How IELTS scoring works

The 9-band scale

IELTS reports each of the four skills, and the overall result, on a scale from 0 to 9 in whole and half bands. There is no pass mark. The organisation you apply to decides what it needs.

Listening and Reading: from marks to bands

Listening and Reading each have 40 questions worth one mark. Your total out of 40 is converted to a band. The conversion is not a fixed percentage. Test versions differ slightly in difficulty, so each version has its own conversion, and those are not published.

What is published, and by whom:

• ielts.org gives four points for each paper, described as the average marks at each level. Listening: 16, 23, 30 and 35 marks for bands 5, 6, 7 and 8. Academic Reading: 15, 23, 30 and 35 for the same bands. General Training Reading: 15, 23 and 30 for bands 4, 5 and 6, plus a band 7 figure discussed below. It adds that the precise marks vary slightly between test versions.
• IDP, one of the three IELTS partners, prints fuller tables on some of its regional websites, with the same warning. They stop at band 4 for Listening, band 2.5 for Academic Reading and band 3 for General Training Reading.
• Nobody publishes the rows below those. The lowest rows in the table are our approximations, based on the conventions used in practice materials.

This is the table Bandwise uses to estimate your band. Three details are worth knowing:

• General Training band 7. ielts.org currently shows 35 marks, but its own earlier pages showed 34 and IDP’s table gives 34–35. Every other ielts.org figure matches the lower end of IDP’s range, so we use 34.
• General Training band 8. IDP’s table gives 37–38 marks, while the earlier ielts.org page gave 38. A score of 37 is a borderline case.
• General Training needs more marks. IELTS notes that General Training Reading usually needs more correct answers than Academic for the same band.

Writing and Speaking: criteria and averages

Writing and Speaking are rated by trained examiners against public band descriptors. Each has four criteria, weighted equally.

For Writing, the double weighting means the band is based on (Task 1 + 2 × Task 2) ÷ 3. A Task 1 of 6.0 and a Task 2 of 6.5 give 6.33, which Bandwise reports as 6.0.

The criteria are described band by band in the Writing guide and the Speaking guide.

The overall band and its rounding rule

This part is published precisely. The overall band is the mean of the four skill bands, rounded to the nearest half band. Two cases sit exactly halfway, and IELTS rounds both of them up:

• a mean ending in .25 is rounded up to the next half band
• a mean ending in .75 is rounded up to the next whole band

Everything else goes to the nearest half band, which can be down: a mean of 6.125 becomes 6.0, and a mean of 6.625 becomes 6.5.

Remember that many organisations also set a minimum for each skill. An overall 7.0 with 5.5 in Writing does not meet “7.0 with no band below 6.5”.

IELTS bands and the CEFR

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) describes language ability in six levels, from A1 to C2. Visa rules and universities often quote it. IELTS publishes an approximate mapping and is open that its bands have never lined up exactly with the boundaries between CEFR levels.

Why half a band between two tests is normal

No test measures perfectly. If you sat two versions of IELTS on the same day, your results would probably not be identical. IELTS publishes figures for this. The standard error of measurement is, roughly, the typical distance between the score you get and the score that reflects your true level.

What this means for your practice:

• For a single Listening or Reading paper, the error is a little under half a band. Scoring 6.5 on one practice test and 6.0 on the next does not show that you got worse. It is within the normal noise of the measurement, and in the middle of the scale half a band is often only three or four marks.
• The overall band is much more stable than any single skill, because errors in four papers partly cancel out.
• These figures describe the official test. Practice tests vary more, and automated estimates of Writing and Speaking are less precise than trained examiners. That is a limit of any practice platform, including this one, and it is why Bandwise shows a range and not just a single number.

Typical score requirements

Requirements change, and the only reliable source is the organisation itself. The figures below were checked in September 2026 and show the kind of score each purpose demands.

Universities set their own scores for each course, often with a minimum in each skill. Two published examples: the University of Toronto asks undergraduate applicants for 6.5 overall with no band below 6.0, and MIT sets a minimum of 7 and recommends 7.5 for first-year applicants. Many courses fall between 6.0 and 7.0 overall.

How long improvement takes

IELTS does not publish a number of study hours needed for each band. An ielts.org article cites two studies in which students took, on average, about three months to improve by up to half a band. Both studies followed students on intensive, full-time courses, and the variation was large: some students gained a full band and some did not improve at all. The biggest gains came from students who started below band 5.5, studied more than 23 hours a week, and were highly motivated.

The often-repeated figure of “200 hours per band” is not from IELTS. It is an extrapolation from Cambridge’s estimate of guided learning hours for each CEFR level, so treat it as a rough rule of thumb.

The pattern is consistent. In Academic, Writing is the lowest skill and Speaking the second lowest. In General Training, Reading is the lowest, followed by Writing. If your own Writing band trails your other skills, you are in the majority, and it is usually the best place to invest your study time.