IELTS never expires. It recommends when to stop trusting it

IELTS reports on a scale from 9 down to 0, and every band carries a published label rather than only a number:

Band 9 — Expert. Band 8 — Very good. Band 7 — Good. Band 6 — Competent. Band 5 — Modest. Band 4 — Limited. Band 3 — Extremely limited. Band 2 — Intermittent. Band 1 — Non-user. Band 0 — Did not attempt the test.

You receive a band for each of the four sections — Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking — and an Overall Band Score. Half bands exist, so 6.5 is a real result at both the section and the overall level.

There is no line anywhere on that scale marked pass. A Band 5 is not a failure and a Band 7 is not a success; they are descriptions, and whoever asked you for the certificate decides which of them they will accept. This puts IELTS with the TestDaF and SIELE, documented elsewhere on this site, and against the DELF, the JLPT and the Polish state certificate, which all draw a line and tell you which side of it you landed on.

One thing worth flagging because its absence is often filled in by other people: the ielts.org pages we read do not map IELTS bands to CEFR levels. Tables doing so circulate widely, and most of them cite nobody. But the mapping does exist first-party — from a partner rather than from ielts.org. Cambridge English, which publishes under Cambridge University Press & Assessment and is an IELTS partner, provides a score converter between CEFR levels, IELTS band scores and the Cambridge English Scale, and states its own limit: IELTS band scores below 4.0 (142 - 146) are not mapped to the Cambridge English Scale. Read 5 September 2026. So the gap recorded here is a gap on ielts.org, not a gap in the world — a distinction this site got wrong once before and would rather not repeat.

The Overall Band Score is the average of the four section band scores, rounded to the nearest half band. Because section bands move in half steps, that average can only ever land on a multiple of 0.125 — which means the midpoints come up constantly, and how they are broken matters.

IELTS publishes the tie-break: If the average of the four sections ends in .25, the overall band score is rounded up to the next half band, and if it ends in .75, the overall band score is rounded up to the next whole band.

Its own worked examples: an average of 6.25 becomes Band 6.5. An average of 3.875 becomes Band 4.0. An average of 6.125 becomes Band 6.0.

This observation is ours, and it is the reason this section exists. Both stated tie-breaks resolve upward. When your average sits exactly between two bands, IELTS gives you the higher one, in writing, with examples, published in advance.

Set that against the marginal rules documented elsewhere on this site and it is close to unique. Brazil's Celpe-Bras certifies you at the level of your weaker half. The JLPT fails you outright for one section below its floor however high your total. Norway's norskprøven caps your writing result at the band you booked, so a cautious registration costs you a level you actually have. Poland raises its own pass threshold from 50% to 60% as the level rises. Every one of those resolves an edge case against the candidate. IELTS resolves the exact midpoint for them.

The practical consequence is small but real, and worth knowing before you argue with your own score. Half a band can turn on a single section. With 6.5, 6.5, 6.0, 6.0 you average 6.25 and receive 6.5 — the rounding, not the extra marks, gave you the half band. With 6.5, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0 you average 6.125 and receive 6.0. One half band in one section moved the overall result, and it moved it because of where the average fell, not because of how much better you performed.

IELTS is not one exam. Four are published, and choosing the wrong one is the most expensive mistake available before test day.

IELTS Academic — for study in a country where English is spoken, higher education and professional registration. IELTS General Training — suitable for those wishing to migrate to a country where English is spoken (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK), and for those wishing to train or study at below degree level. IELTS for UKVI — the same tests, administered so the result is accepted by UK Visas and Immigration for visa purposes. IELTS for UKVI Life Skills — a UK government-approved Secure English Language Test.

Academic and General Training are not two difficulty settings. IELTS states the relationship exactly: In both the General Training and the Academic tests, the Speaking and Listening sections are the same. However, the Reading and Writing sections of these tests differ. Half the exam is identical and half is built for a different purpose, so "which is easier" is the wrong question — the right one is which one the organisation reading your result asked for.

Life Skills is the outlier and deserves its own sentence, because it is structurally unlike anything else documented on this site. It assesses only your English speaking and listening skills. Two skills. Reading and writing are not tested at all.

This comparison is ours. Several exams here let a candidate sit fewer parts — the Dutch NT2 has four independent components, the Goethe modules above B1 stand alone, and norskprøven lets you choose how many of its four sub-tests to take. In every one of those the candidate does the narrowing. Life Skills is different in kind: the awarding body defined a certificate that structurally cannot describe your reading or writing, because the visa route it serves does not ask about them. It is the only test in this dataset whose scope was cut by the purpose rather than by the person sitting it.

Ask how long IELTS lasts and the usual answer is two years. The pages say something meaningfully different, and the difference is the whole point.

The IELTS partners recommend that an IELTS result demonstrates a test taker's English language ability for a maximum period of two years. Recommend. To organisations, about how long to rely on the document — not to the candidate, about when it stops existing.

And the recommendation is conditional. Organisations should accept a Test Report Form older than two years if it is accompanied by proof that the test taker has actively maintained, or tried to improve, their English. So the two-year line is not a wall; it is the point at which the burden shifts to you to show the score is still true.

There is a third line further out, and it is administrative rather than linguistic: the IELTS Results Service will verify a Test Report Form beyond two years, but it is our policy that we cannot further investigate TRFs that are more than three years old.

This is ours, and it is why this page exists. Most certificates documented on this site answer the time question one of two ways. Some expire on a stated date — the TOPIK after two years, SIELE after five. Most do not expire at all and say so in a single word: bezterminowo, unbegrenzt gültig, indefinite. IELTS does neither. It declines to expire the result and declines to vouch for it indefinitely, and hands the decision to whoever is reading it, with a default and a stated exception. (A fourth position exists too, and it is simply silence: HK-dir publishes no validity for norskprøven either way, which is a gap in what we read rather than a policy we can describe.)

That is exactly the move the TestDaF makes about pass marks, documented here on 31 August: refuse to decide centrally, publish enough for the reader to decide well, and be explicit that the reader is the one deciding. Two exams, two different questions — did they pass and is this still true — and the same answer: not ours to say, here is what you need to say it.

Finland's YKI is the near miss and it is worth naming. Its certificate does not expire either, and OPH volunteers that employers may ask a candidate to be retested if enough time has passed, because language skills deteriorate without use. That is the same honesty about decay. The difference is that OPH offers it as a caveat, while IELTS has built it into the product as a number, a default and an exception — and then told organisations, in writing, what to do at the boundary.

What this means if you are sitting it. Do not treat a two-year-old score as void, and do not treat it as safe. Ask the institution what they accept, because the exam has explicitly delegated that to them. And if your result is between two and three years old and someone needs it verified, do that sooner rather than later — the verification window is the one line here that really does close.

IELTS calls a re-mark an Enquiry on Results, and it works unlike any other appeal documented on this site. Test papers are re-marked by senior Examiners/Markers. You pay a fee — which is fully refunded if your band score changes.

Turnaround is stated as a range rather than a promise: your result can become available on the same day as your application and up to 21 days after, depending in part on how many sections you asked to have re-marked. That last clause matters, because it means you choose which sections go back, and the choice affects both cost and time.

This comparison is ours, and IELTS makes a fourth distinct posture on an axis this site has been building all week. France's FEI allows no appeal at all — les décisions des jurys sont sans appel. Finland's OPH allows one reassessment, then declares the outcome final. Norway's HK-dir allows an appeal on exactly one of four sub-tests, the writing paper, and warns plainly that the result can come back worse. IELTS allows a re-mark on any section you choose, and prices it — then refunds the price if you turn out to have been right.

That last mechanism is the interesting part, because a refundable fee is not really a fee. It is a filter. It costs nothing to challenge a mark that was genuinely wrong and it costs money to challenge one that was not, which discourages speculative appeals without putting a price on justified ones. Compare Norway, which achieves a similar filtering effect by making the appeal risky rather than expensive — there, a speculative challenge can lower your result. Both bodies are solving the same problem. One charges you for being wrong; the other takes a band off you.

One caution, stated because we did not read it either way: the pages we read do not say whether an Enquiry on Results can lower a band. Norway says outright that an appeal can go down. IELTS does not address it on the pages read here, so this site does not assert an answer in either direction — ask your test centre before applying.

Release times are published per format, and they differ by more than a week end to end: IELTS on computer — 1 to 5 days. IELTS for UKVI — 1 to 5 days. IELTS Online — 6 to 8 days. IELTS for UKVI Life Skills — up to 9 days. IELTS on paper — up to 13 days.

If a deadline is driving you, the format is a scheduling decision as much as a comfort one: the gap between computer-delivered and paper is potentially twelve days, on identical content.

No fee is published. Neither the test fee nor the Enquiry on Results fee appears as a global figure on the pages we read, and the refund position is explicit that it is local: refund policy is dependent upon when you cancel and whether exceptional circumstances apply, and varies by test centre location.

That is the same posture as JLPT, HSK, telc, CAPLE, DELF / DALF, Norskprøven, Norskprøven C1, Cambridge English and Swedex — the awarding body defines the exam and each centre prices it. The comparison table on this site therefore records not published globally rather than quoting a number, because a figure this site has not read on the body's own page does not get printed here. Any single IELTS price circulating online is somebody's local fee, at some past date, presented as a global one.