Yumei vs Anki for learning Chinese
Anki is a flashcard tool you build a Chinese routine around. Yumei combines flashcards, reading, and speaking practice with one record of what you know.
Anki and Yumei both use spaced repetition to help you remember Chinese vocabulary. Anki gives you a flexible flashcard tool that you can build your learning around. Yumei provides flashcards, reading, and speaking practice together, all using your vocabulary progress.
Anki is one of the most popular apps for learning with spaced repetition. It is free and open source with a one-time fee to use on iOS. Anki has a bank of community decks to pick from in a variety of topics. The algorithm is tunable and the app has extensive documentation and an active community forum.
This flexibility is useful, but creating a setup that works for you may take extra work. You need to find or create cards for what you want to learn. Also, flashcards alone will not get you fluent—most learners will juggle multiple tools, like a dictionary app or tools for pronunciation, reading, and conversations. These tools work well together, but curating the content and building a routine around it is up to you.
We built Yumei to make this easier. Yumei curates decks for you by level and topic so spaced repetition is available on day 1. Yumei also contains a built-in Chinese dictionary, and you can practice role-plays and get pronunciation feedback using our adaptive conversation mode. In conversation transcripts, Yumei translates words that you are still learning, so reading just outside your level is more accessible. You can also tap words to see their definitions and your review history of them.
Let’s say that you have been reviewing 菜单 (“menu”) with flashcards. You can practice it in a restaurant role-play by asking the waiter for a menu. You can then tap that word in the conversation transcript to see the definition and review progress. You can also tap “break it down” on a sentence to explore its sentence structure or pronunciation without losing your place in the conversation. Later, you can engage in reading practice where Yumei uses your vocab data to find or generate passages at your level.
Vocabulary and decks
Anki groups cards into decks and sub-decks. Each deck owns cards, whose contents are defined as notes. A note is a piece of content that can define several cards. Anki also supports tags and filtered decks to allow for studying overlapping material.
In Yumei, a card can share review history across multiple decks. A word could appear in a vocabulary deck and a deck you made yourself without needing a separate copy. You can create multiple cards with the same content if you wish to track them independently. Yumei uses FSRS, which Anki also supports as an opt-in 1.
Cards can also link to dictionary entries. This allows us to show information like part of speech, frequency of use, and pinyin. Linking cards to dictionary entries also lets Yumei use your review progress for those words in reading and conversation practice.
Data ownership and imports
You can import your Anki data to Yumei, and you can export your Yumei data in an Anki format; your progress is never
stuck in Yumei. In Anki, your data is stored locally and optionally synced with AnkiWeb. In Yumei, your decks are
hosted by Yumei and synced to your device. You can also import Anki decks to Yumei by uploading them in the app.
This will keep your review progress data from Anki, but does not yet include media like pictures (this is on the
roadmap). You can export your data in Anki format in the app, including review state.
Cost and limitations
Anki desktop and Android are free, and iOS currently costs $24.99 one time. You might pair Anki with a dictionary app like Pleco (free with add-ons) and a tutor or speaking app for conversation practice.
Anki manages your flashcard reviews, but you will need to figure out reading, feedback on your speech, and conversations separately.
Yumei is free to download, and Yumei Pro is currently $14.99/month or $99.99/year with a one week free trial, and currently only on iOS (Android coming soon). Flashcards and the dictionary are included in the app for free. Pro includes conversation practice, reading, shadowing, and lessons. All of these use the same vocabulary progress.
When considering pricing, it helps to look at the full learning stack. Yumei’s flashcards and dictionary are free, so they would replace Anki and Pleco at no cost. Yumei Pro adds reading and conversations powered by the vocab data; one month of Pro can cost less than an hour of tutoring, and is comparable in price to similar conversation-only apps. If you only want flashcards, Yumei is free and you may not need Pro.
Choose Yumei if:
- You want flashcards, reading, and speaking practice in the same app
- You want a clear starting point with curated vocabulary
- You want conversations and reading that adapt to your vocabulary progress
- You want a free flashcards app for iOS
Choose Anki if:
- You want to work with your cards as files on your computer day-to-day
- You want an established ecosystem with community add-ons (desktop only, AnkiMobile cannot run add-ons)
- You want to use the same study tool for more than one domain (biology, law, etc)
Yumei is under active development! Reach out to hello@yumei.ai if you have any questions or feedback.