HelloChinese, Pleco, Duolingo and Mondly compared for Mandarin — tone correction from day one, animated stroke order, camera lookup and offline use.
In Mandarin, the same syllable pronounced with a different pitch means something completely different, and that is the wall every beginner runs into first. The app you choose has to correct your tones from the first week, or the habits you build will simply be mistakes memorised out loud. The 4 apps in this guide split into two pairs: one app that teaches the language properly for beginners, one daily-habit option, a reference dictionary you will keep for years, and a pronunciation-focused supplement.
HelloChinese is Mandarin-only and it shows: voice-checked tones, animated strokes and real grammar explanations.
HelloChinese is the strongest Mandarin-specific course and fixes precisely what Duolingo skips: speech recognition corrects your tones, characters are introduced with animated stroke order, and the grammar is actually explained instead of absorbed by guesswork, all built only for Chinese. Advanced levels require a subscription, and the interface is in English, which is worth knowing before you start.
Pleco is the dictionary every learner ends up needing, with pinyin, handwriting and camera lookup offline.
Pleco is the reference Chinese dictionary and becomes essential as soon as you move past the first lessons: look words up by pinyin, by drawing the character by hand or by pointing the camera at a menu or a page. The base version is free and works entirely offline, so it survives travel and bad connections. It is deliberately a dictionary rather than a course, the extra dictionaries and features are paid add-ons, and the interface is dense and dated.
Duolingo eases you into Mandarin for free, though it drills tones far less than the language needs.
Duolingo brings the familiar five-minute lessons, streaks, levels and rewards to Chinese, making it the painless free way to start and to keep daily contact with the writing system. The caveat for this language is specific: its tone practice is light relative to how much Mandarin depends on pitch, so learners who stop at Duolingo tend to pronounce confidently and inaccurately. The free version carries ads and ad-free Super is paid.
Mondly teaches Mandarin from your own language and keeps pressing pronunciation with speech recognition.
Mondly covers 41 languages and is one of the few apps that teach Chinese directly from your first language rather than routing every explanation through English. Its lessons are short, with speech recognition checking pronunciation and a chatbot for rehearsing basic conversations, which makes it a reasonable supplement focused on speaking. Without a subscription you receive only one lesson a day, grammar depth is below HelloChinese's, and quality varies by language pair.
Pros
Teaches from your own language
Speech recognition for pronunciation
Chatbot for basic conversation
Cons
Only one free lesson a day
Less grammar depth than HelloChinese
Quality varies across language pairs
Download price only. In-app purchases and subscriptions may cost extra.
Questions & answers
Is Chinese really hard to learn?
It depends which part. Mandarin grammar is among the simplest there is: no genders, no conjugations, no plurals. The difficulty is concentrated in two places, the tones and the characters, both of which are unfamiliar to an English speaker. Tackled from the start with tools that correct tones and break characters down, the language is far less impossible than its reputation.
How many Chinese characters do I need to know?
With around 1,500 to 2,000 characters you can read a newspaper comfortably, while roughly 600 covers HSK level 3 and everyday conversation. The standard method is spaced repetition: AnkiDroid is the usual tool, with prepared decks, while HelloChinese explains how characters are built and Pleco looks up the ones you do not recognise.
What is pinyin and do I need to learn it?
Pinyin is the transcription of Chinese into the Latin alphabet, with marks indicating the tone. It is essential: it is how you type Chinese on a phone keyboard and how pronunciation is studied. The advice is not to linger on it, because reading only pinyin for too long delays learning the actual characters.
Are these apps enough to prepare for the HSK exam?
HelloChinese builds its progression around the HSK levels, so it is the closest fit, and AnkiDroid has widely used HSK vocabulary decks organised by level. For the higher levels you will still need dedicated exam material and listening practice beyond what any of these apps provides, since they teach the language rather than exam technique.
More related apps
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