GraphChinese vs Hack Chinese

By Carson 木林森 · Middlebury College, ICLP at National Taiwan University, Yenching Academy of Peking University

Hack Chinese is a genuinely good spaced-repetition platform built specifically for Chinese vocabulary, with real HSK word lists and a scheduler that puts retention first. This comparison is honest about that. The gap is scope, not quality: Hack Chinese reviews vocabulary, on purpose, and stops there. GraphChinese is the course around the vocabulary.

What Hack Chinese does well

Pre-built vocabulary lists for HSK 1 through 6, plus popular textbooks and topic-based lists.
A built-in dictionary with audio pronunciation for its word lists.
A retention-first spaced-repetition scheduler: keeping old words strong is prioritized over piling on new ones.
A cram mode for reviewing specific vocabulary on demand, outside the normal review schedule.
Progress analytics: graphs and completion percentages that show where your review load is going.

Where it runs out: vocabulary is the whole product

No grammar instruction. Hack Chinese reviews words. It does not teach the sentence patterns those words go into, so knowing a word and being able to use it correctly stay two separate problems.
No character writing. There is no stroke-order writing practice, so recognizing a character on a flashcard does not carry over to producing it by hand.
No reading. A vocabulary list is not a text; nothing in the product puts new words into a passage you actually read.
No speaking practice. Reviewing a card is not the same skill as producing the language out loud with another person.
No dependency structure. An HSK list is ordered by exam level, not by what a given word actually depends on grammatically, so two words on the same list can quietly assume very different amounts of prior knowledge.

The core difference: vocabulary engine versus course

Hack Chinese is a well-built tool for one job; GraphChinese is the course that job sits inside. All 829 topics, from the four tones and the first stroke of 你 through HSK 6 grammar, live in one dependency graph, and a topic stays locked until every prerequisite is proven mastered, so a word never arrives ahead of the grammar it needs. Character writing is drilled in stroke order, speaking is trained from lesson one with a memorized comment and question kit you use on real people, and new vocabulary is met inside graded reading passages as well as flashcards, not only on a review queue. Reviews across all of it are scheduled by FSRS just before you would forget.

None of that makes Hack Chinese a bad choice for what it is built for. If vocabulary review is the specific piece you are missing and you already have grammar, characters and speaking covered elsewhere, it is a solid, focused tool for exactly that piece.

	Hack Chinese	GraphChinese
What it is	Vocabulary SRS platform	Full course, HSK 0 through HSK 6
Curriculum	HSK/textbook word lists	Dependency graph of 829 topics
Sequencing	By exam level, not by dependency	Mastery-gated: a topic unlocks only once prerequisites are proven
Grammar	Not covered	Every grammar point sequenced by dependency
Character writing	Not built in	Active stroke-order writing, every character
Reading	Not built in	Graded readers sequenced into the course
Speaking	Not built in	Comment and question method from lesson one
Scheduler	Retention-first SRS	FSRS, tuned to you
Price	Subscription (monthly or yearly, free trial)	$9/mo, $84/yr, or $149 once

Which one should you use

Use Hack Chinese if vocabulary review is genuinely the one thing you are missing, and grammar, character writing, reading and speaking are already coming from somewhere else. It is a well-built, purpose-made tool for that single job.

Use GraphChinese if you want vocabulary learned as part of the language it belongs to: gated behind the grammar it depends on, written by hand in correct stroke order, met again inside a graded reading passage, and spoken out loud from your first lesson, all on one mastery graph instead of several separate tools.

See the whole path instead of reading about it. Your first lesson, the four tones and tracing 你 and 好 in correct stroke order, is free on the landing page, no signup. The whole course, HSK 0 through HSK 6, is $9 a month, $84 a year (that is $7 a month), or $149 once for lifetime access.

Start the free first lesson

Is Hack Chinese good for HSK vocabulary?

Yes. Hack Chinese is a genuinely good spaced-repetition platform built specifically for Chinese, with pre-made word lists for HSK 1 through 6, a built-in dictionary with audio pronunciation, and a retention-first review scheduler. For learning and reviewing vocabulary on its own, it does the job well.

What is the difference between Hack Chinese and GraphChinese?

Hack Chinese is a vocabulary-only spaced-repetition tool: you review words from HSK lists, and that is the whole product, by design. GraphChinese is a full Mandarin course built on a mastery-gated dependency graph of 829 topics from HSK 0 through HSK 6, so vocabulary arrives alongside the grammar it depends on, plus stroke-order character writing and speaking practice from lesson one, none of which Hack Chinese offers. Hack Chinese is a subscription; GraphChinese is $9 a month, $84 a year, or $149 once for lifetime access.

Does Hack Chinese teach grammar or speaking?

No. Hack Chinese is built around vocabulary review, not grammar instruction, stroke-order character writing, reading passages, or speaking practice. That is a deliberate scope choice on its part, not a flaw, but it means those skills have to come from somewhere else.