How many Chinese characters do you know?
Measure your reading vocabulary of Chinese characters. Your result is graded by the official HSK 3.0 character levels (GF0025-2021) and goes beyond them, up to all 8,105 characters in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters.
- Characters start easy and get rarer, stage by stage.
- For each character, pick its pronunciation or the real word it appears in.
- Not sure? Choose I don't know. Guessing is corrected for, so honest answers give the most accurate result.
- The test ends early once the characters are clearly beyond your level.
HSK 3.0 character requirements
| HSK level | Characters (cumulative) |
|---|---|
| HSK 1 | 300 |
| HSK 2 | 600 |
| HSK 3 | 900 |
| HSK 4 | 1,200 |
| HSK 5 | 1,500 |
| HSK 6 | 1,800 |
| HSK 7–9 | 3,000 |
Frequently asked questions
How many Chinese characters do I need for each HSK level?
Under the HSK 3.0 standard (GF0025-2021, Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education), Levels 1–6 each add 300 characters (300, 600, 900, 1,200, 1,500 and 1,800 in total), and Levels 7–9 bring the total to 3,000 characters.
How many characters do I need to read a Chinese newspaper?
According to the statistics published with the List of Frequently Used Characters in Modern Chinese (1988), the 2,500 most common characters cover about 98% of characters in modern texts, and 3,500 characters cover over 99%. Knowing around 2,500–3,000 characters lets you read most everyday material.
How is my character count calculated?
The test samples characters from each HSK level and from the rarer characters beyond HSK, up to the 8,105 characters of the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters. Your accuracy at each stage is corrected for guessing and multiplied by the number of characters in that stage. The test stops early once the remaining stages are clearly beyond your level.
Does the test use simplified or traditional characters?
Simplified characters, as used in mainland China and Singapore and in the HSK exam.
Is the test free?
Yes. The test is free, and you can see your full report, including mastery by HSK level and the characters to review, by entering your name and email.
Based on answers. The test stopped early because the remaining stages were well beyond your level.
Mastery by level
Characters to review
Share your result
How this is calculated
Characters are grouped into stages by the HSK 3.0 levels (300 characters each for Levels 1–6, 1,200 for Levels 7–9), followed by the remaining characters of the 8,105-character standard table ranked by corpus frequency. A small random sample is drawn from each stage. Your score in each stage is corrected for lucky guesses and multiplied by the stage size; the sum is your estimated character count. The ± range is a 95% margin of error.