Pleco Chinese Dictionary

In-app purchases
4.7
42.9K reviews
5M+
Downloads
Content rating
Everyone
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About this app

Pleco is the ultimate Chinese learning companion - an integrated Chinese English dictionary / document reader / flashcard system with fullscreen handwriting input and live camera-based character lookups, from a company with 17 years' experience making mobile Chinese learning software.

Major features: ($ = paid add-on)

Great dictionaries: the free app comes with two dictionaries - CC-CEDICT and our in-house PLC dictionary - which together cover 130,000 Chinese words and include 20,000 example sentences with Pinyin. We offer 8 more free dictionaries as optional downloads, including a 22,000-entry Cantonese-English dictionary, and 19 other great dictionaries are available as paid upgrades. ($)

Handwriting input: lookup unknown characters by drawing them, with a best-in-class recognition engine. (basic version free, enhanced version $)

Live Optical Character Recognizer (OCR): look up Chinese words in the dictionary simply by pointing your device's camera at them, or by scrolling around a still image. ($)

Screen Reader/OCR: instantly tap-lookup Chinese words in other apps through a floating interface; works on Android 4.1 and later. (reader free, OCR $)

Flashcard System: create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, use advanced techniques like SRS (spaced repetition), and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks and tone drills. (simple version free, full-featured $)

Audio Pronunciation: instantly hear male + female native-speaker audio for Chinese dictionary headwords; recordings available for over 34,000 words. (stitched-syllable free, multi-syllable $) Or listen to example sentences with text-to-speech (system TTS free, enhanced $).

Powerful search: look up words by Chinese characters, Pinyin (spaces/tones optional), or a combination, with support for wildcards and full-text search.

Cross-referencing: tap on any Chinese character / word in any dictionary entry to bring up its definition.

Stroke Order Diagrams: animations showing you how to draw each Chinese character; 500 in free app, 28,000 in paid add-on.

Voice Recognition: look up words by speaking them into your device's microphone.

Document Reader: open a Chinese-language text or PDF file and look up unknown words in the dictionary simply by tapping on them. ($) You can also look up characters on web pages through "Share" and in other documents through the clipboard. (free)

PRC- and Taiwan-friendly: supports traditional and simplified characters (in dictionary definitions, stroke order, search, OCR, and handwriting), and supports Zhuyin (with ruby support) as well as Pinyin for pronunciation display.

Cantonese: display headwords + perform searches in Jyutping/Yale romanization. We also offer Cantonese dictionary and Cantonese audio add-ons. (some $)

No ads: we won't even nag you about buying add-ons.

We also offer excellent customer support - send us an email and see for yourself - and an active user community at plecoforums.com.

We've been making Chinese dictionary apps since 2000, and our sales and customer base have been steadily growing for 17 years across four different platforms. We take good care of our longtime users: people who bought a dictionary on a Palm Pilot in 2001 can still use that dictionary on a new Android phone in 2020 without even paying an upgrade fee.

Paid add-ons can be moved to a new device like any other paid app; just open our free app on your new device and they should reactivate.

If you already own Pleco on another OS, see pleco.com/android for migration options.

This app uses Accessibility services. (for our Screen Reader feature, which helps users to get by in Chinese-speaking regions without knowing Chinese)

Twitter/Facebook: plecosoft
Updated on
Jan 19, 2024

Data safety

Safety starts with understanding how developers collect and share your data. Data privacy and security practices may vary based on your use, region, and age. The developer provided this information and may update it over time.
No data shared with third parties
Learn more about how developers declare sharing
This app may collect these data types
Device or other IDs
Data is encrypted in transit
Data can’t be deleted
Committed to follow the Play Families Policy

Ratings and reviews

4.7
39.6K reviews
Paul Huang
March 10, 2024
I don't write a ton of reviews but I just had to for this one. This is quite possibly one of the best-designed and useful apps ever and life-changing. If they had the equivalent for other languages they'd drive Duolingo right out of business. This is invaluable as a learning tool, with graded readers fully integrated with dictionaries, as well as example phrases they've somehow extracted from those dictionaries, including the Outlier dictionary. Just FYI, many add-ons are absolutely worth it.
9 people found this review helpful
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Kelly O'Neal
January 13, 2024
Best app for Chinese learning. Every learner needs this app. It breaks down words to the individual characters, and the characters into the individual radicals. This makes it so much easier to remember new words and characters. I also like the smorgasbord of other features, like the fact they sell you graded readers through the app, and have a flashcard system. I like it has bopomofo in addition to pinyin. My only wish is there was also a desktop version I could use when I'm not on my phone.
11 people found this review helpful
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jc fyre
September 29, 2023
9/29/23 (New): Still an incredible app. This is THE chinese dictionary app to have if you are looking for the ONE to have that has everything. 11/2/22 (Old): Incredible app. Absolutely worth every add on purchase you make. It has a lot of content and very specific details to each character/ word. Tabs for sentences, stroke order, and breaking up a character into its radicals and components. Good pronunciation. Great ways to search too and a camera to scan chinese writing.
32 people found this review helpful
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What's new

Minor update with data file updates for CC-CEDICT and our embedded Chinese font files, plus support for adaptive icons and a few bug fixes.