Apps & Websites for Learning Chinese Characters

Arch Chinese offers an extensive collection of tools for learning and teaching Chinese characters. View animated stroke order, practice with handwriting recognition, and create customized character and vocabulary worksheets. It also provides radicals, character structure, frequency information, common words, and teacher-written example sentences for both simplified and traditional Chinese.

Designed for absolute beginners, Chineasy teaches learners to speak and read basic Chinese through colorful illustrations, practical lessons, and cultural insights. Progress through short, engaging activities while building the confidence to introduce yourself in Chinese and learning more than 1,500 useful words. Available for Android and iOS.

Dong Chinese teaches characters in meaningful context through vocabulary, complete sentences, handwriting practice, and level-appropriate media. It explains the components and origins of common characters, provides stroke-order guidance, prioritizes useful characters using frequency data, and tracks learning progress. Its combination of character structure and contextual reading offers a more complete experience than isolated flashcard drills.

Hack Chinese is designed for learners who want a structured way to build and retain Chinese vocabulary rather than follow a traditional lesson-by-lesson course. Its customizable spaced-repetition system tracks each word individually, schedules reviews based on how well you remember it, and lets you study from HSK lists, textbooks, imported vocabulary, or your own custom lists. Hack Chinese 2.0 also incorporates Outlier Linguistics character components, helping you understand how characters are constructed and develop a better feel for their meaning and pronunciation. It can also sync vocabulary with supported Chinese learning platforms so words you encounter elsewhere can flow into your study routine. Start with a 21-day free trial and use Hack Chinese through its website.

Hanzi Constellation is a visual tool for learning Traditional Chinese characters through phonetic families, shared components and the words they form. Learners can see how characters are related, track characters they know, create study sets and export charts to Anki. The first star chart with 188 characters is free with no account required; a one-time purchase unlocks the full map of 3,000 characters and 12,000 words. Available on the web and iOS, web and iOS purchases are separate.

HanziCrafti s a well-known Chinese dictionary.  The link here, however, is to a particular page of their site: Phonetic Sets in Chinese Characters. Most Chinese characters contain some clues as to the pronunciation of the character. HanziCraft automatically tries to determine these for each character. However, using this tool, HanziCraft created a list of phonetic sets. A phonetic set is a list of characters where a component produces the same pronounciation clue towards each character.

HanziHero helps learners remember simplified and traditional Chinese characters by connecting their components, meanings and pronunciations with imaginative mnemonic stories. Its structured lessons and spaced-repetition reviews make it particularly useful for learners who struggle to retain characters with conventional flashcards.

Mandarin Blueprint’s Hanzi Movie Method turns each character into a memorable mental scene, using people, places and objects to represent its pronunciation, tone, components and meaning. This detailed system is particularly useful for visual learners who struggle to retain characters through repetition alone.

Created by linguists and Chinese-language specialists, the Outlier Dictionary explains how Chinese characters truly work. Its manually researched entries reveal how each component contributes sound, meaning, or form while tracing original meanings and character evolution. Covering more than 2,700 simplified and traditional characters, it is available as a one-time-purchase add-on within Pleco, with no subscription required.

This ten-module course from Peking University introduces Chinese characters through their basic strokes before teaching 240 commonly used characters and 1,200 related words. Animated stroke-order demonstrations, pinyin, meanings, illustrations and end-of-lesson exercises help learners understand each character’s pronunciation, structure and use.

This follow-up course from Peking University teaches another 240 commonly used Chinese characters and 1,200 related words. Animated stroke-order demonstrations, pinyin, meanings, illustrations and end-of-lesson exercises reinforce each character’s pronunciation, structure and use.

Pleco is an essential Chinese dictionary for looking up and studying characters encountered in everyday life. Search by character, English, pinyin, or handwriting, and access pronunciations, stroke-order diagrams, example words, flashcards, document reading, and camera-based character recognition. The basic app is free, with optional paid features and professional dictionaries, including the Outlier Dictionary.

This is a spaced repetition flashcard system, and I love it. Finding the right balance between learning new words and revising old ones is key to maximizing your learning speed. Once you have learned a new word it is automatically scheduled for revision/testing to make sure you don't forget it. Audio and examples are included. Choose from Simplified or Traditional characters, or Chinese Vocabulary.

Skritter helps learners write and remember Chinese characters through active handwriting practice and spaced repetition. Write directly on a phone, tablet, or computer and receive immediate feedback on individual strokes and stroke order. It separately tests writing, meaning, pronunciation, and tone, supports simplified and traditional characters, and includes textbook-based and user-created study lists.