Anki Alternative for Chinese

Anki is a powerful engine. Aelu is the car built around it.

You know SRS works. You also know that finding decks, vetting content, and managing suspended cards eats half your study time. Aelu gives you FSRS-level scheduling with a curriculum that builds itself from your actual reading gaps.

Free for HSK 1-2. No credit card required.

You're on the list. We'll let you know when it's ready.

Anki vs. Aelu for Chinese

Feature	Anki	Aelu
Spaced repetition	FSRS	Adaptive spaced repetition
Pre-built Chinese curriculum	No (DIY decks)	HSK 1-9
Setup time required	Hours to days	None
Drill types	Flashcards only	27 types
Graded reading	No	By HSK level
Read → drill pipeline	Manual card creation	Automatic
Listening drills	Manual setup	Built in, speed control
Speaking / tone grading	No	Yes
Multi-skill diagnostics	No	Per-skill tracking
Context notes per word	DIY	Built in
Customizability	Infinite	Opinionated
Multi-language / multi-subject	Yes	Chinese only
Price	Free	Free / $14.99/mo

What Anki does well

Anki is a remarkable tool. If you are technically proficient and willing to invest setup time, it can serve you for years.

Free and open source $0 on desktop, web, and Android. $25 one-time on iOS. The economics are unbeatable. No subscription, no lock-in.

FSRS algorithm The canonical implementation of the state-of-the-art scheduling algorithm. Proven over millions of users and years of research.

Infinite customization Card templates, add-ons, plugins, media embedding. If you can imagine it, you can build it. No other SRS tool offers this flexibility.

Massive ecosystem Thousands of shared Chinese decks, community guides, add-on developers. A 15-year-old ecosystem that keeps growing.

Where Anki falls short for Chinese

Setup overhead Finding a good Chinese deck requires research. Many shared decks have errors, bad audio, or poor example sentences. Making good cards takes longer than studying them.

One drill type: flashcards Front/back cards test recognition. They do not test whether you can hear a word, produce it, use it in context, or distinguish its tone from a near-miss.

No reading integration Anki cannot connect your reading to your reviews. Every word you encounter while reading Chinese must be manually turned into a card.

No curriculum Anki does not tell you what to study next. You supply the content and the order. For Chinese, where HSK progression matters, this is a gap.

What $14.99/month buys you over Anki

No setup time Open the app, start a session. HSK-aligned content is curated, annotated, and ready. No decks to find, vet, or maintain.

44 drill types instead of 1 Cloze deletion, sentence construction, listening comprehension, tone pair discrimination, character recognition, speaking drills with tone grading, and more.

The cleanup loop Read graded passages, tap words you do not know, and those words automatically enter your SRS queue. Anki cannot do this.

Tone grading Record yourself and get feedback on tone accuracy. Anki has no concept of pronunciation assessment.

Multi-skill diagnostics The system tracks listening, vocabulary, reading, and tones separately. It knows your listening lags behind your vocabulary and adjusts accordingly.

A curriculum that decides for you Aelu sequences content by HSK level, adjusts based on your performance data, and handles interleaving. You study. The system plans.

Who should use which

Use Anki if you...

Enjoy building and customizing your own study system
Study multiple languages or subjects alongside Chinese
Have invested years in Chinese Anki decks you do not want to leave
Need specialized vocabulary we do not cover (medical, legal, dialect)
Cannot pay $14.99/month and have time to invest in setup
Want total control over every aspect of your SRS

Use Aelu if you...

Want to study Chinese, not maintain a flashcard system
Want reading and drilling connected in one workflow
Want tone grading and listening drills built in
Want to know which skills are lagging, not just which cards are due
Are preparing for HSK and want aligned content
Value your study time more than your setup time

Honest take

Anki is free. Anki has the canonical FSRS implementation. Anki's ecosystem is vastly larger. If you are technically proficient and willing to invest setup time, Anki plus a good deck plus supplementary reading tools can replicate much of what Aelu does, for free.

Our advantage is integration and ease-of-use, not raw capability. Aelu is for the learner who wants to sit down and practice Chinese without thinking about deck management, card templates, or plugin configuration.

If you enjoy the meta-game of optimizing Anki, you will probably stay with Anki. If you want to open an app and study, Aelu is worth $14.99/month.

"Anki is free and powerful. Aelu is $14.99/month and you never build a deck. Different tools for different preferences."

Study Chinese, not Anki

Free for HSK 1-2. Same rigor, none of the overhead.

No credit card. No deck-building. Just learning.