New Scored against the 2026 band descriptors

Get ready for IELTS writing in 7 days

Paste your essay, get a band score in nine seconds, and see the exact sentences holding you back. No tutor, no waiting, no guessing.

  • Know your band score before the examiner does
  • See every fix rewritten for you, not just flagged
  • Walk into exam day knowing your weak spot is closed
Score my essay free No card for your first essay. 7 day money back after that.
MA TN SR LK JD
★★★★★
47,721 students scored an essay this year
Task 2 · Opinion essay

Your essay

6.0
Band 6.0 · Competent Four grammar slips and limited range are capping this at 6. Fix them and this reads as a 7.
Task response6.5
Coherence7.0
Lexical resource5.5
Grammar6.0
Grammarmany peoples believemany people believe. Plural noun, no s.
Grammargood for reduceeffective at reducing. Gerund after a preposition.
Vocabularyvery goodhighly effective. Band 7 wants precision over intensifiers.
StructureYou promised two reasons then gave two one line sentences. Each body paragraph needs an example to reach 7.
Built on the public band descriptors used by Academic Task 1 General Task 1 Task 2 Band 5 to 9

The difference

Studying alone is why you keep scoring 6.5

You can write fifty essays. Without someone marking them against the real descriptors, you repeat the same four mistakes fifty times.

Without Bandly

  • You never find out which grammar errors the examiner would actually penalize
  • Your ideas are fine but the wording is muddy, and nobody tells you where
  • You reuse the same 400 words, so lexical resource stays stuck at 6
  • You run out of time in the real test because you never practiced to the clock
  • You pay a tutor $40 an hour and wait three days for one essay back

With Bandly

  • Every error is named, explained, and rewritten in the sentence it appeared in
  • A clarity pass shows you the version an examiner would score higher
  • Band 8 alternatives are generated from your own sentences, so you actually remember them
  • Timed practice mode mirrors the 40 minute Task 2 window
  • Unlimited essays, marked in nine seconds, for less than one tutor hour a month

How it works

Five things that move your band

Each one targets a specific criterion the examiner scores you on. Nothing here is decoration.

01

Feedback that names the sentence, not the category

Most checkers tell you "grammar needs work." Bandly quotes the clause, explains the rule in one line, and shows the corrected version so you can see the difference instead of decoding it.

  • Scored on all four official criteria
  • Strengths listed too, so you stop rewriting what already works
Marked essay 4 issues

In conclusion, I completely agree that governments must prioritise public transport. Such investment would ease congestion and, in the same time, cut urban emissions substantially.

02

A clear route from where you are to Band 7

Your dashboard tracks each criterion across every essay you submit. When lexical resource is the one holding you back, that is the only thing we ask you to work on this week.

  • Weakest criterion surfaced first
  • Progress chart across all your submissions
Your 30 day trend +1.0 band
Task response7.0
Coherence7.5
Lexical resource6.0
Grammar7.0

Focus this week: lexical resource. Three drills queued.

03

Vocabulary built from your own writing

Generic word lists do not stick. Bandly pulls the words you actually overuse and offers the Band 8 alternative in the context you wrote it, which is the only way it survives to exam day.

  • Collocations, not isolated synonyms
  • Saved to a personal deck you can review
Upgrade these Band 8
big problem → pressing issue a lot of → a substantial number of good for → conducive to think → contend bad effect → detrimental impact nowadays → in recent decades

04

Ideas for the topics you freeze on

Blank page panic costs more bands than grammar does. Enter any prompt and get two arguments per side with supporting examples, so you spend your 40 minutes writing rather than staring.

  • Works on your own custom prompts
  • 1,400 recent exam topics indexed
Idea generator Task 2
Some believe university should be free for everyone. Discuss both views.Prompt reported 12 times this month
Agree: widens access for low income students, raises national skill level.Example: Germany abolished tuition in 2014 and enrolment rose 22 percent
Disagree: shifts cost to taxpayers who never attend, dilutes course quality.Example: rising per student funding gaps in publicly funded systems

05

The rest of the exam, included

Writing is the section most people lose points on, but it is not the only one. Every plan comes with the speaking course, the full test simulator, and the vocabulary handbook at no extra cost.

  • No upsell, no separate checkout
Included with every plan Free
🎙️Speaking coursePart 1 to 3, with model answers
⏱️Full test simulatorTimed, exam interface, instant marking
📘Vocabulary essentialsThe 900 words that appear most
47,721students scored this year
9saverage time to a full report
+1.2average band gain in 30 days
4.8/5from 3,100 reviews

Results

What happens after two weeks

Scores below are self reported by students who sent us their result slip.

★★★★★

I sat the test three times and stayed at 6.5 every time. Two weeks of marked essays showed me I was writing the same conclusion structure that capped my task response. Got 7.5.

MAMariam A.Cairo · Academic7.5
★★★★★

The rewritten sentences are what made it click. Seeing my own bad sentence next to the fixed one taught me more than a month of grammar videos.

TNThanh N.Hanoi · General7.0
★★★★★

My tutor cost 45 dollars an hour and gave me one essay back per week. This gave me twelve in a weekend for the price of a coffee.

SRSofia R.Bogota · Academic8.0
★★★★★

Lexical resource was the thing dragging me down and I had no idea. The dashboard put it in red on day one. Everything else I was already doing fine.

LKLukas K.Warsaw · Academic7.5
★★★★★

The predicted band was within half a point of my real result. That alone was worth it, because I stopped booking the test hoping for the best.

JDJibril D.Lagos · General7.0
★★★★★

I needed 7 in each band for my visa and writing was the only one missing. Six days, eleven essays, and it was done.

PKPriya K.Chennai · General7.0
★★★★★

Timed mode is underrated. I always ran out of time on Task 2 and never practiced with a clock until this made me.

EOEkin O.Istanbul · Academic8.0
★★★★★

English is my third language and most feedback tools were too vague to act on. This one told me exactly which article rule I keep breaking.

AMAndrei M.Bucharest · Academic7.5
★★★★★

Went from 6.0 to 7.5 in a month. The part that changed things was the idea generator, because my problem was never grammar, it was having nothing to say.

FAFatima A.Karachi · Academic7.5
★★★★★

I bought the yearly plan on a Tuesday and had my Band 8 result the following month. Cheapest thing in my whole application.

HWHao W.Chengdu · Academic8.0

Pricing

One price, everything included

Unlimited essays on every plan. No credits, no per essay fees, no upsell at checkout.

Weekly

$7.99/ week

Best if your test is this month

Start weekly
  • Unlimited essay submissions
  • Instant band score, all four criteria
  • Sentence level corrections
  • Speaking course, simulator, handbook
Most popular

Monthly

$14.99/ month

Two weeks of prep is the sweet spot

Start monthly
  • Everything in weekly
  • Progress dashboard across all essays
  • Personal vocabulary deck
  • Idea generator on custom prompts
  • Timed exam simulation

Yearly

$29.99/ year

$37.49 billed once, save 20%

Start yearly
  • Everything in monthly
  • Covers a retake if you need one
  • All future features included
  • Price locked for the full year
100%
BACK
Score higher or pay nothing

Submit at least five essays, follow the feedback, and if your practice band has not moved, email us within 7 days for a full refund. No form, no questions.

Questions

Everything students ask before signing up

Can I try it before I pay?

Yes. Your first essay is scored in full with no card required, including the band breakdown and every correction. You only pay when you want to submit more.

How accurate is the band score?

The model is calibrated on thousands of essays with known official results, scored against the published band descriptors. In our validation set it lands within half a band of the official result on most essays. Treat it as a reliable practice signal, not a guarantee of your exam day score.

Which task types do you support?

Task 2 for both Academic and General, Academic Task 1 including charts, tables, maps and processes, and General Task 1 letters across all three registers.

Is there a limit on how many essays I can submit?

No. Every plan is unlimited. Students who improve the most usually submit between eight and fifteen essays over two weeks.

Can I use my own topic?

Yes. Paste any prompt, including one from a book or a past paper, and the essay is marked against it. You can also pull from our library of 1,400 recently reported topics.

Does this actually improve my writing, or just correct it?

Both. Every correction comes with the rule behind it and the rewritten version, and your dashboard tracks which criterion is holding you back so each week has one clear focus rather than a general instruction to write more.

How is this different from a normal grammar checker?

A grammar checker fixes errors. It has no idea what a Band 7 essay looks like, so it will happily approve a grammatically perfect essay that scores 5.5 for underdeveloped ideas. Bandly marks structure, argument development, cohesion and range, which is where most of your lost points are.

Do I need to install anything?

No. It runs in the browser on phone, tablet and laptop. Most students draft on paper, type it in, and read the feedback on their phone.

How do refunds work?

Email us within 7 days of purchase and we refund in full, usually the same day. You keep any feedback reports you already generated.

Are you affiliated with the official test providers?

No. Bandly is an independent study tool built on the publicly available band descriptors. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Cambridge, the British Council, or IDP Education.

Your first essay is scored in nine seconds

Find out what band you are actually writing at, and exactly which four sentences are keeping you there.

Score my essay free No card required · 47,721 students this year · Full refund within 7 days