Chinese to Pinyin Converter
Type or paste Chinese text and the pinyin appears above every word, instantly — no convert button, no sign-up. Copy the result as tone marks, tone numbers, or hanzi with pinyin. The romanization it produces is Hanyu Pinyin (often written han yu pin yin) — the standard system used in textbooks, dictionaries and classrooms worldwide. Part of our free Chinese typing practice toolkit.
22 / 2000 Chinese characters
Example text with pinyin. Enable JavaScript to type or paste your own.
How to convert Chinese to pinyin
Converting Chinese characters to pinyin is what this tool does as you type. The text you enter is segmented into words, each word is matched to its Mandarin pronunciation, and the reading is shown above the word. Because the reading is chosen per word, characters with multiple readings — polyphonic characters like 了, 好, or 长 — get the reading that fits your sentence, not just the most common one.
When you are happy with the annotation, the four copy buttons under the editor give you the same text in the four formats people actually need: plain pinyin with tone marks, plain pinyin with tone numbers, hanzi with pinyin in brackets, and hanzi with tone numbers in brackets. One click each, straight to your clipboard — useful for worksheets, subtitles, Anki cards, or song lyrics with pronunciation.
Pinyin with tone marks vs. tone numbers
Mandarin syllables carry a tone, and there are two common ways to write it. Tone marks place a diacritic on the main vowel: mā má mǎ mà. Tone numbers append a digit to the syllable: ma1 ma2 ma3 ma4, with 5 (or 0) for the neutral tone as in le5. If you are learning or teaching, tone marks are easier to read. If you are entering pinyin into software — spreadsheets, flashcard exporters, some IMEs — tone numbers are safer because they survive plain-text copying. This converter gives you both from the same annotation, so you never have to convert twice.
How to type pinyin with tone marks yourself
Want to write pinyin (not just convert to it)? The tone marks are the hard part. You have three options: use a keyboard layout that composes them, use tone numbers and let a tool mark them, or use an input method that accepts ni3 hao3 and outputs nǐ hǎo. The same techniques apply to typing Chinese itself — see how to type Chinese for the full setup guide on macOS and Windows.
The pinyin chart
Every pinyin syllable is an initial (like b, p, m, f) plus a final (like a, ao, an, ang). If a word in your text has a reading you do not recognize, the fastest fix is to look it up in a pinyin chart: find the initial's row and the final's column, and the syllable — with its tone variants — is at the intersection. Charts also show which syllables only exist with certain tones, which is great for spotting typos in your own pinyin.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert Chinese to pinyin?
Type or paste Chinese text into the box above. Pinyin appears above each word as you type — there is no convert button. When you are done, use the four copy buttons to copy the text as tone marks (nǐ hǎo), tone numbers (ni3 hao3), or hanzi with pinyin in brackets.
What is the difference between tone marks and tone numbers?
Tone marks write the tone as a diacritic on the vowel: nǐ hǎo. Tone numbers append a digit after each syllable: ni3 hao3 (1–4 for the four tones, 5 or 0 for the neutral tone). Teachers and textbooks usually prefer tone marks; plain-text contexts like spreadsheets or flashcard apps often need tone numbers.
How do you handle characters with several readings?
The converter segments your text into words first, then picks the reading that fits the word. For example 长 is read zhǎng in 长大 (to grow up) but cháng in 长江 (the Yangtze River). Common r-hotacized words such as 这儿 are annotated as a single unit (zhèr).
I can't type Chinese characters — how do I get text into the converter?
Enable the Chinese input method built into macOS or Windows — our setup guide walks you through it in about two minutes. You can also use an online Chinese keyboard that types pinyin and picks characters in your browser, or simply paste text from anywhere.
Does it work with traditional characters?
The converter is tuned for simplified Chinese. Traditional characters that share a reading are annotated; characters outside the converter dictionary are left unannotated rather than guessed.
Can I paste a whole paragraph or article at once?
Yes. The editor accepts up to 2,000 Chinese characters in one go — paste an entire paragraph, a song lyric, or a textbook passage and every word is annotated together. Rich-text formatting is stripped automatically, so text copied from PDFs, Word, or web pages works fine. If your text is longer, split it into chunks and convert them one after another.
What is fuzzy pinyin?
Fuzzy pinyin (模糊拼音) is an input-method feature that treats easily confused syllables as equivalent — zh/z, sh/s, ch/c, n/l, and h/f — so typing “sige” can still find 四个. It changes how you TYPE Chinese, not how pinyin is written. If you want to type by pinyin without installing anything, try our online Chinese keyboard, which understands pinyin input directly in the browser.
Can't type Chinese characters yet? Read how to enable the Chinese input method, or use our online pinyin keyboard to type by pinyin directly in the browser. Then practice what you learn in the Chinese typing practice tool.