The Chinese dictionary that gets out of your way.
Handwrite it, say it, or type it — and get a clear answer in a second. No adverts, no subscription, no account needed, and everything works offline. Depth when you want it, never in your face when you don't.
What you get
The app itself is free, and everything below works out of the box unless it says otherwise — including things some apps charge for, like using your own Chinese font. Extras like more dictionaries, more audio and stroke animations, AnkiDroid flashcards and vocab import/export are one‑off in‑app purchases — buy once, not a subscription. See what's available →
Handwriting
Draw a character you can't type. Over 12,000 simplified and traditional, forgiving of stroke-order mistakes.
Voice
Say the word instead of spelling it. Mandarin and Cantonese, and it can be set up to work offline.
One Search Box
Hanzi, pinyin or English all go in the same place — Hanping searches headwords and meanings together.
Learn more →One Great Dictionary, Not Fifty
CC-CEDICT is built in, and Hanping searches Wenlin's ABC dictionaries too — so a word CC-CEDICT lacks still comes back with its pinyin, free, rather than "no results".
Learn more →Native Speaker Audio
Real recordings, not synthesis. All single syllables are included, plus a selection of multi-syllable words; the full set of over 4,000 is an in-app purchase.
Example Sentences
Over 7,500 included, each with characters, pinyin and a translation. Playing them back in four AI voices (Mainland or Taiwan Mandarin) is an in-app purchase.
Learn more →Stroke Animations
Watch how a character is actually written, for 839 characters free and 8,735 more as an in-app purchase.
Learn more →Hanzi Decompositions
See what a character is built from, and which part is telling you how to pronounce it.
Learn more →No Ads, Works Offline
No adverts and no internet connection required — even voice recognition can be configured to work on a plane.
Still here. Still shipping.
Hanping has been built and maintained by the same person for 17 years, through 9 major versions. Version 7 was a rebuild from scratch, which is why it took four years; the most recent update was June 2026.
Every release is written up, going back to 2010. Read the release notes →
- v1 2009
- v2 2010
- v3 2012
- v4 2015
- v5 2016
- v6 2017
- v7 2022
- v8 2024
- v9 2025
- v9.6 2026
Learning Cantonese instead?
Hanping Cantonese pairs the CantoDict dictionary with the same app, with Jyutping and Yale, traditional and simplified characters, and native speaker audio for every syllable.
Look words up without typing
Hanping Camera reads Chinese straight off your camera — point it at a menu or a sign and the definitions appear, no tapping required. It works on any image, including screenshots.
Hanping Popup looks up words in any app on your phone, by combining screen capture with OCR.
Both are Android‑only, and sold with a 30‑day no‑questions refund.