Free IELTS Writing Checker — Instant Band Score

How it works

• 1. Pick Task 1 or Task 2 and paste your answer.
• 2. Our examiner applies the official IELTS band descriptors.
• 3. Get your overall band + Task Response, Coherence, Lexical Resource & Grammar sub-scores, key corrections and a Band 9 rewrite.

What the four criteria actually mean

Your Writing 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.

• Task Response / Task Achievement. Whether you actually answered the question that was asked — every part of it, with a clear position held consistently and supported. This is where most confident writers lose the band: a fluent essay that drifts off the prompt, answers only half a two-part question, or never commits to a position is capped here regardless of how good the English is.
• Coherence and Cohesion. Whether the reader can follow your argument without effort — paragraphing that groups one idea each, and linking that reflects real logical relationships. Cohesive devices are marked on whether they are used accurately, not on how many appear; a paragraph strung together with 'moreover', 'furthermore' and 'in addition' where no addition is happening scores lower than plain sentences that connect properly.
• Lexical Resource. Range and precision of vocabulary, including collocation and word formation. Precision outranks rarity: a common word used exactly is worth more than an unusual one used approximately, and memorised 'high-level' phrasing dropped into the wrong context is visible to examiners and costs marks.
• Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Both halves matter and they trade off. Only simple sentences caps your range; complex sentences riddled with errors caps your accuracy. The band comes from how much of your writing is error-free, so controlled complexity beats ambitious structures you cannot land.

How to use this tool so it actually moves your band. Write the answer under real conditions first — 40 minutes for Task 2, 20 for Task 1, no dictionary and no pausing to look things up. Feedback on an essay you took two hours over describes a person who will not be sitting the exam. Then read the criterion breakdown before the band, find your lowest one, and rewrite the same answer targeting only that criterion. Re-checking the same piece twice teaches you far more than checking four different essays once.

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 →