Every common question test-takers ask about the TOEFL — the 2026 format, scoring, registration, each section, and how it compares to IELTS — answered directly, in one place. For a deeper dive on any topic, each answer links to our full guide.
January 21, 2026. ETS rolled out a new 1.0–6.0 scoring scale, adaptive Reading and Listening, and entirely restructured Writing and Speaking sections on that date.
Full guide to the 2026 formatFour things, designed together as one overhaul:
The four sections' combined item-response time is about 90 minutes (Reading 30, Listening 29, Writing 23, Speaking 8). ETS advises allowing roughly 2 hours total for the full appointment, including directions and the tutorial.
Not straightforwardly — it's shorter and each task is more tightly scoped, which reduces fatigue. But the adaptive structure on Reading and Listening adds a new kind of pressure: strong early accuracy now affects the difficulty ceiling you can reach, which wasn't a factor before.
Only partially. Several current task types (Build a Sentence, Write an Email, Listen and Repeat, Take an Interview) didn't exist before January 2026, and the old Integrated Writing and Independent/Integrated Speaking tasks no longer exist at all. Confirm any resource has been specifically updated for the current format.
Yes. The format, timing, task types, and scoring are identical worldwide, at every authorized test center and for TOEFL Home Edition, with no region using a legacy version.
ETS cited two consistent pieces of feedback: the old format's length was a barrier for some test-takers, and its 0–120 scale wasn't as intuitive to compare internationally as a CEFR-aligned scale would be. Adaptive testing also let ETS shorten the test without losing measurement precision.
Yes, several times: the iBT launched in 2005, was shortened from about 3.5 to 3 hours in 2019, and had its essay-writing task replaced with the Academic Discussion format in 2023. The January 2026 overhaul is the most significant change since the iBT's original launch.
Take a free full-length diagnostic test to see your real starting band, then read the dedicated guide for whichever section scored weakest, and build a study plan around your specific gaps rather than studying every section equally.
Take a free diagnostic test1.0 to 6.0, in 0.5-point increments, on each of the four sections. This replaced the old 0–120 point scale entirely.
What counts as a good scoreYour overall band is the average of your four section bands (Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking), rounded to the nearest 0.5. This is a genuine change from the old system, which summed four section scores out of 30 each instead of averaging them.
Calculate your bandYes, for now. Every score report shows both the new 1.0–6.0 band and the equivalent legacy 0–120 score through a dual-reporting period ending December 2028, giving universities time to fully update their published requirements.
Each band aligns directly with a CEFR level:
A 4.0 is generally competitive for standard undergraduate admission, 4.5 meets most top-100 university requirements, 5.0 meets most top-50 requirements, and 5.5+ is the typical bar for Ivy League and Oxbridge-tier programs. There's no universal passing score — it's whatever your target program's published minimum is.
Not for your overall average — a strong section can offset a weak one mathematically. But many universities publish separate section-level minimums alongside their overall requirement specifically to catch this kind of imbalance, so check both numbers for your target programs.
Up, to 5.0. TOEFL rounds to the nearest 0.5, and a 4.75 average rounds up while a 4.74 average rounds down to 4.5 — that half-point boundary is why small gains in your weakest section can matter more than they seem.
A legacy score of 90 falls in the 87–94 range, which corresponds to a 4.0 band on the new scale — a good score that meets the minimum for most standard undergraduate programs.
Each individual question or task item is scored, and those item scores are combined into a section band on the 1.0–6.0 scale. Reading and Listening also factor in question difficulty, since both sections are adaptive.
Most have converted their published minimums, but during the 2026–2028 transition period some admissions pages may still list only the legacy 0–120 figure. When in doubt, confirm which scale a program is currently using internally.
Roughly $173 to $475 depending on your country, with most regions falling between about $195 and $275. Extra score reports, late registration, and rescheduling cost extra on top of the base fee.
Full cost breakdown by regionDirectly through the official ETS website: create an account with a government-issued photo ID that matches your name exactly, search for an available date and format (test center or Home Edition), select your score recipients, and pay the fee.
Most major test centers run sessions multiple times a week, and TOEFL Home Edition is available nearly every day. Availability tightens considerably around peak application season, so book earlier if your window overlaps with it.
Typically about 6 days from your test date, delivered to your ETS account and any institutions you selected as score recipients.
Two years from your test date, unchanged by the 2026 format update. Time your first attempt around your latest realistic application deadline, not your earliest one.
Yes, through your ETS account. Rescheduling further in advance of your original date typically carries a smaller fee than a last-minute change, and is cheaper than paying for an entirely new registration.
A valid, government-issued photo ID that exactly matches the name on your registration — a passport is the most universally accepted option. Check your specific country's accepted ID list on the official ETS site beforehand.
In some countries and through specific outreach or scholarship programs, yes, but eligibility and availability vary significantly. Check the official ETS site's current fee-reduction programs and your target universities' international admissions offices directly.
At least six to eight weeks before your actual application deadline, accounting for score delivery time and a buffer for a possible retake — earlier still if your test window falls during peak application season.
Both use identical content, timing, and scoring — the difference is entirely where and how you take it. A test center is a physical, staffed location; Home Edition is taken on your own computer with live remote proctoring.
Full comparison guideNo. The official score report doesn't indicate which format you tested under, so virtually every institution that accepts TOEFL accepts a Home Edition score identically to a test center score.
A Windows or Mac desktop or laptop meeting ETS's minimum OS version (tablets and Chromebooks aren't supported), a working webcam and microphone, a stable internet connection, and a private room with a door that closes.
Yes. A live human proctor monitors your webcam and screen for the entire session, verifies your ID digitally, and scans your room via webcam before you begin — this is meaningfully stricter monitoring than many test-takers expect.
They can be elsewhere in the house, but your testing room must be private with a closable door, and no one may enter or interrupt the session at any point once it begins — even briefly and without speaking.
The session pauses and the proctor attempts to help you reconnect. A genuine technical failure is generally eligible for a free reschedule, though you'll need to contact ETS support to document what happened.
No, the official registration fee is identical either way. The real cost difference is indirect — test centers may involve travel costs, while Home Edition occasionally requires equipment upgrades to meet technical requirements.
Choose Home Edition if you can guarantee a quiet, private, technically reliable setup and value scheduling flexibility. Choose a test center if you'd rather have someone else handle the technical setup or aren't confident your home environment can stay interruption-free for the full session.
Three: Complete the Words, Read in Daily Life, and Read an Academic Passage, delivered across an adaptive router-and-module structure in about 30 minutes total.
Full Reading section guide50 total items across all three task types, per ETS's published breakdown, completed in about 30 minutes.
Yes. Your performance on Complete the Words helps determine the difficulty of the Read an Academic Passage module you see afterward, so two test-takers can see genuinely different content.
You're shown a short academic paragraph with about ten words missing several letters each, and you type the missing letters to complete each word from context and spelling patterns. It also functions as the section's adaptive router.
Not primarily. Academic word-family recognition and context-based inference strategies matter more, since many questions are specifically designed to be answerable from context even without knowing the exact word.
Reading the entire academic passage top to bottom before looking at any question. A 20–30 second structural skim followed by targeted, question-driven reading is consistently faster and just as accurate.
Natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, written at a level comparable to an introductory university textbook. No specialized outside knowledge of the topic is required to answer correctly.
Four: Listen and Choose a Response, Listen to a Conversation, Listen to an Announcement, and Listen to an Academic Talk, delivered through two adaptive modules in about 29 minutes total.
Full Listening section guide47 total items across all four task types, completed in about 29 minutes of base testing time.
No. Every recording plays exactly once, with no option to replay before you answer the related questions — this is central to what the section is designed to measure.
Yes, delivered through two adaptive modules, so the specific difficulty of recordings you hear can vary based on your performance earlier in the section.
Capture structure first — main idea, organization, speaker changes — and specific details second, using consistent shorthand. Over-detailed notes on one part of a recording often cause you to fall behind on the rest.
Reading skill doesn't automatically transfer to real-time audio comprehension. Listening rewards natural exposure to spoken English and single-listen processing speed, which many strong readers haven't specifically trained.
Primarily standard American English, though other native English accents may appear depending on the recording — TOEFL doesn't deliberately rotate through a wide range of regional accents the way some other tests do.
Build a Sentence (arranging scrambled words), Write an Email (a 100–120 word real-world response), and Write for an Academic Discussion (a structured position response in a class discussion thread) — completed in about 23 minutes across 12 items.
Full Writing section guideNo. The old Integrated Writing task, which asked test-takers to summarize a reading passage and a lecture together, was removed entirely in the January 2026 update and replaced with Build a Sentence and Write an Email.
100 to 120 words — enough to address all three required bullet points with some detail, but short enough to finish within the roughly 7-minute time limit.
Each of the 12 items is scored, contributing to an overall Writing band on the 1.0–6.0 scale, based on task completion, organization, grammatical accuracy, vocabulary, and — for Email and Academic Discussion — appropriate tone for the context.
Not strictly required, but referencing at least one classmate's post — agreeing, disagreeing, or building on it — signals genuine engagement and typically strengthens your response compared to writing in isolation.
Subject-verb agreement, article usage (a/an/the), verb tense consistency, run-on sentences, and incorrect preposition choice in fixed phrases account for a disproportionate share of point loss across all three tasks.
About 40 seconds per sentence — 10 sentences in roughly 7 minutes. The task rewards fast, confident grammar instincts over careful deliberation.
Be careful — a grammatically perfect response that misses the expected tone or doesn't genuinely engage with the specific prompt scores lower than a less polished response that gets the register right. Templates supply structure but can't adapt tone to a scenario they weren't written for.
Two: Listen and Repeat (repeat 7 short sentences exactly as heard) and Take an Interview (answer 4 spontaneous questions, 45 seconds each) — 11 items total in about 8 minutes.
Full Speaking section guide45 seconds per question, with no preparation time beforehand, across 4 questions total.
Each of the 11 items is scored 0–5. The 7 Listen and Repeat scores average into one task score, the 4 Interview scores average into another, and those two task scores average together into your final Speaking band.
Not directly. TOEFL scores pronunciation on clarity and intelligibility, not on matching a native-speaker accent — a strong non-native accent that's easy to understand can score well.
Memorizing full responses is risky, since graders are trained to recognize answers that don't genuinely fit the question asked. Memorizing flexible structures and transition phrases is safer and more effective.
No. Each sentence plays exactly once, with no option to replay before you repeat it back — this is central to what the task measures.
Your response is simply cut off and the test moves on. This is why organizing your answer around a clear structure — rather than trying to cram in as much as possible — matters more than speaking as fast as possible.
Familiar, everyday territory that doesn't require specialized knowledge: study habits, daily routines, travel, technology use, campus life, and personal preferences and opinions.
Roughly 5,000–6,000 words for a competitive score, combining general vocabulary with academic vocabulary specific to test content.
Full vocabulary guideA set of 570 word families, developed by researcher Averil Coxhead, that appear frequently across academic texts from a wide range of disciplines. It's organized into 10 sublists by frequency and maps closely onto TOEFL's academic content.
No. Reading and Listening require recognition of a wider range (roughly AWL sublists 1–6), while Writing and Speaking require confident production of a smaller, more manageable set (roughly sublists 1–3).
Often yes, for half a band to a full band of improvement, if you're within about one band of your target with specific, fixable weak areas. If you're two or more bands below target with broad fundamental gaps, a longer plan is more effective.
2-week study planFor most students with an existing working level of English, yes — comfortably enough to move up a full band or more, with real time to build vocabulary and drill two weak sections in depth.
1-month study planNo. Take a diagnostic test first, then weight your practice toward your weakest sections specifically — concentrated practice on identified weak points consistently outperforms even coverage spread across all four sections.
Two to three is a good target: one as an initial diagnostic, and one or two more in your final week of prep to build pacing and stamina, each followed by thorough review of your mistakes.
Light review only — skim your notes and vocabulary, confirm your test-day logistics, and prioritize a full night's sleep. Avoid new material or intense cramming, which tends to produce fatigue rather than meaningful improvement at that point.
Most undergraduate programs require around band 4.0, graduate programs 4.5, and highly selective research universities 5.0 or higher. There's no separate TOEFL threshold for the F-1 visa itself.
Full country-by-country breakdownTOEFL is not on UK Visas and Immigration's Secure English Language Test (SELT) list, which certain visa categories require. Many UK universities accept TOEFL for admission, but check your specific visa route separately.
Most Canadian universities accept TOEFL for admission, but some immigration pathways — including certain post-graduation work permits and permanent residency routes — specifically require IELTS General Training or CELPIP instead.
Yes. TOEFL iBT is an approved English test for most Australian student visa subclasses, alongside IELTS and PTE Academic.
No. Requirements vary by country, university, and degree level, and visa requirements can differ from university admission requirements within the same country — always check your specific program's admissions page.
Often, yes. Many merit-based and government-funded scholarships set their own TOEFL threshold, sometimes higher than the host university's general admission minimum — check this separately.
Pathway and foundation-year programs typically accept lower scores than direct entry, often starting around band 3.0, in exchange for an additional preparatory year of academic English study.
Generally not by much — doctoral programs often match master's-level requirements or set them slightly higher, particularly for teaching-assistantship-funded positions, which frequently carry a separate, higher Speaking minimum.
Take TOEFL if your target universities are primarily in the US, you prefer a fully computer-based test, or you want the shorter ~2-hour format. Take IELTS if your targets are primarily UK, Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, a visa pathway specifically requires it, or you prefer a live examiner over a microphone.
Full TOEFL vs IELTS comparisonNeither — both are calibrated to the same CEFR proficiency levels. Which one feels easier depends on your personal strengths, like typing speed and comfort speaking to a microphone versus a live examiner.
TOEFL 100 (legacy 0–120 scale) falls in the 95–102 range, corresponding to a TOEFL band of 4.5 and an approximate IELTS score of 7.0. This is an institution-published estimate, not an official conversion.
Convert your scoreTOEFL Speaking is recorded and evaluated by a combination of AI and human raters. IELTS Speaking is a live, roughly 11–14 minute face-to-face interview with a human examiner.
TOEFL, at about 2 hours since the January 2026 update, versus IELTS's roughly 2 hours 45 minutes.
Yes — some students do, usually because their application list splits between US programs (which lean TOEFL) and UK/Australian programs (which lean IELTS). If budget or time is limited, it's usually better to prepare seriously for one test than split effort across two.
A fully computer-based English test, similar in format to TOEFL, widely accepted in Australia, the UK, and a growing number of US institutions, known for fast turnaround (often within 48 hours).
A roughly one-hour, fully adaptive test you can take from home on your own schedule, at a fraction of TOEFL or IELTS's cost. It's accepted by thousands of institutions, but coverage is uneven — always confirm your specific target program accepts it.
There's no limit, but ETS requires a minimum three-day gap between attempts, and the full registration fee applies each time.
A feature that combines your best section scores across multiple test dates within a two-year window into a single super-scored report. Most institutions accept this, but confirm with your specific target programs first.
Often worthwhile, but only if you can identify specifically what held your score back the first time — retaking without changing your preparation tends to produce a similar result.
As a planning rule of thumb, most students need 30 to 60 hours of focused, deliberate practice — but where those hours go matters more than the total count. Moving from a lower band is usually a vocabulary problem; moving past 5.0 usually comes from detailed error analysis of your own responses.
Yes, at both test centers and for Home Edition, including extended time and additional breaks. Requests go through a separate application process requiring documentation, and should be submitted well before your intended test date.
Yes, through your ETS account, though adding recipients after the fact typically costs an additional per-recipient fee compared to selecting them for free at registration.
A Windows or Mac desktop or laptop meeting ETS's published minimum OS version — tablets and Chromebooks aren't supported.
Skipping full-length, fully-timed practice tests. Isolated section drills build skills, but only full-length practice under real conditions builds the stamina and pacing instincts the actual test requires.
TOEFL primarily uses American English vocabulary and spelling conventions, consistent with its origin as a US-developed test, though this rarely causes real confusion since most academic vocabulary is shared across English varieties.
There's no announced timeline for another major overhaul. Based on the test's history, significant format changes have come years apart, though minor refinements can happen more frequently.
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