Growth · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to JinbuPal – Learning Chinese doesn't have to be difficult
My co-founder and I built a Chinese language learning web app that helps you quickly master the most common Chinese characters and recognize 95% of real content. JinbuPal uniquely enhances learning for maximized progress by allowing effortless personalization of your daily study. When I dreamed up JinbuPal, I was a maker just like others in the HN community. I was working on my electronic hardware startup and I thought that learning the fundamentals of Chinese would help me communicate with manufacturers in Shenzhen. We designed JinbuPal to help you leverage data and your own curiosity to…
JinbuPal is a web app for learning Chinese that focuses on teaching the most common characters and words needed to recognize 95% of real-world content. It allows users to personalize their daily study routine to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. JinbuPal – Learning Chinese doesn't have to be difficult launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Laoshi▲239Learn new words with flashcards to master Chinese faster
2021 · laoshi.io · its alternatives →
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- 4OS
I'm launching UneeBee, an open-source tool for creating interactive courses like Duolingo: GitHub repo: https://github.com/zoonk/uneebee Demo: https://app.uneebee.com/ It's pretty early-stage, so there's a lot of things to improve. Everything on this project is going to be public, so you can check the roadmap on GitHub too: https://github.com/orgs/zoonk/projects/11 I'm creating this project because I love Duolingo and I wanted the same kind of experience to learn other things as well. But I think this could be useful to other…
2023 · uneebee.com · its alternatives →
- 5IM
The idea is actually quite simple. As a Japanese learner and a coder, I've always wanted there to be an open-source, 100% free for learning Japanese, similar to Monkeytype in the typing community. Unfortunately, pretty much all language learning apps are closed-sourced and paid these days, and the ones that are free have unfortunately been abandoned. But of course, just creating yet another language learning app was not enough - there has to be a unique selling point. And then I thought to myself: why not make it crazy and do what no other language learning app ever did by adding a gazillion…
2025 · kanadojo.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, it’s been 8 years since I posted on here about the launch of my Japanese dictionary app Nihongo [0] and I’m finally back with a new app: Nihongo Lessons! Think of Nihongo Lessons as the textbook to Nihongo’s dictionary. It’s an app for learning Japanese, specifically made for learners who are serious about becoming fluent, and want a guided set of content that will help them efficiently acquire vocabulary and grammar. The project came about when Adam Shapiro of Japanese Level Up (Jalup) [1] announced last April that he was shutting Jalup down. As a fan of Adam’s work I was bummed to…
2022 · lessons.nihongo-app.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Just wanted to share a tool i've been working on to help with my own study routine. It’s a browser extension called Lingoku. The idea is simple: we spend hours browsing the web in English every day. This tool replaces some of the english words with Japanese vocabulary based on your japanese level (Similar to Toucan, but with a better user experience). It’s basically an attempt to make the "i+1" method actually passive, you understand the sentence because it's mostly english, but you pick up Japanese words naturally from the context. It uses an LLM in the backend to make sure the…
Dec 2025 · lingoku.ai · its alternatives →
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2018 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
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Hey there! Out of the necessity to teach my son a new language, I developed an app just for him. After months of use and realizing how effective it was, I decided to make it available to the public. Now, I’m looking for your support, feedback, and possibly help in reaching potential customers. Take a look and let me know your thoughts! Thank you!
2024 · voiczy.com · its alternatives →
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Hi! Wanted to share the project I really wanted to have. TLDR; this app lets you create your own list of words and you get a Duolingo-like experience (kind of, still needs a lot of features) practicing those words in their context. My English is not the best but not the worst either. But I realized I can't boost it up after a certain level! In my belief, in order to truly learn a language, you need to be exposed to that language often. Vocabulary is the key factor here if you really want to improve in any language. My experience is that when I read a book to improve my English vocabulary, I…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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lwlnow▲167I’m thrilled to introduce lwlnow, a web app designed to assist language learners in enhancing their listening, vocabulary, and writing skills through dictation-based practice—a technique that is both versatile and impactful. Why we developed it: Most language apps focus on passive learning or game-like memorization techniques. However, true fluency emerges when you train your brain to understand native speech and respond accurately. Dictation stands out as one of the most effective yet underappreciated methods for skill-building: You listen to a native sentence. You type exactly what you…
2025 · lwlnow.com · its alternatives →
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Master Chinese reading through AIpowered interactive drawing
Dec 2025 · sketchhanyu.aigility.digital · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! In trying to improve my Chinese skills, I built this tool that lets me write a mix of Chinese and English, then recommends a proper Chinese expression. This is super helpful when I want to write something in Chinese but I don't know all the vocab/grammar - I can enter my best effort and use English for the parts I don't know. Really, the fundamental benefit of the tool is that it encourages me to exercise the writing muscle, rather than defaulting to translating from English. My goal was to build something that is fast, relatively inexpensive, and not prone to misleading people.…
2024 · unscrambler.dpw.me · its alternatives →
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I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News. Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention. There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com. It's only for Android so far. The free version includes…
2012 · kanjibyhand.com. · its alternatives →
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The simple, effective way to grow your Chinese vocabulary
2019 · dailychinese.app · its alternatives →
- 19IB
In 2023, I tried my luck with four different educational apps, but none of them really made any money. Then, while working on an English learning website, I added a simple feature where users could chat with AI. Surprisingly, this became super popular! This got me thinking: why not create an app that lets people practice speaking English with AI characters? I put together a basic version of the app in a month and shared it on voz.vn, a well-known forum in Vietnam. The app got 500 downloads on the first day alone, though I didn't earn any money from it initially. In the next 3 months, I only…
2024 · fluentpal.app · its alternatives →
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I've built mandoBot, a web app that segments and translates Mandarin Chinese text. This is a Django API (using Django-Ninja and PostgreSQL) and a NextJS front-end (with Typescript and Chakra). For a sample of what this app does, head to https://mandobot.netlify.app/?share_id=e8PZ8KFE5Y. This is my presentation of the first chapter of a classic story from the Republican era of Chinese fiction, Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun. Other chapters are located in the "Reading Room" section of the app. This app exists because reading Mandarin is very hard for learners (like me), since…
2025 · mandobot.netlify.app · its alternatives →
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Just for fun, I built a language learning tool. It represents Chinese and Japanese as graphs of characters, with connections indicating given characters can form a word. It can also decompose characters to give clues on how they're pronounced, analyzes words to understand which ones are commonly used together, and more. It's fully interactive, supports offline use, generates flashcards, has sentences from humans and from AI, and plenty of other features. Check out the README for details. https://github.com/mreichhoff/HanziGraph
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Chinese dictionary and training tool with AI
2021 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! I’m Alex, and one of my favorite ways to learn languages is by reading novels. Currently I’m reading 三体 (3 body problem), but one problem I've always had is it takes ages to look up words, and add them to Anki flashcards so I can remember them. 三体 is especially brutal with so much sci-fi vocab. That’s why I built Readly. I snap a pic of the page I’m reading, it loads the text in-app and lets me lookup words, add to Anki-style flashcards, or ask AI questions about the text, all in a single tap. It's a huge time saver. My specific learning strategy, if anyone wants to replicate it: 1.…
2025 · readly.ink · its alternatives →
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I've recently launched a startup called Native Tongue. Our vision is to make language learning fun, fast and effective. We've released our first product "Mandarin Madness", which is to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary. Its available on android and iOS. Its for beginners to intermediate, including those with no experience. Please go here for more information and to download the app: http://mandarinmadness.com/ Our company website is http://nativetongue.com/ We would love to get some feedback on our mobile apps. We would also like to speak to people interested in language learning and…
2012 · mandarinmadness.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →