ToneDetector Lite vs Cantone
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ToneDetector Lite
Practice and master Mandarin Chinese tones with instant visual feedback. Compare your pronunciation's pitch contours to sample sounds to improve accuracy and reduce accent.
- Instant tone contour detection
- Visual pitch shape comparison
- Practice Mandarin tonal syllables
- Covers hundreds of base and tonal syllables
- Assess tone perception ability
- Sample sounds for comparison
Read full descriptionHide full description
How to know if you pronounced a Mandarin tone correctly without human tutors? The 12 years old tone detector app lets you make a judgement by yourself instantly. It is very intuitive for you to practice your tones. The Chinese tones are the most difficult part for a foreign language learner to speak Chinese. How to get rid of strong non-native accent and misunderstanding caused by tone issues? Using this app, practice to be right in every Mandarin tonal syllable first! Hear sample tonal syllables, practice tonal syllables and see their pitch shapes immediately. By comparing your pitch contours with the sample pitch contours directly, you can make a judgement easily by yourself. From the visual intuitive feedback, you may improve your tones quickly. This app basically covers all the possible Mandarin Chinese syllables with lexical tones. They are 407 base syllables and 1259 tonal syllables. This app provides a sample sound for each tonal syllable for you to compare. By following the sample sounds, you can practice all the Mandarin tonal syllables and learn Chinese pronunciations. This app is essential to all Chinese learners to master Chinese tone quickly. It could be used for tone lecture demonstration purpose too. In the lite version ToneDetector: 1. detects sample tone contours. 2. covers 56 base syllables and 185 tonal syllables. 3. assesses your tone perception ability using 5 random syllables. In the full version ToneDetector: 1. detects both sample tone contours and your tone contours. 2. covers all the Mandarin Chinese syllables with lexical tones. They are 407 base syllables and 1259 tonal syllables. 3. supports to select syllables randomly, or select syllables by typing. 4. assesses your tone perception ability using 20 random syllables.
Cantone
Master tonal languages like Cantonese and Mandarin with interactive exercises. Improve your ability to perceive and speak tones, learn vocabulary, and understand tone sandhi rules through engaging activities.
- Perception and production tone activities
- Vocabulary reinforcement
- Tone sandhi rule learning
- Support for traditional/simplified characters
- Multiple transcription systems
- Customizable user interface
Read full descriptionHide full description
Cantone helps you to put the tones in tonal languages. Cantone helps learners learn to perceive or speak tones in Cantonese or Mandarin - and reinforces this knowledge with vocabulary, tone sandhi, and other activities. We offer support for * traditional and simplified characters. * multiple transcription systems (Jyutping and Yale for Cantonese; Pinyin and bopomofo for Mandarin) * English, German, Mandarin, and Cantonese user interfaces. * light mode and dark mode You can learn tones and words incrementally and move on to more advanced topics when ready - or you can simply practice what you already know with tasks and ther fun activities. Perception activities tone your abilities to distinguish tones: * Hear sounds and guess the tones. * Match sounds to corresponding tone or word labels. Production activities help you to speak: * Personalize the system to you and your voice. * Listen to exemplars adjusted for your vocal range. * Listen to and match points in a tonal contour. * Follow tone contours at a slower speed with pitch feedback. * Plot attempts against canonical tone contours. Vocabulary activities reinforce your knowledge through words. * Learn words that differ in tone only (e.g. 買 vs. 賣). * Match words by tone, definition, character, and pronunciation. Tone Sandhi activities teach you about tone changes. * Learn tone change rules. * Listen to characters and predict the tones when the characters are put together. Other activities help hone your abilities: * Follow along with hilarious single syllable poems. * Listen to and internalize the "tone melody" * Learn common phrases. Enjoy! P.S. If you encounter bugs, please let me know at cantone.app@gmail.com, and I'll try to get back to you (and the bug) as quickly as possible.
Screenshots
Verdict
ToneDetector Lite and Cantone both sit at 5.0 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Cantone's written reviews are positive against 0% of ToneDetector Lite's. Cantone also leads on update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 30 months) and ratings volume (11 vs 2). On price, rating, 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for ToneDetector Lite against 5.0 for Cantone. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Cantone has 11 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 0% of ToneDetector Lite's written reviews are positive against 100% of Cantone's.
ToneDetector Lite ships an update every 30 months, Cantone every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | ToneDetector Lite | Cantone |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (11 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 0.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 | 11 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 30 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 | 12.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 28 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jian Cheng | Brent Ho |
Customer experience
ToneDetector Lite
Cantone
In-app purchases
ToneDetector Lite
No in-app purchases
Cantone
No in-app purchases







