Daily Mandarin vs Hanzi
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Daily Mandarin
Practice Chinese characters with ease. Search by English, Chinese characters, or pinyin to find any character. Includes stroke order, pronunciation, and official HSK vocabulary lists for comprehensive learning.
- Practice any Chinese character
- Search by English, Chinese, or Pinyin
- Includes HSK vocabulary lists
- Stroke order guide
- Pronunciation guide
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Practice any Chinese character, anytime, anywhere. Simply search a character you want to practice, either by using English, or Chinese (character or pinyin), then practice away! Includes the official HSK vocabulary lists. Each character comes with a stroke order and pronunciation guide. You'll be a master in no time!
Hanzi
Learn to write and type Chinese characters with animated stroke order guides. This free version offers 80 basic characters and phrases, with a full version planned for HSK levels 1-6.
- Animated stroke order guides
- Learn to write basic characters
- Practice typing Chinese text
- Includes common phrases
- Free version with 80 characters
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Learn Chinese writing from the very beginning, starting with simple but useful characters that later combine to make more complex characters. Just follow the animated stroke order! I wrote this app for my kids to learn how to read, write and type text messages to their grandparents in China. This free version includes 80 characters. After mastering these, you will be able to write phrases like: • "Hello" - 你好 • "I don't understand" - 我不懂 • "I have to go to class!" - 我要去上课了 • "Please give me a cup of water" - 请给我一杯水 • "This is my daughter" - 这是我的女儿 You will need to enable the iPhone Chinese keyboard in the Settings app: General -> Keyboard -> Add New Keyboard ... -> Chinese (Simplified) -> Handwriting While not a pre-requisite for this app, if you are taking a listening and speaking course in Mandarin Chinese, you can also follow the pinyin (pronounciation) shown alongside each character. Stay tuned for the full version with all HSK Levels 1 to 6 characters as well as many more phrases and features.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Daily Mandarin at 4.5 against Hanzi's 2.5. Daily Mandarin also leads on ratings volume (25 vs 2) and review sentiment (79% vs 67%). Hanzi's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 5 months) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 18.2). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Daily Mandarin holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 2.5. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Daily Mandarin has 25 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 79% of Daily Mandarin's written reviews are positive against 67% of Hanzi's.
Daily Mandarin ships an update every 5 months, Hanzi every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and November 2, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Daily Mandarin | Hanzi |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.5 (25 ratings) — better | 2.5 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 79.4% of reviews — better | 66.7% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 25 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 18.2 | 9.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 71 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jason Chan | Richard Gomes |
Customer experience
Daily Mandarin
Hanzi
In-app purchases
Daily Mandarin
No in-app purchases
Hanzi
No in-app purchases
