So you’ve decided to learn Mandarin Chinese. I made that decision over 10 years ago, and it changed my life for the better. That also means I’ve spent 10 years trying, failing, buying, canceling, loving and hating Chinese learning resources.
In this guide, I’ve compiled my favorite 10 websites for learning Chinese. They’ve proven to me that they’re the cream of the crop—in-depth lessons, user-friendliness and quality learning tools.
Yoyo Chinese holds a special place in my heart. I started using it when I was 13 years old, and it’s the resource most responsible for taking me from beginner—think HSK 2—to intermediate, about HSK 4.
Yoyo Chinese puts a heavy emphasis on conversational skills and claims you can reach a conversational level in six months. There are three main courses—Beginner Conversational, Intermediate Conversational and Upper Intermediate Conversational. Each course has six levels with 7-10 units per level. Units are then made up of 3-5 video lessons.
The videos are about 5-10 minutes long. In the intermediate levels, they’re centered around a conversation between native speakers. Yangyang—the founder—breaks down each line and teaches new vocabulary and grammar structures from it.
Once you’ve watched the video, there’s an audio review, dialogue review, flashcards and a quiz. Plus, each lesson comes with downloadable PDF lesson notes.
Aside from the conversational courses, there are also two Chinese character courses, a Chinese reader course, Chinese grammar series and a “How to Say in Chinese” series.
While the pricing is affordable in my opinion—$14.99 a month for basic and $19.99 for premium—the only major con I have to point out is that the free plan only gives you access to about 75 videos. Compared to the thousands on the site. So if your budget is tight, it might not be for you—at least right now.
FluentU lets you learn with authentic videos by turning any YouTube or Netflix video into a language learning lesson.
I started using FluentU when I was about 16 years old—so, pretty early on in my Chinese learning journey considering I’m 23 now—and I strongly believe it’s one of the reasons my listening comprehension and natural vocabulary got so good pretty fast.
You hear how native speakers actually speak Mandarin because they’re videos that are made for them. But what makes FluentU so effective is that you’re not just “thrown into the deep.” Each video comes with interactive subtitles—meaning you can click on any word you don’t know to instantly get a pop-up of its meaning, pronunciation and example sentences.
Clicking on the word adds it to your personalized flashcard deck, which uses a spaced repetition algorithm to time your reviews optimally for long-term memory. And once you finish a video, there’s a quiz on the new vocabulary. The only potential downside is that the quizzes are pretty in-depth, so they might be a little overwhelming if you have a busy schedule.
The Netflix and YouTube Chrome extensions give you interactive subtitles on whatever you’re watching as long as the video has captions. For YouTube, there’s also the option to import your videos directly onto the FluentU website. Regardless of which method you use, you can use all the usual FluentU tools to learn your new vocabulary—flashcards, quizzes and the like.
There are also hundreds of curated videos already on the platform that you can watch, categorized by level. And the video-based dictionary lets you find videos that use the word you’re searching for in context.
This is one of the most intensive Chinese courses I’ve tried in my entire 10 years of learning.
Mandarin Blueprint promises to teach you Chinese up to five times faster using their unique immersion and Hanzi learning methods. The creators promise that by the end of the course, you’ll understand 99.4% of Chinese, master 11,800 words, read and write 3,050 characters, and pass the HSK Level 9.
The course starts with extensive lessons on pronunciation. Then, they move on to teaching characters using their “Hanzi Movie Method.”
It’s an in-depth mnemonic system that spends several lessons getting you to design your own, specific mnemonics for components, radicals, initial sounds and ending sounds. When I was going through the course, I doubted whether this was 100% necessary—but it totally worked. Once you learn the 105th character, you won’t even need pinyin anymore.
Once you’ve graduated through enough lessons and phases, the focus shifts to comprehensible input—native Chinese media appropriate for your level. This is part of the “Mandarin Immersion Masterclass.” There’s an exhaustive Notion page full of native speaker media, and the course walks you through exactly how to use each resource.
The only drawback is that it’s very expensive. As in, $799. But there’s an option to pay in $39 monthly installments for one year. The method is also very intensive—and not to mention very different—so if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the course, it might not be worth the money.
I wrote a full review of my experience with Mandarin Blueprint, which you can check out here:
Mandarin Blueprint is an extensive Chinese course that claims to teach you 99.4% of Mandarin. The creators also promise that you can pass the HSK Level 9 exam once you…
ChineseClass101 has been big in the Chinese learning community for a while.
You don’t get a course when you sign up for ChineseClass101. They teach using learner “pathways”—which are essentially collections of podcast and video lessons grouped by specific themes and levels. For example, the “Can Ask About Well-being” pathway has seven video lessons with seven assessments scattered throughout.
Each lesson starts with the audio or video content. They’re pretty short—about five minutes on average, in my experience. You then move on to reviews and drills. Depending on whether it’s a grammar or vocabulary lesson, the types of exercises vary. And there are lesson transcripts and downloadable PDF notes, too.
Personally, I used ChineseClass101 as a supplementary resource to more complete ones like Yoyo Chinese. I love that there’s endless amounts of content, but the lack of structure made it difficult for me to use as a primary resource.
One thing I do love is how many built-in study tools—like flashcards and a personal word bank—and free gifts they offer. There’s a “word of the day” feature, a Chinese dictionary, free vocabulary lists, key phrase lists and a list of the 2,000 most common Chinese words.
If you go with the Premium Plus subscription, you also get access to the “My Teacher” feature. This includes the ability to message your tutor, live private classes, group classes and an assessment test done by a tutor.
Now, the cons. First, a free account doesn’t get you far at all. Second, the abundance of content without any course-like structure can be overwhelming—it definitely was for me. Finally, there’s not much of a focus on reading or writing.
Here’s a more in-depth review of ChineseClass101 if you’re interested in it:
Are the audio-based lessons of ChineseClass101 right for you? Click here to read my review of ChineseClass101 to find out. See the honest truth about the program’s…
Mandarin Corner has some of the most free content I’ve come across. They have a website and YouTube channel with full video courses for HSK Levels 1 through 6, flashcard decks, podcast episodes and conversations, grammar lessons and more.
I used Mandarin Corner’s HSK 4 video course. There are 22 videos and they teach all 600 words you need to pass HSK 4, organized into parts of speech. For example, “Verbs 1-30,” “Adjectives 1-30,” etc. You learn about 30 words per lesson, but the videos are relatively short—about 10 minutes on average. Which I loved.
And the best part? All of Mandarin Corner’s content is free. In all honesty, this is the most in-depth, high-quality resource I’ve come across where it’s not necessary to pay anything.
But if you’re a big fan of their content and want extra materials like PDF notes and transcripts, you can upgrade to premium with a one-time payment. Materials for an entire course costs between $15-40 (depending on the size of the course), and Anki flashcards are $10.
The only downside to Mandarin Corner is that it’s all input—meaning you don’t get any speaking practice. There aren’t any quizzes either, so the only type of reinforcement you get is the flashcards.
Here’s another free resource with lots of quality information. Chinese Grammar Wiki has always been my go-to for grammar references.
They have over 2,100 free articles on Chinese grammar concepts, and they’ve organized them by level. So it’s 100% possible to use it as a grammar course just by working through the articles one by one.
There are full courses—which are basically grammar point lists that link out to the lesson article—for HSK 1, HSK 2 and HSK 3. But if you go by CEFR level instead, there are lessons up to C1. That leveling doesn’t really make sense to me, but they say that the C1 grammar points represent HSK Levels 5-6. In my experience, it’ll take you to at least an upper-intermediate level.
And if you want, you can buy the lessons in an ebook (some levels offer paperback on Amazon, too) for as little as 99 cents.
I love the structure and simplicity of the lessons. Each one starts with a summary that introduces the structure or formula of the grammar point. Then, it goes straight into examples. And although the lessons are pretty short, they go really in-depth. I never felt like I had to look up anything else after I finished one.
The only bone I have to pick is that there’s no pinyin. But for a free resource with so much content, I settled on using a tool like Google Translate where I could copy and paste the sentence to get the pinyin if I needed it.
Obviously, you won’t be able to use Chinese Grammar Wiki as your only—or even primary—resource. There’s just no vocabulary taught or involvement of other skills. It’s pure grammar. But if you use it with a more comprehensive program like FluentU or Yoyo Chinese, it’s definitely worth using.
LingoDeer is like the Duolingo of Asian languages. So many people told me that if I wanted to learn Chinese, Japanese or Korean, to use it instead of Duolingo. And they were right.
There are two Mandarin courses: Chinese I and Chinese II. Chinese I has four levels and Chinese II has six.
The courses follow a roadmap, so you have to complete the units and lessons in order. They follow a format very similar to Duolingo—you start with multiple-choice translation options with pictures that represent the word, and then go through several vocabulary drills. They include multiple choice, listening, translating and matching.
Finishing a lesson gives you points, and then you move on to the next lesson in the unit.
Something I like is that each unit comes with “Learning Tips,” which are like mini grammar lessons. There’s also a “Story,” which is an interactive reading exercise that starts from lesson one. And to top it off, clicking “Vocabulary” shows you all the words you’ve learned in the unit.
But I do have to say that if you’re not a fan of Duolingo, you probably won’t like LingoDeer, either. It can feel rigid and the exercises can get repetitive. I personally don’t like that I can’t skip around in the course, and the progression feels a little slow. But if you have a busy schedule and are more likely to be using your phone than a laptop, it’s probably better for you than others.
If LingoDeer sounds like a program you’d be interested in, I recommend checking out our full review here:
My honest LingoDeer review for 2024 is based on trying to learn Japanese on LingoDeer in one week! I give all my honest impressions of the LingoDeer program and discuss…
italki lets you take one-on-one lessons with Chinese tutors in your price range. It’s one of the most popular tutoring platforms, and I’ve been using it since the beginning of my Chinese learning journey.
There are over 900 tutors as of December 2024, and you can set filters to find the right one for your goals—such as the country they’re from, price range, lesson category (like grammar or conversation practice), etc. Each tutor then has a video introduction and their class offerings on their profile.
Once you’ve found someone you like, you can schedule 30-minute, 45-minute or 60-minute lessons (some tutors offer 90 minutes). If you click with the tutor, you can continue to pay for classes one by one or buy a package of several and schedule them out.
I’ve taken pretty much every type of lesson on italki—I’ve had a tutor who followed a textbook and taught me grammar each class, but the majority were focused on conversation practice. I’d ask them to correct my mistakes and they’d send me corrections and vocabulary I got stuck on in the chat or in a Google Doc.
I love both lesson formats, and I recommend experimenting with both.
What makes italki different from other tutoring platforms is their “Community” feature. This lets you ask questions, practice Chinese writing, read articles published by italki tutors and connect with other learners. I used this feature a lot for sentence corrections. Any time I learned a new grammar concept, I’d post my example sentences. I usually got corrections within a few hours.
Finally, there’s an option for taking group classes that follow a specific lesson topic (like news, politics, daily living, reading club, etc.).
Really the only cons to italki are that lesson costs can add up quickly if you don’t go into it with a budget in mind, and the quality of lessons definitely varies depending on the tutor. You’ll likely have to “shop around” before you find the right person for you, which takes time and money.
There’s really a lot to italki. So if you want to learn more, you can read more about my and one of our other writer’s experiences in our in-depth review here:
Read this italki review to find out if this language tutoring platform will serve you well on your language learning journey! I’ll explain how it works, the pros and cons,…
Pimsleur is an audio-based course that follows a conversational listen-and-repeat format, making it different from all the other websites we’ve explored so far.
Each lesson starts with a conversation. At first, you understand close to nothing. But by the end, you understand everything.
The host prompts you to repeat after the native speaker at intervals to learn the new words used in the dialogue. So not only do you understand it after 30 minutes, but you also get a solid grasp on how to use the words and structures independently.
Audio courses aren’t for everyone, and I used to think they weren’t for me. But I loved that the Pimsleur courses are almost 100% in Chinese and you speak within the first five minutes. So even if you don’t use it as your main resource, you instantly jump into listening and speaking.
However, a lot of people do find the listen-and-repeat style gets boring and repetitive after a few lessons. So be mindful of that.
Each lesson is 30 minutes and there are 30 lessons in each level, so you can realistically complete one level a month. There are five levels total. In my experience, these take you to a lower intermediate level—let’s say HSK 3.
Lastly, signing up for the all-access membership gives you study tools like flashcards and reading lessons.
Pimsleur is another course we’ve reviewed in-depth, so I highly recommend checking it out if you’re thinking about using the program:
Is Pimsleur’s popular, audio-based language learning program right for you? I’ve put together an in-depth Pimsleur review to help you decide. Discover the pros and cons of…
Memrise has undergone a lot of changes in recent years that not everyone has been a fan of, but I still use it every once in a while. And their community website has been a staple part of my routine for years, which I’ll get more into later.
The Memrise Chinese course has seven mini-courses that represent levels, starting at Absolute Beginner and ending in Mastery. Each mini-course is made up of five levels, except for Mastery, which only has one. There are 31 levels in total.
Unlike many courses, Memrise doesn’t follow a set structure. Instead, they have “Scenarios”—collections of lessons that teach a certain topic. For example, there’s an “Activities” scenario with six lessons like “Hobbies,” “Going to the Cinema,” “Making Plans,” etc.
As you complete lessons, you earn points. And once you earn 100 points, you move on to the next level. Since there’s no course structure, you can get your 100 points from any of the Scenarios you want.
Memrise also sprinkles in videos with native speakers and conversations with AI chatbots throughout the lessons and keeps track of how many you’ve completed.
However, it’s obvious that Memrise is more of a vocabulary resource with hardly any grammar instruction. It’s also slightly more expensive than I think it should be—$59.99 a month.
I like that Memrise lets you learn the vocabulary most important to you, and they’ve gotten creative with their practice exercises. But I wouldn’t recommend it as your primary resource, and I honestly never used this new version of Memrise a lot.
But what I have used consistently throughout my years of learning Mandarin is their community site. This is the old version of Memrise that lets you browse thousands of user-created courses and create your own. I’ve taken many HSK courses on this site, and I created my own “courses” to study new vocabulary I learned from italki lessons.
This is because the community site works by teaching you the new words through various rounds of vocabulary drills like multiple choice and translation exercises. And it uses a spaced repetition algorithm to time your reviews optimally.
I co-wrote a more in-depth Memrise review with one of our other writers here if you want to check it out:
Can you master a foreign language with Memrise? In this review, we’ll investigate how the Memrise program teaches languages and whether it’s worth the cost of a…
I get it—hunting for Chinese learning resources is overwhelming. As you can see, I’ve been there. But don’t let analysis paralysis hold you back from starting.
These websites are what worked best for me. Choose two or three, and stick with the ones you like, then drop the ones that aren’t your cup of tea.
Honorable Mentions
While the above websites are definitely my top picks, there are a few more I found worth mentioning:
The Chairman’s Bao. This is an online, interactive newspaper in Mandarin Chinese. The articles are written specifically for Chinese learners and are labeled by HSK level. You can toggle between simplified and traditional characters, and if you highlight a character or word, the definition and pinyin will appear to the right of the text.
Rocket Languages. Rocket Languages is a comprehensive language learning tool, but its real strength lies in its audio lessons and pronunciation practice. These features will get you ready to have real-life conversations with native Chinese speakers. The pronunciation tool allows you to focus on getting your pronunciations to sound more native, another one of Rocket Language’s major advantages. You can learn more in this review.
Chinese Boost Grammar Page. Chinese Boost’s grammar page is extremely in-depth and is organized by level. They have grammar topics from level A1 (absolute beginner) to level C1 (advanced). They also have topics organized by HSK level. You can also choose grammar lessons with specific characters or simply work your way through their list of tags, keywords, parts of speech and functions.
MandarinX. This collection of Mandarin MOOCs includes courses like Mandarin Chinese Level 1, Mandarin Chinese Level 2, Mandarin Chinese Level 3, Mandarin Chinese Essentials, Mandarin Communication and Mandarin Chinese for Business. Each course is free and self-paced, meaning you work through the course on your own time and don’t have to stick to a schedule or syllabus from a teacher. And if you’d like to receive a verified certificate at the end of the course, you only have to pay a small fee.
