Looking for a Skritter Alternative? An Honest Comparison (From Someone Who Built One)

Skritter is very good at one thing, and it's the thing most Chinese apps skip. You write a character on the screen, stroke by stroke, and it grades every stroke as you go. If you want to write Chinese characters by hand from memory, that kind of feedback normally needs a teacher looking over your shoulder.

So why do people go looking for apps like Skritter? In reviews, three complaints come up. The price adds up. Writing with a fingertip on glass isn't the same as writing with a pen. And writing each character out takes a lot more time than recognizing it, which hurts if what you want right now is to read.

I should say up front that I build Hanzi Express, which is one of the alternatives below. So treat this as a Skritter review written by a competitor. I've tried to be fair to it.

What Skritter does best

Skritter teaches a character's meaning, reading and tone, then has you practice writing it. The writing is the heart of it. Because the grading happens at stroke level and in real time, it catches a wrong stroke while you're making it, not after the finished shape looks off. Producing a character from nothing, in the right stroke order, is a different skill from recognizing it, and that's the skill Skritter trains.

Reviews run on spaced repetition, so the characters you find hard come back more often. It covers Chinese and Japanese. Decks are sorted by topic and difficulty, including HSK 1-6 and all nine HSK 3.0 levels, and there are hundreds of textbook and user lists on top of that, or you can make your own. If your class follows a particular textbook, that matters.

People like it. On the US App Store it holds a 4.7 rating from 823 ratings.

Where Skritter is a poor fit

Time is the first thing. Writing a character takes longer than recognizing it, and Skritter asks you to write. If you have 20 minutes a day and the goal is reading a menu, a shop sign or a WeChat message, much of that time goes into a skill you may not need yet. Handwriting is worth having. But plenty of learners type in pinyin for everything, and it's worth deciding honestly whether you'll write by hand before you pay for a tool built around it.

The second is the screen. A fingertip is not a pen, and reviewers say so. If you'll be writing on paper, in a classroom or on a form, you'll still want some practice with an actual pen.

Price comes up too, and it gets the next section to itself.

How much does Skritter cost?

On the US App Store as of October 2026, Premium costs $14.99 a month, $59.99 for six months or $99.99 a year. Some listings show other amounts, and prices vary by store and region, so check yours. For a tool with one main job, that's a real line in the budget, especially if it's one of two or three apps you pay for.

Does Skritter have a free version?

Partly. Guest accounts get free access to select decks, and paid plans come with a 7-day free trial. Past those select decks, you're looking at Premium.

Hanzi Express works differently. The first three levels of the actual course are free, with no card and no time limit, so you aren't racing a 7-day clock to decide.

Where Hanzi Express is stronger

Hanzi Express starts from the other end. It's built for recognizing characters and reading them, and it picks the order for you.

That order is components first. Each level teaches a few components, then the characters built from them, then the words those characters make. A character is never taught before its parts, and a word never before its characters, so you're reading real characters and words from the first level. When a complicated character turns up, you've already met the pieces it's made of. Over 100 levels following HSK 3.0, from HSK 1 to HSK 7-9, that adds up to 832 components, 3,002 characters and 9,460 words.

Reviews cover meaning and pinyin, on spaced repetition with a 9-stage ladder. Answer checking is AI-assisted, so a correct synonym counts instead of being marked wrong for not matching one exact wording. Paid subscribers can skip straight to their HSK level instead of starting again at level 1.

It costs less: $8.99 a month against Skritter's $14.99, or $79.99 a year against $99.99. Around the course there are free tools that need no account: an HSK level test, printable stroke order worksheets, a tool that will add pinyin to any Chinese text, and one that will find a character when you draw it. Teachers can set homework and track their classes with a school account.

Writing isn't left out, but I'll be straight about how far it goes. Stroke order lessons have you trace each character with a guided animation, then write it from memory, and those reviews run on spaced repetition too. That teaches you the order and gets you producing the character. It is not a full handwriting grader like Skritter's. If handwriting is your main goal, Skritter goes deeper.

Hanzi Express teaches simplified characters today, and traditional characters are coming soon.

If reading is what you're after, you can try the first three levels free, with no card and no time limit.

Skritter vs Hanzi Express, side by side

Focus. Skritter: writing characters from memory, with meaning, reading and tone taught first. Hanzi Express: recognizing characters and words, built up from their components.

Writing. Skritter: real-time grading of every stroke, and the deeper of the two. Hanzi Express: guided tracing, then writing from memory, with its own reviews. Not a full grader.

Reading and recognition. Skritter: taught on the way to writing. Hanzi Express: the core of the app, with AI-assisted answer checking so synonyms count.

Order of learning. Skritter: follows the deck you choose, by topic, HSK level or textbook, or a list you build. Hanzi Express: set for you, with each level teaching a few components, then the characters built from them, then the words those characters make.

Price. Skritter: $14.99 a month, $59.99 for six months or $99.99 a year on the US App Store as of October 2026 (prices vary by store and region). Hanzi Express: $8.99 a month or $79.99 a year.

Free option. Skritter: select decks with a guest account, plus a 7-day trial on paid plans. Hanzi Express: the first three levels of the course (120 characters, 130 components and 61 words), no card and no time limit.

If you want the other apps in this comparison too, I've covered them in the best Chinese learning apps compared, and there are more side-by-side pages on our compare page.

Who should pick which

Pick Hanzi Express if you want to read first and would rather not plan the order yourself. It costs $6 a month less, has AI-assisted answer checking, lets paid subscribers start at their HSK level, and still teaches stroke order, though it does less for handwriting.

Stay with Skritter if handwriting is your main goal: you write by hand for a class and want to produce characters from memory. It also covers Japanese, if you're learning both.

Or use both. Learn a character in Hanzi Express, where its parts come first, then write it in Skritter once you can already read it. That way you aren't learning to recognize and write a character at the same moment, and the writing builds on something you already know.

If you'd rather build your own system from scratch, I've written about Anki for learning Chinese as well. And if you want handwriting practice without a subscription, our free stroke-order worksheet generator prints tracing sheets for the characters you're learning, which also gets you away from the fingertip and onto paper.

Is Skritter worth it?

Yes, if you'll use it for what it's built for. If writing from memory matters to you, Skritter does it well, and the 7-day trial will tell you quickly whether you'll keep up the daily writing. If you mostly want to read, you'd be paying $14.99 a month for a skill you aren't training yet. That's the case where an alternative to Skritter makes more sense.

If you're not sure which level you're at, the free HSK level test will give you an estimate. The first three levels of Hanzi Express are free, with no card and no time limit, so start there and see whether reading first suits you before you pay anyone.