5 Best Duolingo Alternatives for Mandarin Chinese in 2026

You've learned the words for “today,” “home,” and “study.” Now you'd like to tell a friend you're studying Chinese at home today. You know the pieces—but which order do they go in? And can you remember the tones when you're thinking about the whole sentence?

If that feels familiar, a Duolingo alternative for Mandarin Chinese with clearer explanations may help. Or perhaps your lessons are going well and you'd simply like something easier to read, a reliable dictionary, or help writing characters. Those are different needs, and they don't all call for a new course.

LingoDeer and ChineseSkill are part of our app family. We recommend LingoDeer first for a guided Mandarin foundation, with ChineseSkill a close second for its focus on Chinese and its choice of courses. We'll also introduce three tools that work well alongside either one. Think of this as a small menu to choose from, rather than five subscriptions to keep up with.

Quick answer

LingoDeer is our top Duolingo alternative for Mandarin Chinese if you want a clear course with grammar you can understand and use. Experienced language teaching experts design the lessons, connecting pinyin, native audio, characters, and review. ChineseSkill is our second pick for dedicated Chinese study, with separate Mainland Mandarin, Taiwan Mandarin, and Hong Kong Cantonese courses. Add Pleco for word questions, Du Chinese for stories, or Skritter for handwriting when you need that extra help.

The five recommendations at a glance

Recommendation	Best reason to choose it	Role in your study plan
1. LingoDeer	You want to understand Mandarin sentence patterns, connect sounds with characters, and follow a clear sequence	Our first pick for a structured main course
2. ChineseSkill	You want a Chinese-focused platform with dedicated courses for different learning goals	A second main-course option, with Mainland Mandarin, Taiwan Mandarin, and Cantonese paths
3. Pleco	You need to check a word, pronunciation, or example while studying	A dictionary companion to LingoDeer or ChineseSkill
4. Du Chinese	You want to read stories at a manageable level and listen along	A reading and listening companion to your course
5. Skritter	You recognize characters but struggle to write them from memory	Focused character and vocabulary practice

Key takeaways

• Start with LingoDeer if you'd like more guidance. Expert-designed lessons connect grammar, sounds, characters, and review, so you have a clear next step.
• Take a closer look at ChineseSkill for dedicated Chinese study. Alongside its established Mainland Mandarin course, it offers separate Taiwan Mandarin and Hong Kong Cantonese courses.
• Add a tool for something you'd like to do. Pleco helps you look up words; Du Chinese gives you stories to read and hear; Skritter helps you practice writing characters.
• Choose the language as well as the characters. Mandarin can use simplified or traditional characters. Selecting traditional characters doesn't turn a Mandarin course into Cantonese.
• Try using what you've learned. Say a sentence of your own, or read a familiar word before checking the pinyin. Small tasks can show you where you need more help.

Choose a replacement around your Mandarin learning problem

Before downloading something new, think about where your last study session got difficult. Was it hearing the word, remembering its written form, or understanding the sentence? That gives you a useful place to begin:

Your current difficulty	What to look for
“I know the translation but cannot hear or say the word reliably.”	Pinyin instruction, repeatable audio, and careful work on tones
“I keep guessing the word order.”	Grammar explanations with examples you can change
“I read the pinyin and ignore the characters.”	Display controls and short reading tasks using familiar vocabulary
“Every paragraph sends me to a dictionary.”	Easier graded reading and selective lookup
“I recognize the character but cannot write it.”	Writing from memory with stroke feedback

If Duolingo has helped you build a study habit, that effort still counts. Keep what works. A different course may help with an explanation you've been missing; an extra resource may give you more chances to use what you know.

The first two apps below can guide your main study. The other three help with questions and practice along the way. You can start small and add more when it feels useful.

1. LingoDeer for a structured Mandarin foundation

Best for beginners and returning learners who want to understand how Mandarin works and build sentences with more independence.

LingoDeer keeps the explanation and practice close together. You can read why a sentence works, hear it, try the exercises, and come back to it in review. If you've been getting answers right while still wondering “Why?”, that support can make lessons feel much clearer.

Expert-designed lessons connect the pieces

Experienced language teaching experts design LingoDeer's course content. Its course-design approach brings grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence building together.

In Mandarin, each part helps the others make sense. A word has a meaning and a tone; its characters help you recognize it in writing; a sentence shows you how to use it. A planned course gives you time to connect those pieces instead of learning them as separate facts.

Think back to telling your friend where you'll study. Knowing the words is a good start. An explanation of where the time and place go gives you a way to turn those words into a message—and to change the message tomorrow.

That's what we value about LingoDeer as a Mandarin course: you get help moving from “I've seen this before” to “I know how to say something with it.”

Pinyin gives you a starting point for pronunciation

LingoDeer's Alphabet section introduces pinyin for Chinese. Pinyin writes Mandarin pronunciation with Roman letters and tone marks. The letters look familiar, but they don't always sound the way an English reader would expect. Listen as you learn them.

The tone is part of the word, too. 买 (mǎi) means “to buy,” while 卖 (mài) means “to sell.” Without the marks, the spellings look the same. Hearing and practicing the word with its tone helps you keep the meanings apart.

Try listening to a new word, repeating it, and then checking the pinyin. If a sound is uncertain, play it again. As the word becomes familiar, see whether you can recognize it from the audio alone. You don't need to get every sound right on the first attempt.

Grammar explanations help you change a sentence

LingoDeer's Learning Tips give you a place to turn when a sentence puzzles you. Read the explanation before a lesson, then come back with the question you're actually asking: “Why does this word go here?” or “What changes if I mean tomorrow?”

Let's use that study plan as an example. You're telling a friend where you'll be studying:

Mandarin	Pinyin	Meaning
我今天在家学中文。	Wǒ jīntiān zài jiā xué Zhōngwén.	I'm studying Chinese at home today.
我明天在家学中文。	Wǒ míngtiān zài jiā xué Zhōngwén.	I'm studying Chinese at home tomorrow.
我明天在学校学中文。	Wǒ míngtiān zài xuéxiào xué Zhōngwén.	I'm studying Chinese at school tomorrow.

These sentences follow person + time + place + activity. 在 (zài) introduces the place before the activity. To change today to tomorrow, we change the time word. 学 (xué, “to study”) stays as it is—you don't need to change it to a future-tense form the way you might in English.

Other Mandarin sentences can work differently, but this pattern gives you somewhere to start. Cover the examples and try saying where you'll study tomorrow. If you get stuck, look back at just the part you need.

You can learn useful small phrases this way, too. In 两杯茶 (liǎng bēi chá, “two cups of tea”), 杯 (bēi) tells us we're counting cups. In 两本书 (liǎng běn shū, “two books”), we use 本 (běn) to count books. These are measure words. Learning one with a familiar noun gives you a phrase you can use straight away.

Get comfortable reading characters at your pace

LingoDeer's reading display options let you adjust how you see pinyin and characters. That can help when your pronunciation and character reading are moving at different speeds.

When a word is new, use pinyin and audio to get comfortable with the sound. Then give its characters some attention. In a familiar lesson, try reading a word from the characters before looking at its pinyin.

It's easy for your eyes to jump straight to the pinyin. Hiding it briefly gives the characters a turn. If that makes the whole lesson confusing, bring the help back and practice with a smaller bit of text.

There's no fixed day when you must stop using pinyin. Let it help you while you gradually get more comfortable reading the characters themselves.

Native audio supports listening beyond individual words

The LingoDeer Chinese course uses native-speaker recordings for words and sentences. You can hear how familiar words sound when someone puts them together.

Choose one short sentence. Listen while reading it, cover it and listen again, then say it yourself. Pick one thing to notice, such as a tone you missed. Recording yourself separately can help you compare, and a teacher or proficient speaker can give you feedback if the difference is hard to hear.

This gives listening a small, manageable place in your lesson. When you can, try a real exchange as well. Another person may reply in a way you weren't expecting, which is useful practice of its own.

Review follows what you have learned

LingoDeer's spaced repetition system brings material from your lessons back over time. Mobile review includes flashcards, listening, speaking, spelling, and comprehensive practice; web options are more limited, and access depends on membership. For Chinese, you can review with pinyin, characters, or both.

Choose a little practice that fits the difficulty. If you know a word on the page but miss it when spoken, listen to it again. If a sentence still doesn't make sense, revisit the explanation before another round of exercises.

After you've reviewed an item through SRS at least once, Custom Review lets you choose it for extra practice. You can spend a few minutes on the material that's giving you trouble without starting a separate vocabulary deck.

Try a few lessons before choosing a plan

LingoDeer's free-access guide includes Alphabet, Unit One and its review, Test Outs, and the Travel Phrasebook. Further course content, offline learning, and cross-device synchronization require Premium.

Try the introductory lessons before choosing a subscription. Read an explanation, listen to the example, and see whether you can use it yourself. If you like that way of studying, check the membership options for your platform and region.

2. ChineseSkill for dedicated Chinese study and more course choices

Best for learners who want a Chinese-focused platform, particularly when Taiwan Mandarin or Cantonese is part of the goal.

ChineseSkill began in 2014, giving it more than a decade of experience focusing on Chinese learners. Its course choices have grown since those early Mandarin lessons. Today, that's especially interesting if your plans involve Taiwan or Hong Kong as well as Mainland China.

An established product with a teaching focus

ChineseSkill's curriculum was developed with professional teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. The lessons bring pronunciation, words, grammar, and characters together, with activities for listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

The ChineseSkill website describes native-speaker audio, class notes, varied practice, and adjustable learning settings. Together, these give you several ways to work through something: hear it, read the explanation, try it, and return to it later.

As you sample a lesson, notice what happens when you make a mistake. Can you find the help you need? Then close the exercise and try a phrase yourself. That's a useful way to see whether the teaching suits you.

Mainland Mandarin, Taiwan Mandarin, and Cantonese serve different goals

A particularly useful part of ChineseSkill is that you can choose a course for the people and places you want to connect with. Its App Store listing describes three paths:

• Mainland Mandarin with simplified characters, for standard Putonghua.
• Taiwan Mandarin with traditional characters, for learners whose plans or relationships point toward Taiwan.
• Hong Kong Cantonese, for learners who want to study Cantonese itself.

The Taiwan Mandarin course includes native audio, pronunciation help such as Zhuyin drills, and handwriting practice. The Hong Kong Cantonese course has its own native audio, Jyutping pronunciation drills, review, and simplified or traditional character options. Zhuyin and Jyutping are pronunciation guides for different learning contexts; you don't need to learn both to get started with one course.

Picture where you'd like to use the language. For Mandarin conversations in Taiwan, try the Taiwan Mandarin course. For Cantonese with family or in Hong Kong, choose Cantonese. Traditional characters can appear in either, but Mandarin and Cantonese don't become the same spoken language because the writing looks familiar.

Newer content gives you more ways to practice

The app description also lists graded stories, listening activities, handwriting, speech recognition, and authentic videos. That gives learners more ways to meet language again: in a story, in speech, or on a page they're trying to write themselves.

Do check your chosen course before subscribing. The listing currently reserves videos, extra vocabulary, and Booster content for Mainland Mandarin. Other features and access can differ by platform or app version, too.

If you use speech recognition, take the feedback as a reason to listen and try again. Being understood by the app is encouraging, but it doesn't tell you that every sound and tone is natural. Ask a person for help with sounds that keep giving you trouble.

Would ChineseSkill suit your plans?

LingoDeer stays our first pick for a guided Mandarin foundation with clear explanations. ChineseSkill earns a closer look for its long focus on Chinese teaching and courses that may fit a more specific goal, such as life in Taiwan.

You don't have to complete both beginner courses. Sample them, then follow the one you feel comfortable returning to. ChineseSkill is free to download with in-app purchases; check the plan inside the app for the courses and content it includes.

3. Pleco for dictionary support during real study

Best for checking words and examples while using LingoDeer, ChineseSkill, or reading material.

Pleco is the kind of companion you can open when a word raises a question. Its core dictionaries are free, with lookups by characters, pinyin, or English, definitions, examples, and support for simplified and traditional characters. Paid add-ons include more dictionaries, flashcards, reading tools, and OCR, which recognizes text in images.

If you're looking up something from a sentence, search the whole word first. Translating each character separately won't always give you the word's meaning. Check its pronunciation and the definition that fits, then return to the sentence and read it again.

Your course helps you decide what to learn next; Pleco helps with questions that come up along the way. It's a useful companion to LingoDeer or ChineseSkill, especially once you start noticing Chinese outside your lessons.

Start with the free dictionaries. If you later need something extra, the official Pleco store lists add-ons and bundles. One distinction to keep in mind: drawing a character to look it up isn't the same as practicing how to write it from memory.

4. Du Chinese for graded stories and listening

Best for turning lesson knowledge into sustained reading with support.

When you'd like to read more than individual lesson sentences, Du Chinese offers stories and articles arranged by difficulty. You can look up a word, check a sentence translation, or listen to native-speaker audio. There are simplified and traditional character options, pronunciation support, grammar help, and vocabulary review.

Reading gives familiar language a new setting. A pattern from your LingoDeer or ChineseSkill lesson might turn up in a character's conversation, and suddenly it has a job to do in a story.

Pick something you can mostly follow. Read a short part, check the words that leave you lost, then listen and read again. You might try another listen without the text. If you're opening a translation for almost every sentence, choose an easier story—you'll have more room to enjoy it.

Du Chinese works well here as extra reading and listening alongside your course. The pricing page shows free selections and Premium access to the full library. Check your plan for offline downloads and audiobook features.

5. Skritter for writing characters from memory

Best for learners whose recognition is ahead of their handwriting.

If you can recognize a character but draw a blank when trying to write it, Skritter is worth exploring. It gives stroke feedback and reviews over time, with simplified and traditional Chinese, textbook lists, and your own lists. You can also practice readings, tones, and meanings.

Start with a few words from your current lesson. Study the shapes, then try writing without the model. Check what you missed and use one of the words in a sentence. That keeps the writing connected to something you understand.

Handwriting deserves time if you need it for a class, exam, or personal goal. If you're mainly hoping to chat with people, leave plenty of room for listening and speaking as well.

We'd use Skritter for that writing practice alongside a main course. Its official site includes subscription plans and trial information. Try writing on the device you'll use, and make sure you've chosen the script you want to learn.

Free access and costs to compare

Access details checked October 11, 2026. Prices, trial eligibility, and inclusions can change by region, platform, and plan. Confirm the terms on the linked official pages before purchasing.

Product	Starting point	What to check before paying
LingoDeer	Free Alphabet, Unit One and review, Test Outs, and Travel Phrasebook	Premium course access, offline study, and your platform's current offer
ChineseSkill	Free download with in-app purchases; explore the course you want	Which course and content the plan unlocks; do not assume every feature is shared across courses
Pleco	Free core dictionaries	Which paid dictionary or feature you need, and whether a bundle is useful
Du Chinese	Free reading selections	Premium library access, offline and audiobook functions, and renewal terms
Skritter	Advertised seven-day trial on its website plans	Trial eligibility, renewal, and the writing workflow on your device

These offers aren't all the same: a free dictionary may remain useful for years, while a trial ends after a set time. Start by deciding what help you need, then compare the plans that provide it.

Build a routine with one course and one useful extra

Start with LingoDeer as your main course, or choose ChineseSkill if its course options fit your plans better. Give yourself time to settle into that routine. You can add something else when you find a question or skill you'd like more help with.

If you have twenty minutes, try five reviewing, ten on a lesson, and five using what you've learned. You could say something about your day, read a short passage, or write a few familiar words. You don't need to open every app every day.

Here are three ways to use the other recommendations:

• Course plus Pleco: look up a word that's puzzled you, then return to the sentence it came from. One answered question is enough; you don't need to save every interesting word you see.
• Course plus Du Chinese: read a short story near your level and listen along. See whether you can retell one detail in simple words.
• Course plus Skritter: practice writing a few words from your lesson, then try without the model. Keep the set small enough to remember what the words mean, too.

Already using Du Chinese and Skritter? Their documented integration lets newly saved reading vocabulary go to a Skritter deck once you've connected the accounts. Older saved words need a separate export. Start with a few words you'd like to keep, so the review stays manageable.

At the end of the week, come back to something that felt difficult. Maybe you can hear a sentence more clearly, read with less help, or remember a character's strokes. Those small changes help you decide what to keep practicing.

Frequently asked questions

Is LingoDeer better than Duolingo for Mandarin Chinese?

We recommend LingoDeer if you'd like clearer grammar explanations and a course that brings the parts of Mandarin together. Its expert-designed lessons include pinyin, native audio, and review. Try a lesson and see whether the explanation helps you make a sentence of your own.

Should I choose LingoDeer or ChineseSkill?

Start with LingoDeer for the guided Mandarin approach described here. Try ChineseSkill too if you'd like a Chinese-focused platform, especially for Taiwan Mandarin or Cantonese. Choose the course you enjoy following; you don't need two sets of beginner lessons at once.

Can Pleco replace a beginner Mandarin course?

Pleco is best used here alongside a course. It can answer a word question, while LingoDeer or ChineseSkill helps you decide what to study next. If you're happy with your lessons, adding a dictionary may be all the change you need.

Is traditional Chinese the same as Cantonese?

No. Traditional Chinese refers to the written characters; Cantonese refers to a spoken-language variety. Mandarin can use traditional characters, too. That's why ChineseSkill's Taiwan Mandarin and Hong Kong Cantonese courses are separate choices.

Do I need Du Chinese and Skritter from the beginning?

No. Try Du Chinese when you'd like more supported reading, and Skritter when writing characters matters to you. A main course is plenty to start with. You can add more once you know what you'd use it for.

For help bringing Mandarin sounds, characters, and sentences together, try LingoDeer's Chinese course. Begin with the introductory material and give one explanation a try. A sentence you can make your own is a good first step.