Master the characters, in the order that pays off fastest.
A standalone character-only course built on real corpus frequency. Some people learn faster drilling single characters first, then graduating to words — this course is built for exactly that.
A little goes a long way
Chinese is steeply frequency-weighted. Learn the top characters and you can already read most of what you’ll meet — set a target and the course paces you to it.
of everyday text covered
of everyday text covered
of everyday text covered
of everyday text covered
of everyday text covered
of everyday text covered
The First 500 Characters — done in a month.
About 17 characters a day, scheduled by spaced repetition so they stick. The First 500 are the foundation of everything: measured against our own graded books, you’ll recognize 4 of every 5 characters on a beginner page — and each milestone after that unlocks real reading:
Foundation 500
83% of the characters in A1 books
Reader 1,500
96% of A1 · 95% of A2 books
Book Ready 2,000
98% of every A1 & A2 book — reading feels like reading
Mastery 3,000
98%+ of everything, through C1
Numbers measured against our own graded book corpus — character recognition, the decoding layer under every word you’ll learn.
Frequency-ranked & goal-driven
Pick a coverage target (1,000 → 89%, 2,500 → 98%…) and learn characters in the order that unlocks the most text. No wasted reps on rare characters.
Lookalike disambiguation
Confusable characters like 己 / 已 / 巳 are grouped and drilled together, so you learn the differences instead of cementing the mix-ups.
Automatic leech detection
The characters that keep tripping you up get flagged automatically and given extra attention — or you can flag them yourself.
This is the actual drill.
Not a mockup — the real study screen: the queue, the Leitner boxes, the lookalike rail. Four correct recalls lock a character in; a miss resets the round. Try three characters right now.
5 cards remaining
Tap the card or press Space to reveal
人 · 水 · 火 — real characters at their real frequency ranks, exactly as they appear in the First 500.
Why this is the fastest way to 500 characters
4 recalls to lock it in
A new character isn’t “seen”, it’s earned: four correct recalls in one session, and a miss resets the round. No illusion of learning — if it’s in Box 1, you really know it.
Reviews land right before you forget
Spaced repetition, Leitner-style: intervals grow 6h → 1d → 3d → 7d → 14d → 30d. Every successful recall pushes the next review further out — maximum retention from the minimum number of reps.
Leeches get their own drill
The characters that keep tripping you up are flagged — automatically, or by you with one tap — into the Hard Deck for focused practice. Five stubborn characters never slow down the other 495.
Lookalikes trained side-by-side
人 · 入 · 八 blur together when you meet them apart. The course drills confusable characters next to each other, so you learn the differences instead of cementing the mix-ups.
~17 characters a day × 30 days = the First 500, locked into long-term memory. Start the speed course ↑
Characters first, then words
Words are built from characters. Learn the characters solidly and the words come far easier — you’re recognising one familiar piece at a time instead of memorising two or three new shapes at once. Character Mastery and the interactive books are both included in Pro, so you can move between them however suits you.
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