The 8 Best Chinese Reading Apps in 2026: Graded Readers Compared

For graded stories, the best Chinese reading app is Du Chinese: it has more than 3,000 readings, recorded audio for every one and the gentlest beginner level. For graded news, pick The Chairman's Bao, which is also the cheapest of the big libraries at $88 a year. To read anything you like with a pop-up dictionary, Pleco's reader is free for pasted text and a one-off £9.99 for whole files, while LingQ adds known-word tracking and a web version for a monthly fee. If you want your reading tied to the words you already know, our own app, Mandarin Mosaic, shows what share of each article is new to you. Readibu is the free choice for Chinese web novels, and maayot suits people who want one short story a day.

A word on bias: we make Mandarin Mosaic, one of the eight apps below. The other seven aren't ours and none of them pays us, and we say where they beat our app. Prices, plans and features are from each product's own website and its App Store or Google Play listing, checked on 14 November 2026. This page covers apps only; for printed books, see our guide to Chinese graded readers and textbooks.

The Short Answer: Which App for Whom

• You're near the start (HSK 1–2) and like stories: Du Chinese.
• You're intermediate and want news and current affairs: The Chairman's Bao.
• You want to know how hard a text is for you before you start, and to practise its new words afterwards: Mandarin Mosaic.
• You want to read your own books, articles and transcripts, on a computer too: LingQ.
• You want to read Chinese web novels without paying: Readibu.
• You want a dictionary that opens files and web pages, with no subscription: Pleco.
• You want a five-minute daily habit, or a teacher to correct you: maayot.
• You're already learning with HelloChinese: its graded stories may be all you need for now.

Chinese Reading Apps Compared: Prices and Levels

Prices checked November 2026, at the time of writing. Website prices are in US dollars unless stated; App Store prices are from the UK store, as listed there. All the subscriptions renew until you cancel, and prices in the app can differ from the website and vary by country, so check before you pay.

1. Du Chinese: Best for Graded Stories

Du Chinese is a reader built around stories. Its website counts more than 3,000 readings and over 80 graded stories of 6 to 22 chapters, across six levels from Newbie to Master. Every reading has audio recorded by a native speaker, and you can tap a word for its meaning and pinyin, read grammar notes and save words as flashcards. It works in Simplified or Traditional characters, on iPhone, Android and the web.

Who it suits: beginners and lower-intermediate learners, and anyone who keeps reading because they want to know what happens next.

Free and paid: the app is free to download with a selection of free lessons, and each story has a free chapter. Premium opens the whole library, offline study and an audiobook mode. On its website it costs $14.99 a month, $79.99 for six months or $119.99 a year. The UK App Store lists Du Chinese Premium at £12.99, £70.99 and £105.99 without naming the plan lengths; they line up with the same three plans.

Weakness: it costs more by the year than The Chairman's Bao, and it isn't a news service. Our Du Chinese vs The Chairman's Bao comparison goes through the two apps feature by feature.

2. The Chairman's Bao: Best for Graded News

The Chairman's Bao (TCB) rewrites news stories for learners at six levels, with more published every day. Each lesson comes with a one-tap dictionary, keywords, grammar explanations, and reading and listening exercises, and the app has an offline mode and stroke-order practice. One subscription covers the website and the iPhone and Android apps.

How big is the library? The two official sources disagree: the homepage counted 11,136 lessons when we checked, while the App Store and Google Play descriptions still say "9,500+".

Who it suits: intermediate learners who want the vocabulary of newspapers and current affairs, and anyone who wants the most graded reading for the money.

Free and paid: there's a free sample lesson at each of the six levels. On the website, in US dollars: $11 a month, $27.50 for three months, $49.50 for six months, $88 a year, $154 for two years, or $450 for lifetime access. The UK App Store lists £10 for a month, £29.99 for three months, £49.99 for six and £89 for twelve.

Weakness: news can be dry, and the lowest levels have to squeeze real events into very few words, so complete beginners usually do better with stories first.

3. Mandarin Mosaic: Best for Reading Tied to the Words You Know

Mandarin Mosaic is our app. It's a sentence-mining app first: it tracks the words you know and teaches new ones in sentences with one new word each, with spaced repetition. Its reader, Chinese Articles, uses the same record of what you know. Every article shows the share of its words that are new to you, so you can sort by easiest and pick one you'll understand.

There are three kinds of article: more than 200 graded stories sorted by HSK level from 1 to 5; real news from the Chinese editions of sites such as BBC News and the New York Times, which isn't simplified; and, on Premium, Article Generation, which writes an article on a topic you describe, or rewrites one from a link, at HSK 2, 3, 4 or 5. While reading, you tap a word for its pinyin, meaning and audio, and can add it to Focus Words so it comes up in lessons. Our guide to how Chinese Articles works has the details.

Who it suits: learners from about HSK 2 who want the words they meet while reading to come back in lessons until they stick.

Free and paid: on the free plan every collection is open and you can read the first five pages of any article, with all the reading tools. Premium gives whole articles and 30 generated articles a month; it costs £11.95 a month or £95 a year (£7.92 a month) at the time of writing, and the first month is free.

Weaknesses: the story library is much smaller than Du Chinese's, and the audio is text-to-speech where Du Chinese and The Chairman's Bao use recordings. The news isn't rewritten by editors every day as The Chairman's Bao's is: you read the original, or have the app simplify it on Premium. You can't paste in or import your own text to read, which LingQ, Readibu and Pleco all allow, and there's no web version.

4. LingQ: Best for Importing Your Own Texts

LingQ is a reader for dozens of languages, on the web, iPhone and Android. You read lessons from its library or import your own (articles, ebooks, video subtitles), tap unknown words to save them, and watch your known-word count grow.

Who it suits: intermediate learners who want to choose their own material, people who study at a computer, and anyone learning a second language on the same subscription.

Free and paid: the free plan lets you read the library, but you can save only 20 words in total and import 5 lessons. Premium costs £12.99 a month, £103.99 for 12 months or £179.99 for 24 months on LingQ's UK sign-up page; LingQ's own pricing article gives US prices of $14.99 a month, $10 a month paid yearly and $8.99 a month paid for two years. In the UK App Store it's dearer: £15.49 a month or £124.99 for 12 months.

Weakness: LingQ was built for languages with spaces between words, and learners on its forum report wrongly split Chinese words and pinyin errors. Our LingQ for Chinese review has the examples and the full price table.

5. Readibu: Best Free App for Web Novels

Readibu is a reader for Chinese web novels, short stories and children's stories written for native readers. You browse them by ranking or category, open any web page in its reader, or import your own EPUB, PDF and TXT files. It has a tap dictionary, text-to-speech, pinyin or zhuyin over the words, Simplified and Traditional conversion, and a breakdown of any text by HSK level, so you can see how hard a chapter is before you start.

Who it suits: upper-intermediate and advanced learners who want long, real fiction. Its own listing says it's for people "ready to move beyond flashcards and graded readers".

Free and paid: reading is free; Readibu says Premium "unlocks additional functionalities but does not charge for reading content". Premium adds cloud sync, unlimited sentence translation, offline reading and a quiz on the words you've looked up. It costs £4.99 a month, £9.99 for three months or £49.99 a year on the UK App Store ($4.99, $9.99 and $47.99 in the US).

Weakness: nothing is written for learners, and the audio is text-to-speech. The app was last updated in July 2026 when we checked. If you're not sure you're ready for novels, our guide to Chinese novels for beginners suggests what to read at each HSK level.

6. Pleco's Reader: Best One-Off Purchase

Pleco is a dictionary, but its reader makes it a reading app too. The free version lets you paste in any text from the clipboard and tap each word to look it up. The paid Document Reader add-on does the same for whole files; Pleco's App Store listing names text, HTML, DOC, DOCX, PDF and EPUB files.

Who it suits: anyone who already has things to read (messages, web articles, an ebook) and wants the best dictionary underneath them, without a subscription.

Free and paid: the clipboard reader is free. The Document Reader is a one-off £9.99 on the UK App Store, or $9.99 from Pleco's own store. The Basic Bundle, which includes it along with camera lookup, flashcards and more, is £29.99 in the app or $24.99 from Pleco's store. Pleco also sells graded readers as paid add-ons.

Weakness: it gives you a way to read, not something to read: there's no free library and no levels, and it doesn't track what you know. Our Pleco review covers every add-on and price.

7. maayot: Best for a Daily Reading Habit

maayot gives you one graded story a day, written by its teachers, with native audio, tap-to-look-up words and a short quiz. Its App Store listing describes six levels, from Beginner 1 to Advanced 2, in line with HSK and TOCFL, a placement test, and a figure for how many of a story's words you already know. It works on the web, iPhone and Android, in Simplified or Traditional characters.

Who it suits: people who want five or ten minutes of reading chosen for them each morning. The Pro plan suits learners who want a teacher to correct their writing and their recordings.

Free and paid: the App Store listing says free members get a new story every Sunday and a subscription unlocks one every day; the website offers five days of everything free. On the UK App Store the Standard plan is £14.99 a month or £119.99 a year, and Pro is £49.99 a month or £449.99 a year. Its website didn't show prices without an account when we checked.

Weakness: at one story a day, you get far less to read for a little more than Du Chinese costs, and Du Chinese's library is open all at once.

8. HelloChinese: Graded Stories Inside a Course

HelloChinese is a beginner course, not a reader, but its listing counts over 1,000 graded stories alongside the lessons. If you're already working through the course, they're reading practice in an app you know, on iPhone and Android.

Free and paid: when we reviewed it on 8 November 2026 the stories were part of Premium+, the dearer of its two plans, which starts at £15.99 on the UK App Store. Our HelloChinese review sets out what's free, what Premium covers and what Premium+ adds.

Weakness: Premium+ is a lot to pay for the stories alone. If reading is what you're after, a dedicated reader gives you more for less.

How to Choose by Level

Not sure of your level? Our Chinese level test takes a few minutes. To check a text before you read it, paste it into the HSK level checker, which shows the HSK level of its words.

• HSK 1–2: stories, not news. Du Chinese's Newbie and Elementary readings are the easiest way in, and the HSK 1 and 2 Graded Stories in Mandarin Mosaic are an alternative. If you use HelloChinese, its stories fit here too.
• HSK 3–4: the widest choice. Keep going with Du Chinese's stories, start The Chairman's Bao for news, or take maayot's daily story. This is also the stage where Mandarin Mosaic's generated articles (HSK 2 to 5) and its "new to you" figure are most useful.
• HSK 5 and above: start moving to text written for native readers: novels in Readibu, your own files in Pleco or LingQ, and the news collections in Mandarin Mosaic. Keep a graded app for the days when real text is too slow.

A Chinese study plan for your level shows where reading fits beside vocabulary and listening.

What You Can Read for Free

• Readibu: all reading is free; only the extras are paid.
• Pleco: pasting text into the reader is free, with no time limit.
• Du Chinese: a selection of free lessons, and a free chapter of each story.
• The Chairman's Bao: one sample lesson at each of the six levels.
• Mandarin Mosaic: the first five pages of every article, with all the reading tools.
• LingQ: the whole library to read, but only 20 saved words in total.
• maayot: one story a week.

So the cheapest way to read a lot is Readibu or Pleco with text you find yourself, which works once you're past the graded stage. Our post on reading Chinese news lists free news sites to read with them. For free courses, dictionaries and listening as well, see our list of free ways to learn Mandarin online.

How to Get More From a Reading App

Read easy text. Reading research puts comfortable reading at 95–98% known words, which is one unknown word in every 20 to 50. If you're tapping every third word, drop a level. Our guide to comprehensible input for Chinese explains why easy and plentiful beats hard and slow.

Don't rush to native news. In our study of HSK vocabulary and Chinese news, knowing every word on the HSK 3.0 lists up to level 6 covered about 80% of the words in news articles, well short of that 95–98%. That gap is what graded news and a tap dictionary are for.

Aim for one new word per sentence. A sentence with a single unknown word explains the word for you; a sentence with three is a puzzle. That's the idea behind sentence mining: when a sentence in your reading has just one new word, save the whole sentence, not the word alone.

Review what you look up. Tapping a word tells you what it means today. Every app here saves your lookups in some way: flashcards in Du Chinese and The Chairman's Bao, LingQs in LingQ, a vocabulary export in Readibu, Focus Words and saved sentences in Mandarin Mosaic. Pick a few words from each reading and go back to them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Du Chinese Free?

Partly. The app is free to download with a selection of free lessons and a free chapter of each story. The full library of 3,000+ readings needs Premium, which is $14.99 a month or $119.99 a year on its website at the time of writing.

LingQ vs Du Chinese: Which Is Better?

Du Chinese, if you want texts written for your level with recorded audio; it's the better choice for beginners. LingQ, if you're intermediate and want to import your own reading, or you're learning other languages too. Their yearly prices are close: $119.99 for Du Chinese, and $10 a month paid yearly for LingQ.

What Is the Best App to Read Chinese News?

The Chairman's Bao, for news rewritten at six levels with exercises. For real news that isn't simplified, Mandarin Mosaic has collections from Chinese-language news sites and shows how many of an article's words are new to you, and Pleco or LingQ will open any news page you find.

Is There a Free Chinese Reading App?

Readibu is free for all reading, and Pleco's reader is free for text you paste in. Both give you tools and native-level text, not graded stories. For graded reading, Du Chinese, The Chairman's Bao and Mandarin Mosaic each have a limited free tier.

Which Chinese Reading App Is Best for Beginners?

Du Chinese: its Newbie level is the gentlest start, with pinyin and recorded audio. Wait until you know a few hundred words before trying graded news.

More Posts: