Short answer: Pleco’s stroke-order add-on is worth it as a reference, and it is cheap enough that most serious learners will get value from it. But it has one limitation that matters more than its price. It shows you the answer. That makes it great for looking up how a character is written and almost useless for learning to write that character from memory.

Here is how to think about it.

What the add-on actually does

Pleco is, first and foremost, the dictionary nearly every Chinese learner keeps on their phone. Its optional add-ons extend it, and the stroke-order content lets you see how a character is formed, stroke by stroke, right inside the entry you are already looking at. As a reference that is genuinely handy: you meet a new character, you check the order, you move on.

That is the whole strength and the whole limitation. A reference answers “how is this written?” on demand. It does not ask you to produce the character yourself.

Recognition and tracing are not recall

When you watch a stroke-order animation or trace over a model, the character is in front of you the entire time. Your brain confirms a shape it can see. That is recognition, and it feels productive, but it is the easy direction.

Writing from memory is the hard direction: nothing is on the screen, and you have to reconstruct every stroke in the right order yourself. That is recall, and it is the skill you actually use when you sit down to write. We cover this gap in detail in the case for a dedicated Hanzi writing app, and the mechanics of order in Hanzi stroke order practice.

A reference tool, by design, keeps you in recognition. That is fine. It is just not the same as practice.

So, is it worth it?

Buy it if:

  • You want correct stroke order available instantly inside Pleco, without leaving the dictionary.
  • You are learning new characters and want a quick, trustworthy reference for how they are formed.
  • You value having one app that does lookups well.

Do not expect it to:

  • Make you able to write characters from memory.
  • Track which characters you are forgetting.
  • Schedule review so the right characters come back at the right time.

For those, you need a practice system, not a reference.

What to pair it with

The strongest setup is simple: use Pleco as your reference, and add a tool that drills recall. Look a character up in Pleco, then practise writing it with the model hidden, and let something else handle the part humans are bad at, deciding what to review and when.

That is what Hanzi Write Practice does. You draw each character from memory on a practice grid, check your stroke order, pinyin, and meaning afterward, and spaced repetition brings back the characters you keep missing, which collect in a focused difficult pile. It is not a dictionary and is not trying to replace Pleco. It does the one thing a reference cannot: turn “I looked it up” into “I can write it.” For building that into a routine, see Chinese character writing practice that sticks, and for exam-focused study, HSK writing practice.

Keep Pleco. Add real practice next to it.

Join early access and start practising the characters you keep forgetting.