Immersive Chinese vs Dot Languages
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Immersive Chinese
Learn practical spoken Mandarin Chinese with a structured course and high-quality audio. Features include extensive vocabulary, customizable revision tools, and offline access. Progress from beginner to intermediate levels with gradual introduction of new material.
- 12000+ high-quality audio recordings
- Structured serial course for beginners
- Customizable revision and repetition tools
- Slow and normal speed audio options
- Simplified or traditional characters
- Offline use supported
- Detailed notes and definitions
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Immersive Chinese is a simple but effective method for learning practical spoken Mandarin Chinese. No gimmicks or time-wasting games, Immersive Chinese uses meticulous course design and high-quality audio to provide the best way to learn spoken Chinese from scratch. • More than 12000 high-quality audio recordings. • Perfect difficulty curve for beginners. • Carefully designed serial course that introduces new words in a controlled way. • Powerful revision tools that allow you to create highly-customised study sessions. • Includes separate slow and normal speed recordings. Hear every detail in the slow version. Now also includes a separate male voice. • Choice of simplified or traditional characters. • Currently includes 185 lessons and more than 4500 unique sentences • 36 lessons are available for free, and a full subscription is just a few dollars. • Save custom lists of vocabulary and sentences and generate study sessions from them. • Each line of text (translation, pinyin or Chinese characters) can be individually revealed and hidden. • Full offline use supported (all files can be downloaded and stored locally). • Detailed notes and definitions. • Repetition Training allows you to drill your listening and hear a huge volume of comprehensible input covering the exact material you want to practice. • Highly customisable audio playback (set the exact time delay between sentences). • Detailed pronunciation guide. • Mix of individual sentences and short stories. • Audio recorded by a professional broadcaster with perfectly standard Mandarin. • Integrates with the desktop web browser version (found at console.immersivechinese.com). Natural and Intuitive Way to Learn Spoken Chinese The Serial Course contains months worth of content and is designed to take you from absolute beginner all the way to intermediate level. It starts out with extremely simple sentences and gently builds on that, only introducing new material very gradually. The content is carefully designed so that you are never confronted with a word you don't know. The aim of the course is to give you the essential building blocks for forming practical sentences of your own. It naturally integrates spaced repetition so that as you move forward you are continually revising previous content. Powerful Revision Features Research into language acquisition has shown that repetition of comprehensible content is one of the most effective ways of learning a language. Repetition Training is a core feature of Immersive Chinese that allows you to play a specific selection of content on a continuous loop according to a number of different settings. You can set the specific time delay before and after each sentence, use normal speed or slow recordings, repeat each sentence a certain number of times, and use a random or sequential order. You can also add custom filters, so you only study the exact material you want to. Give it a try and start making progress today.
Dot Languages
Master Mandarin Chinese with a structured curriculum aligned to HSK 3.0 and TOCFL 2.0. Engage with AI-powered exercises, personalized practice, and a vast library of lessons and articles. Track progress, stay motivated with gamified elements, and even bring your own content for study.
- HSK 3.0 & TOCFL 2.0 aligned curriculum
- AI-powered exercises and personalized practice
- 11,000+ lessons covering vocabulary, grammar, reading
- Daily refreshed articles with in-app dictionary
- Spaced repetition for vocabulary retention
- Animated stroke-order character writing
- Speech recognition for pronunciation practice
- User-added content and study material generation
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Dot Languages is a complete Chinese learning app: lessons carefully written and crafted by humans, advanced exercises powered by AI — all built around a structured curriculum aligned to HSK 3.0 (2021 and 2025) and TOCFL 2.0 (2023), with personalised practice. Learn at your own pace through a dynamic HSK-aligned learning path with 11,000+ lessons covering vocabulary, grammar, and reading. Read new articles daily, refreshed for every HSK level, and look up any word in a comprehensive Chinese-English dictionary with character components. Practice that adapts to you: spaced repetition for vocabulary retention, animated stroke-order character writing, speech recognition for pronunciation, multiple choice, matching, sentence arrangement, flash cards, and AI-evaluated open-ended questions. Stay motivated with awards, streaks, learning milestones, leaderboards, and social profiles. Track your performance with weekly progress charts. Bring your own content — add private articles from any source and generate study material from text you paste in. More features: family plans, teacher classroom tools, grammar with sentence-structure analysis, and variable-speed audio narration of articles.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Immersive Chinese at 4.8 against Dot Languages's 4.2. Immersive Chinese also leads on review sentiment (90% vs 72%). Dot Languages's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs every 5 weeks). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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. Immersive Chinese sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month and Dot Languages sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $9.00 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Immersive Chinese holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.2. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 57 and 55 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 90% of Immersive Chinese's written reviews are positive against 72% of Dot Languages's.
Immersive Chinese ships an update every 5 weeks, Dot Languages every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Immersive Chinese | Dot Languages |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (57 ratings) — better | 4.2 (55 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 89.7% of reviews — better | 72.2% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 57 — better | 55 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 46 MB | 200 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Iain Chalmers | Dot Languages ApS |
Customer experience
Immersive Chinese
Dot Languages
Bugs and requests
Immersive Chinese
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
Dot Languages
Reported bugs
12 issues- App closes every time after signing up
- App not opening
- App crashes on startup
- Articles disappear when hitting back icon
- Return button partially visible after lesson
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- Bug where leaving and re-entering a story counts as two reads
- App freezes and never works again
- Login screen freezes
- App doesn't load at all
- Kicks out of login every time app is opened
- Streak and articles read does not carry across devices
- Button of 'open more stories' doesn't work
Requested features
9 requests- Add Korean and Japanese language options
- Add stories in addition to articles
- Option for lifetime subscription
- Speaking exercises
- More vibrant colors and backgrounds
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- Pictures to help remember words
- Way to practice tones for each character
- Option to switch to traditional characters
- App for Cantonese
In-app purchases
Immersive Chinese
- Immersive Chinese$3.991 Month
- Immersive Chinese$5.993 Months
- Immersive Chinese$8.996 Months
- Lifetime Access$24.99
Dot Languages
- Standard Monthly7 Days trial$9.001 Month
- Dot Premium - Monthly7 Days trial$18.491 Month
- Standard Yearly7 Days trial$72.001 Year
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- Dot Premium - Yearly7 Days trial$135.991 Year
- Dot Premium - Family Plan7 Days trial$339.001 Year
Questions
Is Immersive Chinese free?
Is Dot Languages free?
Which has better reviews, Immersive Chinese or Dot Languages?
Do Immersive Chinese or Dot Languages have ads?
Which is updated more often, Immersive Chinese or Dot Languages?
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