Text level checker
Paste a Chinese text, an article, a story or a page from a textbook, and choose the HSK level you have studied. The checker splits the text into words, looks each one up in the 11,000-word HSK list, and shows how much of the text you should be able to read. Everything runs in your browser; your text is not sent anywhere.
How to read the result
The main number is coverage: the share of the words in the text that are on the HSK list at or below your level. Every word counts each time it appears, so a text that repeats 的 forty times gets credit for all forty.
- 98% or more: comfortable reading. About one unknown word in fifty, which you can usually guess from context.
- 95–98%: readable with some effort. Good for practice if you look up a few words.
- 90–95%: one unknown word in every ten to twenty. Use it for careful study with a dictionary, not for reading practice.
- Below 90%: too hard for now. Try something simpler, or come back after the next level.
These thresholds come from research on reading in a second language, mostly English, which found that readers need to know around 95–98% of the words in a text to understand it without help. They are a rough guide for Chinese too.
Ways to use it
- Choosing reading material. Before you start a graded reader or an article, check whether it sits in the 95–98% band for you.
- Building a word list. The table of words above your level, sorted by level and by how often they appear, is a ready-made study list. Download it as CSV for Anki or WordSwing.
- Seeing your next step. Switch the level up one step and watch the coverage rise. That shows how much the next level’s words will help with the texts you want to read.
- For teachers: check whether a text suits a class, and pre-teach the few words above their level.
What the checker can and can’t tell you
The checker splits text into words using the HSK list itself, preferring common, lower-level words when there is a choice. It works well for everyday prose. A few things to keep in mind:
- Names and places are usually not on the list, so they show as unknown. Tick “ignore” next to them in the table and they stop counting against the text.
- Words not on the list are sometimes split into smaller words that are. 火车站 counts as 火车 and 站, which is fine for reading. Rarer compounds may look easier than they are.
- Coverage is about words, not grammar. A text full of HSK 2 words can still use HSK 5 grammar. For the structures at each level, see the grammar points.
- Simplified characters only. Text in traditional characters won’t match the list.
Where the word list comes from
The levels are from the official 2025 HSK syllabus published by the Center for Language Education and Cooperation, which the new HSK (3.0) is based on. You can browse each level’s list, with pinyin, meanings and audio, on the vocabulary pages, and quiz yourself in the vocabulary quiz.