Chinese Reading Level Test
This free 2-minute test estimates how many Chinese characters you know, then shows what that unlocks — using readability data we measured across the 658 graded stories in the Literate Chinese catalog (July 2026).
You'll see up to 60 characters, drawn from five frequency bands of our corpus. For each one, choose honestly: do you know its pronunciation and meaning? Recognizing it vaguely doesn't count. Keyboard: K = know, D = don't.
Simplified characters. If you read Traditional, count a character as known if you know its traditional form.
How the estimate works
Characters aren't equally common: the 100 most frequent characters make up 56.7% of all text in our story corpus, while characters ranked 1,001–1,500 add only about 2.4 percentage points of coverage. The test samples characters from five frequency bands (ranks 1–100, 101–300, 301–600, 601–1,000, 1,001–1,500), measures the share you know in each band, and sums the weighted estimate. It stops early once your ceiling is clear, so most people finish in under two minutes. It's an estimate, not an exam — ±15% is normal.
Want the full data behind the milestones? Read How Many Characters Do You Need to Read Chinese? and the 100 most common Chinese characters.
