Graded Reading Apps & Websites

This is one of the best apps available for advanced students. The Chairman’s Bao offers 9,500+ graded news lessons for Mandarin learners across all HSK levels, with new articles added regularly. Each lesson includes clickable word translations and native Chinese audio. Additional features include flashcards, character-writing practice, idiom explanations, and other tools to build reading and vocabulary skills. Available on the Web, iOS and Android.

Short original stories designed for HSK 1–4 learners. Each story includes full Pīnyīn, key vocabulary, and comprehension questions. A great choice for learners who can already read basic Chinese characters.

This subscription-based reading app highly recommended by many Chinese teachers. Its stories are written and recorded by native speakers, include professional translations, and are available in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Content is organized by difficulty and HSK level, ranging from simple beginner texts to longer stories for intermediate learners and classical Chinese, including Tang Dynasty poetry, for advanced readers. Available for Android and iOS.

Learn Chinese naturally with a daily engaging story that offers a smooth learning experience. Tap on characters for instant definitions, take comprehension quizzes, and practice writing—all while learning how native speakers use words in context. Simplified and Traditional Chinese are both available. Forget rote memorization; research shows context is key to mastering characters. Available on the Web, Android and iOS.

Mylingua is a personalized reading platform for intermediate and advanced Mandarin learners. It gathers thousands of articles from China and Taiwan and recommends content based on your Chinese level and interests. Each article receives a Mylingua Score to help you find authentic content at the right difficulty level, with recommendations adapting as your skills improve.

Pandaist is a graded reader app for Chinese learners, offering news, stories, and quizzes to improve reading skills. It tracks your progress, updates content regularly, and includes a built-in dictionary. Available for iOS and Android.

Readibu is designed for learners who want to move beyond graded readers and start reading authentic Chinese content. Browse Chinese web novels, short stories, and children’s stories, open content from Chinese websites, or import your own EPUB, PDF, and TXT files. Reading tools include tap-to-lookup definitions, optional pinyin or zhuyin, text-to-speech, simplified/traditional conversion, HSK difficulty analysis, vocabulary tracking and links to dictionaries such as Pleco and MDBG. The app is free to use for reading, with a Premium subscription adding features such as sentence translation, cloud sync, offline reading, quizzes and syntax analysis. Available on Android and iOS.

Todaii (also called Easy Chinese) helps Mandarin learners build reading, listening, and vocabulary skills through real-world content, including current news. It offers materials for different proficiency levels and includes tools to support HSK preparation. Available on the Web, Andriod and iOS