Free IELTS Speaking Checker — Instant Band Score

How it works

• 1. Get a real Part 2 cue card and record your answer (it transcribes as you speak).
• 2. Our examiner applies the official IELTS band descriptors.
• 3. Get your overall band + Fluency, Lexical, Grammar & Pronunciation sub-scores, targeted tips and a Band 9 model answer.

What the four criteria actually mean

Your Speaking band is the average of four criteria, each weighted equally — so a weakness in one costs you a quarter of the section, and the checker's breakdown is more useful than the single number above it. Understanding what each one rewards is what lets you act on the feedback rather than just read it.

• Fluency and Coherence. Whether you can keep going at a natural pace and be followed. Speed is not the measure — long silences, repeated self-correction and abandoned sentences cost more than speaking slowly and clearly. Extending answers with a reason and an example is the single highest-value habit here, especially in Part 1 where short answers are the common failure.
• Lexical Resource. Range and precision, including idiomatic language used naturally. Rehearsed idioms inserted regardless of context are penalised rather than rewarded; being able to paraphrase when you cannot recall a word is worth more than the word itself.
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Same trade-off as Writing. A mix of structures used accurately scores above complex attempts that collapse mid-sentence, and above safe simple sentences throughout.
• Pronunciation. Whether you are understood without strain — individual sounds, but also stress, rhythm and intonation. An accent is not penalised and never has been. What is assessed is intelligibility, and sentence stress usually affects that more than individual sounds do.

How to use this tool so it actually moves your band. Record a full two-minute Part 2 answer from a cue card, in one take, without stopping to restart. The restarts are where the fluency marks go, so a polished third attempt hides exactly the thing you need to see. Then look at your lowest criterion and re-record the same cue card targeting only that one.

What an estimate can and cannot do. This gives you a calibrated estimate against the published criteria, and it is genuinely useful for finding your weakest criterion and tracking whether it is improving. It is not the official band. A real examiner marks live under exam conditions, and borderline cases in particular can land either side. Use it to direct your practice and to know when you are consistently clearing your target — not as a prediction to plan a test date around on its own.

Pair it with full papers: 181 free IELTS practice tests covering 3,850 questions are on this site, counted from the test files rather than estimated. Take a full timed IELTS mock →