Yoyo Chinese review: what its video courses teach, and what they leave out

Is Yoyo Chinese worth it?

For a self-taught beginner who likes a teacher explaining things, we think so. For anyone who mainly wants to talk, it does far less. We read what Yoyo says about each part of its course, and what learners report, then scored each part:

Sources: Yoyo Chinese's website, help centre and app listings, and learner threads on Reddit, read 6 November 2026. Each row is explained below.

So we'd use Yoyo as the teacher in your week: the part that explains. Plan from day one where you'll speak and be corrected.

Nine courses and 1,272 lessons, from zero to advanced

Yoyo Chinese is a video course first and an app second. Yangyang Cheng, a Chinese teacher and former TV presenter, started it on YouTube, and Yoyo's FAQ says she'll be your teacher through its videos.

It's bigger than most reviews describe. We counted every course on the course list that any visitor can load:

Source: the course list on yoyochinese.com, 6 November 2026. The four conversation courses hold 818 of the 1,272 lessons.

We think of the conversation courses as the spine. Each one has six levels, and Yoyo's help centre says you can take the character courses alongside them or afterwards. The two series are short collections on grammar points and everyday phrases.

Lessons are short. Yoyo says each video runs about five minutes, so by our sums the whole library is roughly 100 hours of teaching. Practice and quizzes come on top.

Yoyo's help centre says each of the first three conversation courses can take as little as six to eight months. Here's the list as Yoyo's own App Store image shows it:

So we'd expect most learners to spend their first year or two inside the Beginner and Intermediate courses. That's where Yoyo's teaching style matters most.

The new Advanced course fills Yoyo's old gap

The most common complaint in older reviews was the top. Fluent in 3 Months, in a review last updated in 2023, said Yoyo had no advanced course, so even its intermediate material felt like review to an advanced learner.

That changed in March 2026, when Yoyo launched Advanced Conversational Chinese. It has 180 lessons in units of five, and every unit follows the same steps:

• An animated dialogue set in a real situation.
• A breakdown of the dialogue's words and expressions.
• A longer, freer conversation between the hosts, with harder vocabulary.
• A culture lesson on what lies beneath the words.
• A review video that replays the whole unit.

The units cover adult life in China: hotels, food and takeaways, travel and transport, shopping, work, doctors, banks and renting a flat.

One caveat. When it launched, the course's quizzes weren't ready, and Yoyo said its teachers would release them gradually. In November, the lesson data Yoyo's website loads for visitors still listed no quiz for any Advanced lesson; lessons we checked in its other courses list ten questions. So open its first lessons, which are free, before you count on the quizzes.

None of the nine reviews we read from Google's top results mentions the course. We think it's the biggest change to Yoyo in years: if you'd outgrown it before, there's now somewhere to go.

A lesson is a short video, then practice and a quiz

A Yoyo lesson is a video first. In the Beginner course, Yangyang explains in English and shows the Chinese on screen. Later courses use more Chinese, more interviews and more storytelling, as one long-time learner on the App Store noted.

After the video, you practise. Here's what a lesson can hold, according to Yoyo's help centre:

• Flashcards for the lesson's new words, with normal and slow audio.
• The dialogue, line by line, also at two speeds.
• Audio Review, a recording that prompts you to say words and phrases from memory.
• Lecture notes as a PDF, and an FAQ where you can send the team a question.
• A 10-question quiz, with a gold medal for a perfect score.

Yoyo's App Store image shows the pattern on an Upper Intermediate lesson:

The quizzes mix question types. In one App Store image, a Beginner quiz has you translate 我会说一点儿中文 wǒ huì shuō yìdiǎnr Zhōngwén, "I can speak a little Chinese", by tapping English words into place.

The videos' best trick is real speech. From the Beginner course on, Yoyo mixes in short street interviews with native speakers, so you hear people talk fast, slur words and use regional accents. Then a lesson breaks the clip down, and later courses build whole units around unscripted conversations.

We'd lean on the slow audio, because Yoyo's help centre warns that its native speakers talk fast. And we'd keep Yoyo's own rule: if you score under six on a quiz, redo the lesson before moving on.

We think that's most of Yoyo's value: a study flow you'd otherwise have to build yourself.

Pinyin and tones are where Yoyo is strongest

Yoyo spends its first level on sound. Pinyin, 拼音(pīnyīn), is the system that spells Chinese sounds in Roman letters, and Level 1 of the Beginner course teaches it with the four tones and some basic grammar.

Two free tools back it up:

• The Interactive Pinyin Chart. It plays audio for every syllable, and Yoyo counts 409 sounds. Its explainer videos need a free account.
• Tone Pairs. A grid of the tone combinations, with a common word and a native speaker's recording for each. A button loads a new set of words.

Tone pairs are the right unit to practise. Many everyday Chinese words have two syllables, and tones change shape next to each other. Teacher, 老师(lǎoshī), is a third tone then a first, and you say lǎo low, without the rise a third tone has on its own.

On Reddit, learners praise this part more than any other, as our count further down shows.

There's one catch for app users. Yoyo's August 2025 letter says the pinyin chart and Tone Pairs stay on the website for now, because they suit bigger screens.

If you're starting from zero, Yoyo's first level and its free tools are worth your time even if you never pay.

Nothing listens back when you speak

Yoyo trains your ear well, but nothing in it judges your voice. Its speaking practice is a recorder: on a flashcard, you press and hold the microphone, then play your recording next to the native speaker's.

Audio Review works the same way. A recording asks you to remember how to say words and phrases from the lesson. It's good recall practice, and you're the only judge of how you sounded.

Here's the recorder in Yoyo's own App Store image, behind a quiz:

We found neither speech scoring nor a conversation feature on any page Yoyo publishes. Yoyo's home page makes a point of it: it says it doesn't use AI or AI-written dialogue. In its 2025 letter, the team said it was exploring AI practice partners and instant corrections, but we found nothing launched.

We think that gap matters more in Chinese than in most languages, because a tone slip changes the word. To buy, 买(mǎi), and to sell, 卖(mài), differ only in pitch. Comparing by ear works only as well as your ear, which is the thing you're still training.

So we'd add something that hears you: a tutor, a language partner, or a tool that shows your pitch. Yoyo itself has no live lessons, though its FAQ says it helps students find tutors when they ask.

Characters get their own courses

Yoyo teaches reading separately from speaking. Its two character courses teach 300 characters each, most common first, and Yoyo says the first set alone makes up over 60% of written Chinese.

The method leans on memory aids. Each character gets a picture or story to hang it on, and the course puts typing ahead of handwriting. Every lesson includes stroke order and a practice sheet, but writing by hand is optional.

The Character Reader comes after both. It tells animated comic-strip stories built on the same 600 characters, plus a few new ones, voiced by native speakers.

The videos use Simplified characters, the script of mainland China. You can switch flashcards and quizzes to Traditional, the script of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Yoyo says 70% of its 600 characters look the same in both.

We set the two courses against the characters the new HSK asks you to recognise:

Source: Yoyo Chinese's help centre; the 2025 HSK syllabus, counted in our HSK 3.0 guide. This compares sizes, not the characters themselves.

Yoyo says its 600 characters make up nearly 80% of written Chinese, a solid base for simple texts. The new HSK 6 asks you to recognise about 1,940, so plan a reader or a second course once you finish.

Yoyo's HSK levels come from the old exam

Yoyo doesn't teach to the HSK, China's proficiency exam, and says so. Its course has its own curriculum, though Yoyo's FAQ says students have passed the HSK using only Yoyo.

What it does publish is a rough HSK level for each course. Those estimates sit in a help article last updated about four years ago, and they use the old six-level exam. The new HSK, which starts on 13 December 2026, asks for more words at every level.

We set each estimate against the new word lists, using our match of the old lists against the new ones:

Sources: Yoyo Chinese's HSK article, using the top of each range; the old HSK lists and the 2025 syllabus, as matched in our HSK 3.0 guide. This re-reads Yoyo's labels; it doesn't test Yoyo's own vocabulary.

On the new exam, each of these courses ends about a level lower than its label suggests. Even at that lower level, the old list misses about a third of the new words.

None of this makes Yoyo a poor course, in our view. It means its HSK labels need translating. If an exam is your goal, check yourself against the new HSK word lists as you go, and add exam practice before you book.

"Conversational in six months" means the basics

Yoyo's home page promises conversational Chinese in six months or less, at 30 minutes a day. That promise belongs to the Beginner course, and Yoyo's own FAQ says it means beginner-level conversation.

We think its list of what you'll manage by the end is honest. You'll greet people and introduce yourself, chat about daily life, give opinions, make plans and get around in China.

By the table above, that's about new HSK 1. It's a real milestone, and we think it's the right first goal. It's also the start of a long road: our guide to how long Mandarin takes shows where it leads.

So we'd read "conversational" as "basic conversations about yourself". The Intermediate course, another six months by Yoyo's estimate, is where it promises longer conversations with native speakers.

The apps are new, and mostly the website on your phone

For more than a decade, Yoyo lived in a web browser. Its iPhone app arrived in August 2025, and its Android app appeared on Google Play in June 2026.

Both carry the whole course, and your progress syncs with the website. We compared the two listings on 6 November:

Source: Yoyo Chinese on the US App Store and Google Play, 6 November 2026.

Two limits apply on both. The videos only stream, so you can't save a lesson for a flight. And the pronunciation tools stay on the website, so keep a laptop for the pinyin chart.

The iPhone app hasn't been updated since its launch month, August 2025. The Android app had its latest update this August.

What learners say: clear teaching, thin practice

Yoyo's apps are too new to tell you much, with fewer than 20 ratings in each store. We read all 24 written reviews, and every one gives four or five stars.

Most come from existing fans: 17 say or imply they used Yoyo's website first. So the stores mostly show how fans like the app. Their requests are telling: two wanted an advanced course before March brought one, and one wants a way to search old lessons.

Reddit gives a wider view. We read every comment that mentions Yoyo on the r/ChineseLanguage forum since January 2025. Here's what the 96 people who gave a view raised:

Source: our coding of 210 comments from 120 people, read through the public Arctic Shift archive of Reddit. Method below.

Two in three recommend Yoyo, and half point to its pinyin chart, tone pairs or free YouTube videos. Several of the people we counted recommend those free tools without saying they've paid for anything.

About one in five calls Yoyo a beginners' resource, and most of them mean it as praise. The criticism, from seven people, is mostly about fit: one objected that the lessons are mostly someone talking in English. One long-time learner also found Upper Intermediate a big jump from Intermediate.

The sharpest point echoes our own. A learner who also used a speaking app wrote in August 2025: "While I think the material is good, I wasn't speaking at all."

So read the praise as praise for Yoyo's first months, and for its ear training. Its loudest fans are people it taught to hear and say the sounds.

Price: Learn is the plan to buy, yearly or once

Yoyo sells two subscriptions and a one-off lifetime plan, on top of a free account. Here's what each gets you, at the prices on Yoyo's website and the US App Store:

Source: Yoyo Chinese's pricing page and the US App Store, 6 November 2026. The website shows yearly plans as a monthly price, $8.99 and $11.99, billed once a year. Google Play lists its purchases only as $14.99 to $299.99.

We think Watch is a false economy for most learners. It saves $36 a year on Learn and takes away the flashcards, review audio and quizzes, which is where the learning sticks. Yoyo itself recommends Learn to anyone new to Chinese.

The real choice is between paying yearly and paying once. Here's what each option costs per month:

Source: yoyochinese.com/pricing, 6 November 2026. The lifetime rows are $299 divided by 24, 36 and 60 months.

So try a month first, then pay yearly if you're staying. Buy lifetime only once you've kept the habit and expect to study for years.

Yoyo's prices haven't moved in years. We read every archived copy of its price page since late 2022, 36 in all, and each one shows the prices above.

One copy, from Black Friday week that year, showed lifetime on sale for $199, a sale price the page still carries. Learners on Reddit mention lifetime deals of about $150 to $200.

Before you pay, know the terms:

• Free has limits. Yoyo's pricing FAQ says a free account opens the first 30 lessons or so in full; the plan card says 75+ videos.
• We found no free trial. Instead, Yoyo's terms give a 7-day money-back guarantee on your first purchase made on its website.
• Renewals aren't refunded. Plans renew automatically. If you paid through Apple, Yoyo's terms send you to Apple for a refund.
• Cancel anytime. You keep access to the end of the period you paid for, and Yoyo keeps your progress.
• Read the lifetime terms. Yoyo's FAQ says lifetime includes future courses. Its terms describe access to what's available when you buy, for as long as it's supported.

Lifetime means the lifetime of Yoyo Chinese as a business, Yoyo's help centre says, not yours. Yoyo has run its website for more than a decade, but its terms let it change or end its offerings at any time.

Learners on Reddit ask when the next sale will be. Yoyo doesn't publish a schedule, so if $299 feels steep, start on a yearly plan; Yoyo's help centre says it often sends subscribers upgrade deals.

How to get the most from a Yoyo plan

If you do pay, Yoyo works best as a daily routine with one addition. Here's how we'd use it, drawing on Yoyo's own help centre:

• Find your level first. We found no placement test, but the first lessons of every course are free, so try a few before you pick one.
• Follow Yoyo's order in each lesson. Watch the video, read the FAQ, then do the flashcards, the dialogue, Audio Review and the quiz.
• Start slow, then go to normal speed. The dialogues use real speech, so play each line slowly before you try it at full speed.
• Download the Audio Review files. They're recordings you can take on a walk or a commute.
• Ask when you're stuck. Each lesson's FAQ has an Ask button that sends your question to Yoyo's team.
• Add the character course after Beginner. Yoyo suggests finishing the Beginner course before Characters I, so the sounds are solid first.
• Book speaking practice every week. A tutor, a partner or a speaking app turns what the videos teach into answers you can give.

At Yoyo's suggested 30 minutes a day, that's about a lesson a day. One long-time learner on Reddit kept exactly that pace through two courses, and we'd copy it.

Who should use Yoyo Chinese, and who shouldn't

We'd pick Yoyo Chinese if:

• You're starting from zero. The first level teaches pinyin and tones properly, and its first lessons are free.
• You like a teacher who explains. The lessons walk you through the language, in plain English at first.
• You want real spoken Chinese. Street interviews and unscripted dialogues train your ear for how people really talk.
• You study on more than one device. The website, the iPhone app and the Android app share your progress.
• You want one long path. Four conversation courses now run from zero to advanced.

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

• You want to speak soon. Recording yourself won't prepare you for questions you didn't expect.
• You're preparing for the new HSK. Yoyo isn't built for it, and its labels use the old exam.
• You want to write by hand. Handwriting is optional, and nothing checks it.
• You want games and streaks. Yoyo has streaks and points, but its heart is a lecture plus review.

The best alternatives for each goal

If Yoyo isn't the right fit, or you want a second tool beside it, here's what we'd pick for each goal:

Source: each company's US App Store listing or pricing page, 6 November 2026; Pimsleur from our Pimsleur review and italki from our tutors guide.

If you want Yoyo's teaching without paying, its YouTube channel has 490 free videos. They come without practice or quizzes, but they're an honest way to see whether the style suits you.

For other video courses, our guide to online Chinese courses compares Yoyo with ChinesePod, Mandarin Blueprint and eight more, and our Mandarin Blueprint review covers the characters-first course in depth. For phone apps, read our HelloChinese review and SuperChinese review.

Where SayMei fits, and where it doesn't

SayMei is built for the part Yoyo leaves to you: speaking and being heard. In a lesson, Mei Lin, SayMei's AI tutor, 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. Our pinyin chart, tone-pair trainer and Tone Checker are free. Our HSK workbooks and character writing practice, which checks every stroke, are free with a SayMei account.

We'll be plain about where SayMei loses to Yoyo:

• No video teacher. Yoyo's lessons explain grammar and culture on screen, and SayMei has nothing like its 1,272 videos.
• No street interviews. Yoyo's clips of real people talking at full speed have no match on SayMei.
• No character lessons. Yoyo explains 600 characters on video with memory aids; SayMei's character practice drills writing them, stroke by stroke, without the lessons.
• A different kind of app. SayMei runs in the browser on any phone or computer, while Yoyo has apps in both stores.

Many learners would do best with both: Yoyo's videos to understand the language, and daily speaking practice that answers back.

What to do next

• Start on the free account. The first level shows you whether Yangyang's teaching style suits you.
• Use the free pronunciation tools. The pinyin chart and Tone Pairs are worth an hour even if you never subscribe.
• Buy Learn, not Watch. The flashcards, review audio and quizzes are what make the videos stick.
• Go yearly before lifetime. Commit once you've kept the habit for a few months.
• Add speaking from week one. Find a tutor, a partner or a tool that hears your tones.

If you'd like a cheaper course that also scores your speaking, start with our SuperChinese review.