Drag the slider to convert a raw score out of 40 into an IELTS band for Listening or Reading — and see exactly how many more questions stand between you and your target.
no email, no paywall — just the numbers
The question most students really want answered. These are the raw scores where each band begins — change the section above and these update with it.
Highlighted rows are the official anchor bands. Each row shows the raw-score range that lands on that band.
Unlike the tables above, the overall rule is officially fixed. Average your four skill bands, then round to the nearest half band. Ties round up.
Listening 6.5 · Reading 6.5 · Writing 5.0 · Speaking 7.0
average 6.25 → overall band 6.5
Listening 4.0 · Reading 3.5 · Writing 4.0 · Speaking 4.0
average 3.875 → overall band 4.0
Listening 6.5 · Reading 6.5 · Writing 5.5 · Speaking 6.0
average 6.125 → overall band 6.0This is why one weak skill drags everything down: a 5.0 in Writing costs you half a band overall even when the other three sit at 6.5–7.0. It is usually faster to lift your weakest section than to polish your strongest.
Honest answer: close, but not official to the mark. The IELTS Partners do not publish a fixed row-by-row raw-score table, and the real boundaries shift by about one question between test versions. The band 5, 6, 7 and 8 anchor marks are fixed, and so is the overall rounding rule above. Treat a result here as an accurate estimate — if you are one mark from a boundary, you are genuinely on the edge, not safely across it. Any site presenting these rows as exact official boundaries is overstating what exists.
Yes. Listening uses a single conversion table for both. Reading does not — General Training Reading is markedly harsher at the top, needing 34/40 for band 7 where Academic needs 30/40.
Because the boundaries genuinely move by around one mark between test versions, so different published tables disagree at the edges. Anyone showing a single exact table is picking one version and presenting it as universal.
Yes. Listening and Reading produce half bands directly from the raw score. Writing and Speaking are marked against band descriptors by criterion, then averaged.
It depends entirely on where you are applying. Band 6.0–6.5 covers a great many undergraduate courses, 7.0 is a frequent postgraduate requirement, and 7.5–8.0 shows up for competitive programmes and professional registration. Check the specific requirement before setting a target — aiming a whole band higher than you need costs weeks.
Timed, full-length practice under exam conditions, then reviewing every wrong answer to find the pattern behind it. Most students lose marks to a repeating habit — skimming past negatives, mishearing plurals, running out of time on the last passage — rather than to vocabulary. You can practise IELTS free with timed mock tests and get a band estimate the moment you finish.
The same tables as JSON, so you can import them instead of retyping a screenshot.
one table, both exam typesAcademic onlyGeneral Training onlythe official ruleconst { thresholds } = await (await fetch('data/reading-academic.json')).json();
// thresholds are ordered high → low, so first match wins
const rawToBand = (raw) => thresholds.find((t) => raw >= t.rawMin)?.band ?? null;
rawToBand(30); // 7The gap between your score today and your target closes with timed practice and honest feedback — not with another conversion table.
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