The free app
- 1:25What the add-ons cost
- 2:17Bundles, and what to buy
- 3:03Camera, flashcards, handwriting
- 4:10iPhone vs Android
- 4:33Who it suits
- 5:09The alternatives
- 6:05What to do next
Transcript
Start
Some people who bought a Chinese dictionary for their Palm Pilot in 2001 still use it today, on a new phone. Pleco says so. And most of the app is free. The hard part is knowing what to pay for. From SayMei Guides, by Mei Lin: our Pleco review. What's free, what's worth paying for, and the alternatives.
The short answer
The short answer. Yes. The free app is a complete Chinese dictionary, with handwriting lookup, audio and no ads, and it works offline. Pay only for what you'll use. Camera lookup, flashcards and the document reader cost $9.99 each. The Basic Bundle has all three for $24.99 on Pleco's own website. It won't teach you to speak, though.
The free app
Download Pleco and nothing is locked. You get two dictionaries: CC-CEDICT, a free open-source one, and Pleco's own, with example sentences. Together they cover about 130,000 Chinese words. Search by characters, pinyin or English, in Simplified or Traditional. What else is free? Draw a character you can't type on a full-screen pad. Paste Chinese text and tap any word. Hear words read aloud. Stroke order for 500 characters. It all works offline, and there are no ads. If you mostly look words up, you may never need to pay.
What the add-ons cost
So what costs money? Everything else is an add-on you buy once. There's no subscription. Camera lookup, $9.99. The Flashcard System, $9.99. The document reader, $9.99. Stroke order for about 28,000 characters, $3.99. Recorded audio for 34,000 words, $4.99 a voice. And then there are the dictionaries. The free iPhone app has no English-to-Chinese dictionary at all. Pleco's web store sells 28 dictionaries. The biggest, KEY, has 287,000 entries. But size isn't quality. In our view, the first one worth adding is the Oxford, at $19.99, because it fills the English-to-Chinese gap.
Bundles, and what to buy
Now, the bundles, and here's a tip. They cost less on Pleco's website than inside the app, because Pleco pays no commission to Apple or Google there. The Basic Bundle is $24.99 on the web store, and $29.99 in the app. Bought one by one, its parts would cost $68.92. But bundles aren't always the bargain they look. Want only the camera and flashcards? Buying those two separately costs less than either bundle. Where would we start? Beginners at HSK 1 and 2: the free app. Reading real texts at HSK 3 and 4: the Basic Bundle. HSK 5 and up: the Professional Bundle. And there's no rush. You can start free and buy later.
Camera, flashcards, handwriting
The camera lookup reads Chinese through your phone's camera. Point it at a menu or a sign, and it shows each word's entry. Pleco says it launched the first live Chinese camera lookup, in 2010. We didn't try it ourselves, and reviewers disagree about accuracy. So before you pay, try what your phone already has: Apple's Live Text, or Google Translate's camera mode. Buy it if you read printed Chinese often. Pleco's flashcards grow out of the dictionary: one tap on any entry makes a card. You can install ready-made lists too, including the new 2026 HSK vocabulary. What's free depends on your phone. On iPhone, saved words are only bookmarks. On Android, you can test yourself, but cards come up at random. The paid Flashcard System adds spaced repetition, tone drills and handwriting tests. Drawing characters is free on both phones. Draw anywhere on the screen and pick from the matches. On iPhone, an enhanced recognizer costs $9.99. Try the free pad first, and pay only if it keeps misreading your writing.
iPhone vs Android
Here's something many people miss. Android's free version does more. You get simple flashcards, and a floating button to look up words in other apps. The iPhone has its own extras: iCloud sync for your cards, and two Chinese fonts you can buy. And either way, you pay once. One Registration ID unlocks your add-ons on both platforms, on up to three devices.
Who it suits
So who should pick Pleco? You read Chinese, at any level. You use Traditional characters, or you're learning Cantonese too. You don't want another subscription. Or you travel. Skip it, or pair it with something else, if you want a course, if you want to speak, or if you study on a computer. There's no desktop version yet. Longtime learners find it hard to replace. In a January 2026 Chinese-Forums thread asking what's better than Pleco, most posters still used it. One member learning Japanese wrote that there isn't a Pleco equivalent half as good.
The alternatives
Not the right fit? Hanping is a clean offline dictionary, long an Android favourite. KTdict is the cheapest way we found to get camera lookup and spaced-repetition flashcards: $3.99 to unlock, on Apple devices only. On a computer, MDBG is a free website, and Zhongwen shows definitions as you hover in Chrome. Still, Pleco's free app plus one or two add-ons is the setup to beat. And SayMei? It doesn't replace Pleco. It covers the part Pleco leaves out: speaking. In lessons with Mei Lin, SayMei's teacher, you use new words out loud, and she corrects your tones and grammar as you go. Where do we lose? There's no dictionary app, Premium is a subscription at $5.99 a month, and you can't open your own files. Our free word pages, for words like 几乎, almost, still help.
What to do next
So, what next? Install the free app, and use it for a week or two first. Buy single features if you want one or two. Buy bundles on Pleco's website. Try your phone's camera before paying for the camera lookup. And pair it with speaking practice: a dictionary helps you understand Chinese, and talking is how you learn to answer. You can practise speaking with Mei Lin, SayMei's teacher, in a short spoken lesson at your level. The full guide, with every source, is on the page at saymei dot app.