GraphChinese vs HSKStory for learning Chinese

By Carson 木林森 · August 2026

HSKStory is a graded-reading platform: levelled stories with audio and pinyin, written to stay inside the vocabulary of an HSK band, with a few free before you pay. It is well made and the stories have actual hooks rather than syllabus energy. This comparison is honest about that, and about what a story library does not do, which is decide what you learn next or check that you learned it.

Prices and features for HSKStory checked August 2026. They change; if you spot something stale, tell us and it gets fixed.

What HSKStory does well

• The stories are written to hook rather than to fill a syllabus. "A wet stray kitten, a mother who is allergic, a father starting to waver" is a story; most graded readers manage a paragraph about a library.
• Coverage runs across the HSK 3.0 bands including the 7–9 range, which is further up than most reading libraries go.
• Audio and pinyin on every story, and the free tier lets you finish one without an account, which is the right way to sell reading.
• The product is simple and does not waste your attention. That is harder than it looks.

What a story library leaves to you

• Nothing decides what you study. Levels are a filter, not a sequence, and a story cannot notice that the pattern you keep missing is 把 or that you never really learned 了.
• Reading is one of four skills. No character writing, no speaking practice, no scheduler for the words you meet after you close the story.
• Meeting a word once is not learning it. A word you tapped in a story reappears when a story happens to use it again. A scheduler brings it back on the day you were about to forget it, which is the entire difference between exposure and retention.
• Same lifetime price, different amount of product. $149 buys their reading library or it buys a whole course with a reading library inside.

The readings are in here, and they are wired into the course

GraphChinese ships 102 graded passages, written to the vocabulary a learner actually holds at each level and narrated by native voices with per-character timing, so the text highlights as it is read. Each one ends in a comprehension check rather than a "finished" button. They are free to read at /read, so you can judge the writing without paying anyone.

The part that is hard to build is what surrounds them. All 829 topics from the four tones through HSK 6 grammar sit in one dependency graph, a topic stays locked until its prerequisites are proven, and the new words a passage introduces land in an FSRS review queue timed to your own forgetting curve. Characters are written in stroke order and graded. Speaking is drilled from lesson one. A story you enjoyed becomes vocabulary you keep.

Which one should you use

Use GraphChinese if you want one product to take you from zero to HSK 6. That includes complete beginners: the first lesson assumes no Chinese, teaches the four tones and traces 你 and 好 in stroke order, and is free without an account.

Use HSKStory if you already have a course you are happy with and want more levelled stories, especially above HSK 6 where their 7–9 band material goes further up than ours does. Reading a lot is good for you regardless of whose library it is.

Is HSKStory or GraphChinese better for learning Chinese?

HSKStory is a graded-reading library of 100+ levelled stories with audio across the HSK 1 to 9 bands, and it is good at that. GraphChinese is a full course from HSK 0 to HSK 6 on a dependency graph of 829 topics with mastery gating, and it includes 102 narrated graded readings alongside stroke-order writing, an FSRS flashcard scheduler, a 124,727-entry dictionary and speaking practice from lesson one. Both offer a $149 lifetime plan.

Does GraphChinese have graded readers like HSKStory?

Yes. 102 graded passages, each written to the vocabulary available at its HSK level, each narrated with per-character timing so the text follows along as it is read, and each ending in a comprehension check. They are free to read at /read.

Does GraphChinese use HSK 3.0 levels?

The course is built on the HSK 1 to 6 bands. The HSK 3.0 standard is vendored and its band mapping is published at /shareables, so you can see where the 3.0 levels fall against the curriculum, but the course itself is not renumbered to 1 through 9.

How much does HSKStory cost?

HSKStory is $7 a month or $5 a month billed yearly at founding-member prices, rising to $9.99 and $84 a year, with a $149 lifetime plan rising to $199, checked August 2026. GraphChinese is $9 a month, $84 a year, or $149 once.

Compare with: Anki · Duolingo · HelloChinese · Super Chinese · Du Chinese · Hack Chinese · Skritter · Pleco · Migaku · all of them side by side