IELTS Band Scores: Conversion Tables and How the Overall Band Score Is Calculated

Your IELTS result is a band score from 0 to 9 in steps of 0.5 for each of the four sections — Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking — and an Overall band score.

Listening: raw score conversion

You receive 1 mark for each correct answer, with a maximum of 40. Indicative conversion table:

Reading Academic: raw score conversion

For Reading Academic, the officially published reference points are: 15 correct ≈ 5.0, 23 ≈ 6.0, 30 ≈ 7.0, 35 ≈ 8.0. The full table below is indicative:

Boundaries vary slightly from test to test: if a particular version is slightly more difficult, you need slightly fewer correct answers for the same band.

Writing and Speaking

These sections are assessed by an examiner against four criteria with equal weighting. In Writing, Task 2 carries twice the weight of Task 1. You can learn what each criterion means in our article IELTS Writing Assessment Criteria.

Overall band score

The Overall band score is the average of the four sections, rounded to the nearest 0.5 according to the rule:

• fractional part below .25 → round down to the whole band (6.125 → 6.0);
• from .25 to below .75 → round to .5 (6.25 → 6.5; 6.625 → 6.5);
• .75 and above → round up to the next whole band (6.75 → 7.0).

Examples:

Note the first two rows: half a band in Listening changes the Overall from 6.5 to 7.0. That is why every correct answer counts in the objective sections.

What the band scores mean

For how IELTS bands align with CEFR levels from A1 to C2, see IELTS and CEFR.

How to achieve a high band score

To get 8.0 in Listening and Reading, you can afford no more than four to five mistakes out of 40 questions. How to build that accuracy is explained in detail in the Listening guide and the Reading guide.

The easiest way to check your current level is to take a mock test: the platform automatically converts your raw answers into band scores and calculates your Overall band using the official rounding rules.