The best Simplified Chinese websites

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 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.

Shows you where characters actually come from — ancient forms, sound components, meaning components — instead of inventing mnemonics, then feeds you sentences and short media graded to what you already know. The character-origin data is genuinely scholarly and the free tier is generous. The interface is dense and does not hold your hand, so it suits self-directed learners more than beginners who want a guided path.

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 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.

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.