Learn Chinese characters with ease.
HanziHero is a web app for learning traditional and simplified Chinese characters and vocabulary.
Try for free Learn more
Learn thousands of characters from the bottom up.
Each Chinese character consists of its visual components and sounds. We break each character down for you, teaching you the components and sounds that make up a character before the character itself.
How it works →
Imagine a 貝 shellfish that has a huge 目 eye sticking out of the top of the shell, and two little ハ fins sticking out of the bottom of the shell. It looks like something that would be in a nightmare or a horror movie, but it's just one super weird 貝 shellfish.
Recognize hundreds of components.
Components are common groups of strokes that are within Chinese characters. We teach you hundreds of them with a story for each, helping you recognize and remember them.
Learn more about components →
Pinyin made memorable.
Each Chinese character is pronounced as a single syllable which can be broken down into a pinyin initial, final, and tone. We give an easy-to-remember name for each of these parts to help you easily recall the pronunciation of each character.
Learn more about pinyin →
[ti-] Timmy Turner is in [1] front of the [-e] electricity plant, 貼 pasting posters on the wall. The posters advertise that he will tell anyone's 占 fortune for the cost of a single electrified 貝 shellfish.
Remember characters with clever mnemonics.
We have a handcrafted story for each character that weaves together its components and pinyin sounds. Every component, sound, character, and word has a story that weaves together meaning, pronunciation, and appearance to help you learn, remember, and recall with ease!
Learn more about our mnemonics →
Learn characters in optimal order.
We've analyzed thousands of Chinese characters to create an optimally ordered and thorough curriculum that covers all characters in the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test. You'll be able to understand basic sentences in no time, and recognize nearly all characters on a newspaper page by the time you finish.
Learn more about our optimal learning order →3100+
Characters we've analyzed, ordering them by most frequently occurring4700+
Words we've handpicked to enforce your character memory, with over 50 added every week500+
Components we've extracted to make recall a breeze70+
Sounds we've broken down to make sure you never mix up pronunciation again
Learn essential vocabulary words, too.
Learning Chinese characters without words is like learning English prefixes, roots, and suffixes but not knowing any vocabulary. We teach you useful vocabulary, with clever mnemonics, that will help reinforce and deepen your understanding of each character.
Learn more about vocabulary words →The best way to get 貼心 close to someone is to rip out your 心 heart and 貼 paste it on their shirt.
A journey you won't forget
We have a built-in spaced repetition system to review you on what you learn at the optimal time, ensuring you remember everything you've learned.
Learn how space repetition works →We built it for ourselves, and for you too
When I moved to Taiwan, I spent every spare minute trying to learn Chinese.
I've tried nearly every tool and method for learning the characters, but all of them left me unsatisfied and illiterate. Desperate for a solution, I worked with my brother, Phil, to build HanziHero. We've combined the best parts of many different methods and tools to make learning characters less of a hassle, and even a little fun!
Now I am able to easily read simple Chinese literature, and continue to improve each day with my daily HanziHero reviews and lessons. We both hope that it'll help you, too.
加油！
Kevin CreatorMore about us →
Ready to get started?
The first 90 characters and all of their related components, sounds, and words are free, forever.
Try for free Learn more about our free tier →