🇨🇳 Chinese (Mandarin) for advanced learners: the best resources

Free on desktop, Android and web; the iOS app is a one-off paid purchase that funds the project. The interface is dated and the options are overwhelming at first, but nothing beats it for retaining vocabulary over years. Most effective when you stop grinding premade decks and start mining sentences from things you actually read or watch.

A long-running forum where advanced learners, translators and teachers review resources, discuss study methods and run reading groups — the signal-to-noise ratio is far better than social media. Searching the archive answers most 'which textbook / how do I get past HSK 4' questions immediately. Traffic is much lower than it was, so expect slow replies to new threads and treat it primarily as an archive.

The reference to bookmark: each structure gets a short explanation, a formula and a stack of natural example sentences, organised A1 through C1 so you can both look things up and work through a level systematically. Free on the web with an optional paid ebook version. It is a reference, not a course — it explains what a structure means but gives you no drilling or production practice.

The authoritative source for what each HSK level actually requires, where to sit the exam, and free official practice papers — worth checking directly rather than relying on third-party summaries, since the HSK 3.0 standard changed level boundaries and vocabulary counts substantially. Registration and information are free; the exam itself has a fee. The site is functional but clunky, and English translations lag the Chinese pages.

Foreign Service Institute, Peace Corps and DLI materials — full textbooks plus hundreds of hours of audio — are public domain and hosted here for free across dozens of languages. The depth is extraordinary and the FSI Basic courses take diplomats to professional working proficiency, which no consumer app attempts. The recordings are from the 1960s–80s, the drills are relentless, and some vocabulary is dated (Cold War era), so they suit disciplined self-studiers, not casual learners.

Olle Linge writes long, careful pieces on tone learning, character memorisation, listening strategy and dealing with plateaus, plus regularly updated best-of lists for podcasts, YouTube channels and reading material. There is an accompanying podcast and free challenge platform. It is about method rather than content — you still need a course, a dictionary and input, but this tells you how to use them well.

A free Notion wiki that solves 'what do I read next': hundreds of native books, webnovels, manhua, games and TV shows sorted by real difficulty, with a step-by-step guide out of textbook Chinese and into native material. It is the single best answer for intermediate learners stuck in the HSK plateau. Notion's interface is clunky on phones, and recommendations skew towards webnovels and genre fiction.

Thousands of public-domain books recorded by volunteers, downloadable as MP3 or M4B with no account. Pairing a LibriVox recording with the matching free Project Gutenberg text gives you a full audiobook-plus-ebook study set for nothing. Two caveats: recordings are volunteer-quality and vary a lot reader to reader, and everything is out of copyright, so the language is often a century old — great for literature, poor for modern slang.

Eileen's channel captures how people in China actually speak — market vendors, taxi drivers, friends chatting — with dual subtitles and downloadable transcripts, plus slower structured lessons for lower levels. It is one of the few free sources of genuinely unscripted mainland Mandarin at a usable difficulty. Upload pace has slowed in recent years, but the back catalogue is large and still current enough.

The default desktop lookup for most learners: search by pinyin, character, English or handwriting, then drill into components, stroke order and example words. It also has a bulk text annotation tool that adds pinyin above a whole passage, which is handy for prepping reading material. Plain and ad-light, but purely a reference — no lessons, no spaced repetition.

The default place to ask 'is X app worth it' or 'what should I do at B1' and get answers from people who have actually done it, plus per-language subreddits (r/Spanish, r/LearnJapanese, r/French) with far better resource lists. The wiki and FAQ head off most beginner questions. Expect strong ideological camps — comprehensible-input purists versus textbook people — so read a few threads before taking any single answer as settled.

A collaborative, Creative Commons-licensed corpus you can search for real usage of a word or download in bulk to build your own decks. It is the raw material behind Clozemaster and countless Anki decks rather than a study tool in itself. Sentences are contributed by volunteers, so quality and naturalness vary — prefer sentences from native contributors and cross-check anything surprising.

Over 100 language editions; the English edition alone has millions of entries covering hundreds of languages, with IPA, declension and conjugation tables, etymologies and usage notes that commercial apps usually paywall. The etymology sections are quietly one of the best vocabulary-retention tools available. Being crowd-sourced, coverage is uneven and rare entries can be wrong — cross-check anything unusual against a native-language dictionary.

Type a word or phrase and it plays back real YouTube clips of people saying it in context, across 25 languages plus sign languages, so you get natural intonation and regional variation rather than an isolated dictionary recording. Free, donation-supported, no account needed. Complements Forvo: Forvo for single words, YouGlish for phrases and prosody.

A free, open-source Chrome extension that turns the whole Chinese web into readable material: hover for pinyin, definition and word segmentation, with keyboard shortcuts to save words for export to Anki. It is the cheapest way to start reading native articles rather than textbook passages. Purely a lookup crutch — it will not make you learn anything unless you also review what you save.

Around 900 episodes of first-person narration from across Chinese society, produced to a high standard and free with transcripts on the website. As native content it doubles as language input and as a window into contemporary China that learner material never gives you. It is genuinely native speed with regional accents and heavy colloquialism — comfortable only once you can follow unscripted speech.

The best free reference for traditional characters and Taiwanese Mandarin usage, built on the Ministry of Education's official dictionaries and showing zhuyin (bopomofo) alongside pinyin. It also carries Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka entries. Definitions are Chinese-Chinese, so it is a step up in difficulty — treat it as the monolingual dictionary you graduate into rather than a beginner tool.

Modern assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) will roleplay a scenario at your level, correct your writing with explanations, generate graded reading, and hold voice conversations — endlessly patient and available at 2am, which no tutor is. Free tiers are enough for text practice; voice modes generally need a subscription. The caveats are real: models are noticeably weaker and more error-prone in lower-resource languages, they tend to produce bland textbook register rather than how people actually speak, and they will not correct you unless you explicitly ask them to.

Two decades of lessons built around a short natural dialogue plus bilingual discussion, graded across six levels — the Intermediate and Upper Intermediate tiers in particular are still among the best listening material for Mandarin. Many episodes are free through podcast feeds; transcripts and exercises need a subscription. Caveat: the platform is essentially in maintenance mode, with little new content and slow support, so treat it as an archive rather than a living course.

Built on Tatoeba sentences, it drills words in context by frequency band across 50+ languages and 170+ language pairings, with a genuinely generous free tier. It explicitly starts where beginner apps end, so it is the natural 'what now?' answer for someone who finished a Duolingo tree. Sentences are crowd-sourced and occasionally awkward or oddly specific, and it teaches nothing about grammar explicitly.

Unscripted multi-speaker conversation is the hardest listening skill and this is the best learner-oriented source of it: real interruptions, opinions and slang, but from teachers who keep things intelligible. Excellent preparation for native podcasts. Free on YouTube and podcast apps, with transcripts and vocabulary behind a paid tier; the pace will overwhelm you below solid B1.

Thousands of short lessons across six difficulty tiers, each with clear recorded audio, a pop-up dictionary and toggleable pinyin, so you can read comfortably from your first hundred characters. A few free lessons refresh regularly; a subscription unlocks the library. The stories are written for learners rather than native content, which is exactly what makes it work early on but also why you should graduate to real material later.

A franchise of local producers filming unscripted street interviews, each episode subtitled in the target language and English, which is the closest free thing to hearing how people genuinely speak. All YouTube episodes are free; membership adds transcripts, vocabulary lists and exercises. Real-speed unscripted speech is hard early on — start with the slower 'Super Easy' episodes if you are below B1.

Around 6 million words recorded by native speakers across 400+ languages, usually with several accents per word so you can hear regional variation. Free to search on the site; the paid tiers are aimed at API users and bulk audio downloads. Indispensable for names, place names and anything a TTS voice would mangle — many learners wire it directly into Anki for card audio.

Built-in correction tools let partners fix your messages inline, and the social 'moments' feed gets you corrections from strangers without arranging a call. Free for the core exchange; VIP adds more translations and simultaneous target languages. The persistent caveat is that a fair share of users treat it as a dating app, and exchange partners are unreliable — it works best once you already have some output to correct.

A Chrome extension that shows target-language and native subtitles simultaneously, lets you click any word for a definition, replay a line, and save phrases for review. The free tier already covers dual subs, dictionary lookups and the CEFR-graded video catalogue; Pro (about $6/month) adds machine translation, speech recognition and better AI lookups. It transforms passive Netflix time into study time, but you need enough of a base — roughly B1 — for subtitle mining to beat just watching.

Each story comes with a companion episode where the hosts unpack the key words and phrases in Chinese, so you get input and consolidation without leaving the language, from Beginning through Superior. The level range makes it one of the few learner podcasts you can stay with for years. Podcast audio is free; transcripts, worksheets and speaking cohorts are paid, and the recording quality varies across the older catalogue.

Import podcasts, articles or ebooks, tap unknown words for definitions, and LingQ tracks your known-word count over time. The free tier caps how many saved words you can keep, so serious use means paying (~$13/month or less annually). The interface is clunky and the built-in SRS is weaker than Anki, but the reading-plus-audio workflow with 50+ languages is hard to replicate elsewhere.

A free, offline-capable Chinese-English dictionary with stroke-order animations, handwriting and audio search, plus paid add-ons for OCR (point your camera at a menu or sign), document reading and extra dictionaries. The free version alone is better than any competitor; the paid bundles are one-time purchases rather than a subscription. Its flashcard system is powerful but fiddly — many people pair Pleco for lookup with a separate SRS. Simplified and traditional both supported.

Aimed squarely at the hardest transition in Chinese — from graded readers to native text — by making any Chinese webpage or imported file tappable for pinyin, definitions and text-to-speech, with difficulty estimates for novels. Reading itself is free; premium adds sync, offline and sentence translation. Best once you have roughly HSK 4 vocabulary; below that even with lookups the novels are a slog.

A browser extension plus web reader covering 100+ languages: click a word or drag across a phrase, get an inline translation, and it becomes a flashcard automatically. The free tier gives unlimited single-word translations but caps phrases and AI explanations at 10 a day; Premium is $6/month. Simpler and cheaper than LingQ or Migaku if all you want is frictionless reading of articles and ebooks.

A detailed staged roadmap for acquiring a language through massive comprehensible input — what to do at each stage, when to start output, how to mine sentences — with a free tracker, starter courses and an active Discord. The roadmap and community are free; vocabulary decks, advanced courses and coaching are paid. It is opinionated to the point of dogma about avoiding early output and translation, so take the framework and ignore the purity rules if they do not fit your goals.

Same idea as HelloTalk but with vetted profiles and a cleaner focus on actual voice and video calls, which makes it noticeably less spammy in practice. Free to use; Pro adds unlimited partner search and extra languages, and the app also sells paid tutors. Both apps live or die on finding one or two committed partners, so expect to message a lot of people before anything sticks.

A news-based graded reader adding articles daily across levels roughly mapped to HSK 1–6, each with human-recorded audio, one-tap dictionary and exportable vocabulary. Because the content is current events rather than invented stories, it keeps intermediate learners reading when textbook dialogues get boring. Free sample lessons exist but the useful volume is behind a subscription, and simplified characters dominate.

The most complete HSK-aligned course track available online, with grammar explanations, vocabulary drilling and mock exams for each level, taught clearly in English with Chinese examples. If your goal is the HSK certificate for study or work in China, this is the straightest path. Courses are paid per level (a free YouTube channel previews the teaching style), and the HSK-exam focus means less everyday conversational practice.

A vocabulary SRS built only for Mandarin: import HSK levels, Integrated Chinese chapters or your own lists, and it schedules reviews with sensible defaults instead of Anki's endless configuration. Good for people who want spaced repetition to just work. It is a paid subscription doing something Anki does free, and like all SRS it teaches recognition, not usage — pair it with reading.

One-on-one video lessons from roughly $5–30/hr depending on the language and the teacher's credentials. It is the single fastest way to get real speaking practice, and the reason most self-study plans stall is that they skip this step. Community tutors are cheap conversation partners; professional teachers are worth it if you want structure, homework and error correction.

A streaming service where every show has clickable dual subtitles and saved words become flashcards, covering 15 languages with apps on phone, Roku and TV. It solves the 'what do I watch' problem for languages where Netflix's catalogue is thin. The library is much smaller than a mainstream streamer and it is subscription-only — if you already pay for Netflix, Language Reactor's free tier does most of the same job.

The heavyweight immersion toolkit: one-click sentence mining with audio, screenshot and definitions, plus its own SRS and known-word tracking, for 11 languages including Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and the major European ones. A 10-day free trial then a subscription (roughly $10/month). Overkill unless you are committed to a sentence-mining routine — if that describes you it saves hours a week, otherwise Language Reactor's free tier is enough.

Built by linguists working from excavated bronze and oracle-bone forms, it explains for each character which parts carry sound and which carry meaning, correcting a lot of folk etymology that circulates in learner circles. It installs inside Pleco, so it fits your existing lookup habit. It is a one-time paid add-on and it assumes you already read some Chinese — buying it at beginner level is premature.

100,000+ tutors across 120+ subjects, with a free replacement if your first tutor is a bad fit. The main structural difference from italki is that Preply pushes weekly lesson subscriptions and takes a large commission from tutors, which some learners consider a reason to prefer italki. Worth comparing side by side for your language — prices, availability and tutor quality differ per market rather than per platform.

You write characters with a finger or stylus and it marks stroke order and shape in real time, scheduling reviews so you actually retain them; it ships with HSK, Integrated Chinese and other textbook lists. Only Chinese and Japanese are supported, which is why it is here rather than in the general tools. Roughly $15/month or $100/year after a 7-day trial, and it is worth it only if handwriting is genuinely one of your goals — many learners reasonably skip production of characters entirely.