The best Traditional Chinese dictionaries

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.

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 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.