20 Best Apps to Learn Mandarin Chinese, Free and Paid (2026)

The best app to learn Chinese depends on which part you need: HelloChinese for an all-round start, Speak to talk from the first lesson, SuperChinese for an HSK path, Du Chinese to read, Duolingo for a free start, and Slova for Chinese built around your own life and interests.

Mandarin grammar is kinder than most people expect: no verb endings, no genders and almost no plurals. What takes time is the sound and the writing. Every syllable has one of four tones, or a neutral one, and reading means learning thousands of characters. That is why the best setup is usually one main app plus one helper. It is also one of the longest languages for English speakers: the US Foreign Service Institute puts Mandarin at 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours, of full-time study to reach a working level in speaking and listening [1]. You do not need that to enjoy Chinese, and our guide to learning Chinese by yourself shows how to fit an app into a weekly routine.

We compared 20 apps in September and October 2026, from free dictionaries to AI tutors you talk to, and rechecked every price and free plan in October 2026. This is not a ranking from worst to best. Every app below has a "best for" line, so find the one that sounds like you.

Comparison table

✓Yes◐Partly✕No

How we tested

We checked every app between September and October 2026 against the same three tasks. For each one we went through its published lesson flow, official help pages and store listing, and rechecked every price and free limit in October 2026.

1. Say it with tones. Introduce yourself out loud (Nǐ hǎo, wǒ jiào …, 你好，我叫…) in the first ten minutes, and see whether the app checks your tones.
2. Read a short menu. Read a few lines in characters with the pinyin switched off, and see what help the app gives and how it checks you.
3. Follow real Chinese. Understand one minute of natural speech from a show or a conversation, with and without help.

Then we scored each app on five things. Each one gets 2 (strong), 1 (partly) or 0 (missing), which is what the marks in the table above show.

• Speaking and tones. How much of a session you spend saying Chinese out loud, and whether anything checks the tones.
• Characters and reading. Whether the app teaches you to recognize, and ideally write, characters, or quietly leans on pinyin.
• Grammar explained. Whether sentence patterns and measure words are explained in plain words.
• Words that come back. Whether new words return for review or vanish after the lesson.
• Value. What a month costs against what you get, and where the free plan stops.

We also noted whether an app helps with the HSK, because it changes what you study. More on that in the HSK section below.

The best apps to learn Chinese

3

Slova

Best for learning Chinese through your own life and interests

Slova starts with one sentence about why you want Chinese, and the answer can be a goal or something you love. A goal might be a job with a supplier in Shenzhen, a move to Chengdu, a partner's family in Beijing or a trip to Shanghai. An interest might be C-dramas, football, hotpot, cooking or C-pop. You can say both. Slova asks a few questions about that topic and builds a path of units and lessons around it, and the path keeps changing as your goals, interests and level change.

Under the path sits a real curriculum from A0 to C2, built by language learners and computer scientists, with visual lessons. Every lesson comes in two forms you can switch between: interactive slides with pictures, audio and quick checks at your own pace, or out loud with our AI tutors, who listen to your answer and correct it with a reason. Order drinks in a role-play at a hotpot restaurant and say wǒ yào èr píng píjiǔ (我要二瓶啤酒), and the tutor stays in character as the waiter, answers liǎng píng píjiǔ (两瓶啤酒) and explains that you say 两, not 二, before a measure word. Finish the last unit and the path extends itself, so there is no end of course.

You also make your own practice. Describe a place, say a hotpot restaurant from a drama, and Slova draws it and labels every object in Chinese: huǒguō (火锅, hotpot), kuàizi (筷子, chopsticks), fúwùyuán (服务员, waiter). Ask for a short podcast or story at your level and Audio Lab writes it, with a transcript that follows the audio. You can also generate vocabulary and verbs on any topic, from football to a factory visit. Every word from lessons, pictures, audio and texts you read goes into one list, the Lexicon, which shows where you met it and how well you know it, and brings it back for review. Words you already know can be imported, so you do not start from zero.

That is why results come quickly. The word you learn on Monday, like jiābān (加班, to work overtime), is one you hear in Tuesday's episode or use in tomorrow's chat, because it comes from your own life. It also gives you a reason to open the app in week six, when courses written for everyone start to feel like homework.

GoodChinese that comes from your own life, spoken from the first lesson, with every word kept in one list.

Watch outNewer than the big names, and it teaches 12 languages today rather than 40.

• English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian and Turkish, and growing
• A0 to C2 curriculum
• Speaking in every lesson

More apps worth knowing

Best free apps to learn Chinese

For most people the best free app to learn Chinese is Duolingo for the daily habit, with the free part of HelloChinese for tones and characters, Pleco for lookups and a library card for Mango. Here is where each free plan stops, checked in October 2026.

Speak, Pimsleur, Lingopie, Pingo AI and Hack Chinese are trial-only (see whether Pingo AI is free for the details). A free start that works: tones and first words in HelloChinese's free part or Duolingo, a dictionary in Pleco, graded reading from The Chairman's Bao's sample lessons, and a first conversation on HelloTalk, following our plan for learning Chinese by yourself.

Fastest way to learn Chinese with an app

Chinese is one of the slow ones, and no app changes that. The Foreign Service Institute's 88 weeks is for a working level in speaking and listening, which is a high bar [1]. What speeds you up is the same everywhere: speak every day, hear real Chinese, and review the words you meet.

The fastest setup we found has three parts:

1. Sounds and tones in the first two weeks. Pinyin is the spelling every app, dictionary and phone keyboard uses. Learn it with the tones attached and say it out loud, because a wrong tone changes the word.
2. One speaking app, every day. Fifteen to twenty minutes with Speak, or with Slova if you are learning for a specific reason, gets sentences out of your mouth early.
3. Characters and review in the background. Ten minutes a day with HelloChinese, Skritter or Hack Chinese, so the words you met on Monday are still there on Friday.

Our guide to the fastest apps for any language compares more options.

Best apps for beginners and adults

Mandarin is friendlier to start than its reputation. The grammar is simple and the sounds are few. Adults usually want two things a child does not: to know why a sentence works, and a plan that fits into 20 minutes a day.

For the first month, we would pick one of these starts:

• Free and structured: HelloChinese's free part or Duolingo for the daily habit, with Pleco on your phone from day one.
• Paid and clear: SuperChinese, if you want a school-like path with scored speaking and HSK levels, or LingoDeer, if you want grammar explained first.
• Speaking from day one: Speak, if you would rather talk badly now than read perfectly later.
• Built around your reason: Slova, if you are learning for a job, a move, family or a passion, so the first words are ones you will use this week.

Learning Chinese in the car

Audio is the best way to use a commute or a walk, and it suits tones especially well. Three options work without looking at a screen:

• Pimsleur is the one built for the car, with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto modes and a hands-free driving mode [10]. You answer out loud, so it works best on a calm drive.
• Du Chinese has an audiobook mode on Premium, and every reading comes with native-speaker audio.
• The Chairman's Bao records each article with a human voice at a speed that matches the level.

Keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. Anything that needs the screen can wait until you park.

Best apps for Chinese conversation

Understanding Chinese is easier than saying it, and the only fix is saying it. You have three kinds of partner:

• AI tutors are always there and never tired: Speak for guided speaking, Praktika for a friendly voice, Pingo AI for chatting about any topic, and SuperChinese's CHAO plan for role-plays that explain what sounded unnatural.
• Human tutors on italki hear your tones and catch what an AI misses.
• Exchange partners on HelloTalk swap an hour of English for an hour of Chinese.

A sensible split is AI for volume during the week and a human tutor once a week for the unexpected. For more, see the best apps for speaking practice.

Apps other than Duolingo

Duolingo is a good habit builder, and many people outgrow it. The cure depends on what is missing. If you want an all-round course, use HelloChinese. If you want a school-like path toward the HSK, SuperChinese. If you want speaking, Speak. If you want to read, Du Chinese. If you want Chinese built around your goals and interests, Slova. Our list of Duolingo alternatives covers more.

Tones and pinyin: what to learn first

Mandarin has four tones and a neutral one, and the tone is part of the word. Mā (妈, mother), má (麻, hemp), mǎ (马, horse) and mà (骂, to scold) are four different words. Mǎi (买, to buy) and mài (卖, to sell) differ only in tone, and mixing them up is a classic. Pinyin is the Latin spelling every app, dictionary and keyboard uses, so learn it in the first two weeks with the tones attached, and say every syllable out loud.

Apps differ in how they check tones. SuperChinese returns a pronunciation score color-coded down to the characters you got wrong [4]. HelloChinese checks pronunciation with speech recognition. Speak, Praktika and Pingo AI correct you in conversation, and a human tutor on italki is the best check of all. Pimsleur trains your ear. The mistake to avoid is staying on pinyin for months: it feels fast, and then you cannot read a menu.

Characters: read, write or both

Most learners need to recognize characters long before they need to write them. You type Chinese on a phone with pinyin and pick the character you recognize, which is what Hack Chinese trains you to do [16]. Handwriting is worth adding if you plan to live in China, take a written exam or simply enjoy it, and Skritter is the tool for that. HelloChinese and ChineseSkill include handwriting practice inside the course.

Choose your script early. Mainland China and Singapore use simplified characters, and Taiwan and Hong Kong use traditional ones. HelloChinese and Du Chinese support both, and ChineseSkill has a separate Traditional course for Taiwan Mandarin. A rule that works: hide the pinyin for words you have seen five or six times, and let the characters do the work.

HSK: which apps help

The HSK is the standard Chinese proficiency test, used for study and work in China. Today it has six levels. A new version, HSK 3.0, moves to a nine-level framework in three stages and tests listening, speaking, reading, writing and, at advanced levels, translation [19]. It launches worldwide on 13 December 2026, with registration open until 16 November for the paper test and 3 December for the computer test [20]. Check the official site for which version your test date uses.

No app is an exam drill. SuperChinese's Main Course covers HSK 1 to 5 content, and its separate SuperTest app is built for exam practice [4]. HelloChinese's courses follow the HSK levels. Skritter has decks for HSK 1 to 6 and the new HSK 3.0 levels 1 to 9 [12]. Du Chinese has HSK-aligned readings, and Hack Chinese has an interactive HSK guide and vocabulary lists. Because the new test asks you to speak, add a tutor or a speaking app.

Mandarin or Cantonese

This guide is about Mandarin, the standard spoken in Mainland China and Taiwan and taught in most Chinese courses. Cantonese is a different spoken form of Chinese, used in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong, with its own sounds and tones. A few apps teach it: Pimsleur has a separate Chinese (Cantonese) course, ChineseSkill has a Cantonese course, and Mango has one too. Most of the apps above teach Mandarin only.

Best app by goal

Which one should you pick

If you are starting from zero and want to spend nothing, begin with the free part of HelloChinese or with Duolingo, and keep Pleco on your phone. When you are ready to pay, Speak is the best way to get Chinese out of your mouth early, and SuperChinese is the better choice if you want a school-like path with HSK levels.

For reading, add Du Chinese or The Chairman's Bao. For characters, Skritter or Hack Chinese. For the commute, Pimsleur.

If you are learning Chinese for something specific, a job in Shenzhen, a partner's family, a trip, or a passion like C-dramas, football or cooking, Slova is the one we would start with. It builds the lessons, the speaking practice and the word review around your own reason, so what you learn today shows up in your life tomorrow.

Conclusion

Chinese needs tones, characters and a lot of words, and the strongest setup is usually one main app plus one helper. Start free with Duolingo, the free part of HelloChinese and Pleco, then pay for the one thing you are missing. Speak leads for speaking, SuperChinese for an HSK path and Du Chinese for reading. If you want one course, speaking included, built around your own goals and interests, give Slova a try.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Written by Yiğit Karasu, founder of Slova