Is Duolingo worth it for Chinese? An honest review
Duolingo is the easiest way to start Chinese and keep a habit. It stops before real Chinese becomes readable.
We make Mandarin The Wild. Everything we say about Duolingo comes from its own pages, checked on 24 October 2026.
What Duolingo does well
Duolingo is free, and every course is free.2 Short lessons, streaks and leaderboards make it easy to study a little every day, which is the hardest part of learning any language, and it is rated 4.7 out of 5 on the App Store.2 For Chinese, it gets you through the sounds, the tones and your first characters, so the language stops looking like noise.
Good
- Free, with every course free.
- The easiest way to keep a daily habit.
- Gets you through the sounds and first characters.
Not so good for Chinese
- Stops around HSK 3, under half the words on a Chinese web page.
- Words come one at a time in drills, with ads and energy on the free plan.
The two gaps for Chinese learners
1. It stops before real Chinese
When Duolingo launched Chinese, it said the course covers the words and grammar for HSK levels 1 to 3 and about half of level 4.3 We counted ordinary Chinese web pages: the HSK 1–3 words, and words made of them, are about 48% of the words there.4 Readers follow a text on their own at about 98% of its words.5 So after the whole course, every second word on a page is still new.
How Mandarin The Wild closes it: the Library has more than 250 graded stories and articles, HSK 1 to 6, each with a recording in two voices, free. 120 of the 354 we counted are already 95% words a Duolingo finisher knows, so you can read them for the story. What to do after Duolingo lists the first ones.
2. Words come one at a time, in exercises
A course teaches a word in a short drill, then moves on. Reading asks you to meet it in long stretches of text, in the meaning it has there. The free plan also has ads and a limit on energy; Super Duolingo removes the ads and gives unlimited energy, and the App Store lists Super Duolingo purchases from $9.99 to $119.99, with 14 days free.2
How Mandarin The Wild closes it: point at any word in a story, on a web page or in YouTube captions, and its card shows the meaning it has in that sentence, with its pinyin as it is said there. Keep it, and Review brings it back in the sentence you found it in. No ads and no energy.
学完了，下一步做什么？
next step
Side by side
| What you want to do | Mandarin The Wild | Duolingo |
|---|---|---|
| Start Chinese from zero | A pinyin chart, tone practice and HSK 1 stories, but no step-by-step course. | Yes. A full beginner course.2 |
| Keep a daily habit | Review, every day, with no daily limit. | Yes. Streaks and leaderboards.2 |
| Read graded stories at every HSK level | Yes. More than 250, HSK 1 to 6, with recordings, free. | Lessons and exercises. |
| Understand Chinese on any web page or YouTube | Yes. Point at any word, in Chrome or Edge. | No. Its lessons, in its app and on its site. |
| Ads | None. | On the free plan; Super Duolingo removes them.2 |
| Price | Free to look up, read the Library and review. | Free; Super Duolingo is paid: the App Store lists Super Duolingo purchases from $9.99 to $119.99, with 14 days free.2 |
Everything Mandarin The Wild does
- Every page and every video. The same card on any web page and in YouTube captions, in Chrome or Edge. The video keeps playing, and Previous, Replay and Next sit in the player. On Netflix, Disney+ and Viki, the Chinese subtitle line is ours too: point at a word and the video waits while you read its card.
- Captions when a video has none. On a Chinese YouTube video with no captions, sign in and press Make captions: we make them from its sound.
- Backpack and Review. Press M and the word is kept with its sentence and the page or video moment it came from. Review brings it back by sight and by sound, on every device you sign in on.
- The Library. More than 250 graded stories and articles from HSK 1 to 6, each with a recording in two voices, free.
- Look a word up here. How to say it in Chinese for an English word and What does it mean in Chinese? for a Chinese word or its pinyin, each with toned pinyin, its characters and a real sentence, free with no sign-up.
- Immersion for your own Chinese. Links, Google Docs, EPUB, PDF and Word files, and recordings with their subtitles or a transcript made from their sound, every word ready to explain.
- Your phone, offline. Add the site to your home screen: Review, the reader, and the chapters and sources you keep work with no signal.
- Your words, in and out. Bring in a Pleco or Anki list, and download your words for Anki whenever you like.
Which to pick
Starting from zero: Duolingo, for its course and its habit. Finished it, or about to: add Mandarin The Wild and read every day. Most learners do best with both: Duolingo for ten minutes of drills, a graded story for ten minutes of real Chinese.
Questions
Is Duolingo worth it for Chinese?
As a free start, yes: it builds a habit and teaches the sounds and first characters. On its own it stops around HSK 3, about half the words on a Chinese web page, so pair it with graded reading.
Can Duolingo make you fluent in Chinese?
Not on its own. Duolingo said its Chinese course covers HSK 1 to 3 and about half of HSK 4. Fluency needs much more reading and listening than a course gives.
What should I use with Duolingo for Chinese?
Graded stories at your level. Mandarin The Wild has more than 250, HSK 1 to 6, with recordings, and its word card works on any web page and YouTube, free.
Is Super Duolingo worth it for Chinese?
Super Duolingo removes ads and gives unlimited energy; the App Store lists Super Duolingo purchases from $9.99 to $119.99, with 14 days free. Every course is free either way, so if the free plan feels fine, spend the time on reading instead.
Is Mandarin The Wild free?
Looking words up, the Library with its recordings, and Review are free. Looking up needs no account; a free account keeps your words.
Sources
Checked on 24 October 2026. Prices and features change; tell us if one has.
- Mandarin The Wild: Chrome Web Store listing
- Duolingo: App Store listing (United States), its in-app purchases and description
- VentureBeat (15 November 2017), Duolingo now helps you learn Chinese: the course’s HSK coverage, as Duolingo described it at launch
- FineWeb-2, the web text we counted (its Mandarin part, cmn_Hani)
- Hu and Nation (2000), Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension, Reading in a Foreign Language 13(1)