Dictionaries · head-to-head
Chinese Character Web vs Wiktionary
The Chinese Character Web API (CCDB) is a free, read-only JSON API built on the Unicode Consortium's Unihan Database, covering Mandarin and Cantonese readings, Japanese on'yomi/kun'yomi, radicals, stroke counts, definitions, and simplified/traditional variant mappings for CJK Unified Ideographs, filterable by character-set encodings like GB2312, Big5, and Shift JIS. A live GET against /version returned a real 200 JSON body and Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * on the same Apache-served host.
Wiktionary exposes its full multilingual dictionary — definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and translations spanning thousands of languages — through the same MediaWiki Action API that powers Wikipedia, with no key required for read access. Cross-origin browser requests need the documented origin=* query parameter rather than a bare Origin header, since that's what actually unlocks the API's CORS headers.
| Chinese Character Web | Wiktionary | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON | JSON, XML |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | No | Yes |
Wiktionary supports 2 response formats, while Chinese Character Web offers fewer — pick Wiktionary for more integration flexibility.