Skritter vs TONGUES
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Skritter
Master Mandarin characters through interactive writing practice. Learn meanings, readings, and tones with curated decks for all levels, from beginner to advanced.
- Interactive character writing practice
- Learn character meaning, reading, and tone
- Topic-based and difficulty-level decks
- HSK 1-9 study decks
- Stroke order guidance
- Review mode
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Practice Chinese writing with Skritter, whether you have a strong grasp of written Chinese and want to remember the characters better or are a beginner who doesn’t know where to start. Skritter has existed for more than 10 years, and for a good reason: our learners are amazing! They help us with feedback which allows us to create what we think is the best Chinese writing app out there! If you have seen Chinese writing before, you probably noticed that it requires us to learn characters rather than the roman alphabet we know from English. You can learn it through our “decks” (similar to a card deck) based on topics and difficulty. Popular Decks: - Ordering or making coffee or tea (so you can get your morning caffeine fix) - Chinese Stroke Order - HSK 1-6 & New HSK3.0 1-9 study decks - More advanced topics like Yoga and talking about your Emotions - The 16-episode Ultimate Chinese Character course First, you learn a character’s meaning, reading, and tone; then practice writing it! Before you know it, you’ll want to learn thousands of characters, and words like these two happy users: “If I could only keep one app on my iPod, this would be it without a doubt. Skritter will change your life!” ― Wendy Werneth, UN Translator “Learning to write characters has never been so fun. From writing zero to 2000+ characters in six months!” ― Brian Jackson, Economist Try our app and see for yourself why thousands of people use it every day. Have questions, problems, or feedback? We would love to hear from you. Reach out to us at team@skritter.com ----------- Guest accounts enjoy free access to select decks forever! Unlock Review mode, and study anything you want with a premium subscription, which is available for purchase in the app. Big savings offered on 12-month subscriptions! • One month subscription (automatically renewed until canceled) • 12-month subscription (automatically renewed until canceled) Recurring billing, cancel anytime. Within 24 hours before the subscription period ends, you will be charged through your iTunes account. Manage your subscription from your iTunes App Store settings where you can turn off auto-renewal at any time. Any unused portion of a free trial period, if offered, will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription to that publication, where applicable. Privacy Policy: https://skritter.com/legal Terms of Use: https://docs.skritter.com/article/133-terms-of-use
TONGUES
This app lets you learn vocabulary relevant to your life, starting with words you care about. You can create custom lessons based on detailed prompts, making language learning personalized and engaging.
- Personalized vocabulary learning
- Custom lesson generation
- AI-driven learning
- Hobby and profession-specific terms
- User-driven curriculum
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Pick a word. Any word. Most language apps hand you the same tired curriculum — colors, farm animals, "the boy eats an apple." TONGUES does the opposite. You choose what you learn, starting with the words you already care about: the jargon from your job, the slang from your hobbies, that phrase you've been dying to drop at a dinner party. Learn vocabulary that's actually relevant to your life, not a textbook's Start from your profession, your hobbies, your obsessions Give elaborate prompts and get lessons tailored to them Study what sticks, because you picked it. Studying a language should feel like learning to say the things you want to say. With TONGUES, it finally does. Download Tongues and pick your first word. EVERY LANGUAGE AND DIALECT TONGUES features every single language and dialect varying degrees. It is on average 90% accurate depending on how rare the language and dialect is. AUDIO PLAYLISTS With TONGUES, everything is automatically an audio playlist. Every word that you encounter on vacation, during a conversation, or found in an artifact, can be read out loud using state-of-the-art voice models. For commonly used language, ElevenLabs is used, and for rare languages, Forvo is used. ARTIFACTS With TONGUES, you can generate artifacts which are conversations stories that can be read out loud. You can generate their prequels and sequels while testing your reading comprehension for them. CONVERSATIONS When conversing with the AI, get valid responses in real time. Break down grammatical structures coming from the chat, and save words you don't understand back to your flashcard deck. TONGUES remains the only true language learning application that harnesses top frontier models
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: TONGUES at every 3 days against Skritter's monthly. TONGUES also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7) and review sentiment (100% vs 83%). Skritter's advantage is ratings volume (816 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). 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. Skritter sells 9 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month and TONGUES sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $8.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
TONGUES holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Skritter has 816 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 83% of Skritter's written reviews are positive against 100% of TONGUES's.
Skritter ships an update monthly, TONGUES every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on September 23, 2026 and September 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Skritter | TONGUES |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (816 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 82.8% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 816 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Monthly | Every 3 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 54 MB | 117 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Inkren, Inc. | Olympian Hourglass LLC |
Customer experience
Skritter
TONGUES
Bugs and requests
Skritter
Reported bugs
4 issues- Subscription issues and unauthorized charges
- App freezing and crashing
- Syncing problems across devices
- Inconsistent character recognition
Requested features
5 requests- Allow creating custom decks and word lists
- Add Cantonese support
- Improve landscape mode on iPad
- Provide more detailed performance tracking
- Add ability to focus on specific problem characters
TONGUES
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Skritter
- Skritter Premium (1 month)7 Days trial$9.991 Month
- Skritter Premium (1 month)7 Days trial2 variants$14.991 Month
- Skritter Premium (1 month)14 Days trial$14.991 Month
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- Skritter Premium (6 month)7 Days trial$59.996 Months
- Skritter Premium (6 month)14 Days trial$59.996 Months
- Skritter Premium (6 month)7 Days trial$69.996 Months
- Skritter Premium (1 year)7 Days trial2 variants$99.991 Year
- Skritter Premium (1 year)14 Days trial$99.991 Year
- Skritter Premium (1 year)7 Days trial$119.991 Year
TONGUES
- Standard$8.991 Month
- Pro$14.991 Month
- Max$29.991 Month
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- Standard (Yearly)$83.001 Year
- Pro (Yearly)$155.991 Year
- Max (Yearly)$299.991 Year









