Wanyu vs Du Chinese
Reading Chinese gets solved two opposite ways: Du Chinese gives you level-graded readings, written by professionals and narrated with native audio; Wanyu lets you read your own things — whatever you already want to read. Two different philosophies, and two different pricing models.
What Du Chinese gives you
A library of stories and lessons written for your level (graded by HSK), with human audio synced sentence by sentence, translations, tap-to-look-up, and new content every week. For comprehensible input from the very start, it's among the best there is. It's paid by subscription: $14.99/month or $119.99/year (as of July 2026).
What Wanyu does instead
Wanyu doesn't write readings for you: it lets you read what you already want to read. Paste any text — song lyrics, a news piece, your show's subtitles — and the Reader segments it into words; tap what you don't know and its card appears, with tone-colored pinyin, a gloss and audio; and what you tap can be saved into a deck that feeds your FSRS review (what is FSRS). The Reader is free, and around it sits the rest: the full HSK library, grammar, chengyu.
The honest part: Wanyu doesn't narrate your texts — audio lives on the library's words and sentences, not over the running text — and it doesn't come with graded stories written for you. If that's what you're after, Du Chinese does it very well.
| Du Chinese | Wanyu | |
|---|---|---|
| What you read | Their catalog: professional graded stories | Your own: any text you paste |
| Audio for the reading | Synced native narration — its trump card | No narration; audio on the library's cards |
| From reading to review | Save words inside the app | Decks + FSRS out of the box, all local |
| Model | Subscription: $14.99/mo · $119.99/yr | Pay once: €24.99 (the Reader is free) |
| If you stop paying | You lose access to the catalog | There's nothing to stop paying: it's yours |
| Accounts / cloud | Yes | No: local, no accounts, offline |
The honest math
A year of Du Chinese is about $120; five years, about $600. All of Wanyu costs €24.99, once. But the fair comparison isn't only money: you pay Du Chinese for new professional content every week — a real service that has to be sustained. You pay Wanyu once for the tools and the library, and what you study is yours forever. Different models, because they sell different things.
When to choose which
Du Chinese is better for you if…
- you're starting nearly from zero and need readings made for your level;
- native audio narrating every story is what you value most;
- you prefer your reading picked and edited for you, and the fee doesn't bother you.
Wanyu is better for you if…
- you already have things you want to read — lyrics, social feeds, articles, subtitles;
- you want what you read to become your review syllabus, not just a saved-words list;
- you want to pay once, keep your data on your device, and study offline.
They're not mutually exclusive either: some people read Du Chinese's catalog and study its vocabulary in Wanyu. Nobody ever broke from combining.
Frequently asked questions
Does Wanyu have graded readers like Du Chinese?
No. Du Chinese offers a professional catalogue written for your level, with native narration. Wanyu comes from the other side: you paste what you actually want to read and the Reader splits it into tappable words.
Does Wanyu's Reader narrate your texts?
No: Wanyu's audio lives on the library's words and sentences, not over running text. If you want stories narrated by native speakers, Du Chinese does that very well.
Which works out cheaper?
Du Chinese costs $14.99/month or $119.99/year (as of July 2026); Wanyu, €24.99 once — and the Reader is free. They sell different things: fresh professional content every week versus tools and a library that stay yours forever.
Facts checked in July 2026; prices change — the source is Du Chinese's own site. More head to head: vs Anki · vs Pleco · vs Chinesimple.