IELTS vs TOEFL vs PTE vs Duolingo: Which One in 2026?

Almost every Indian applicant books an English test the way they book a train ticket: whichever one a coaching centre, a senior or a consultant put in front of them. Then one of three things happens. The score comes back fine and nobody ever questions it. Or a university on the shortlist does not accept that test and the whole thing is repeated at full price. Or, worse, the score clears admission and then fails at the visa stage, weeks before an intake, when there is no time left to sit another test.

The four tests Indian students actually choose between are IELTS Academic, TOEFL iBT, PTE Academic and the Duolingo English Test. They are not interchangeable, they are not priced the way people assume, and one of them changed its entire score scale in January 2026. This page compares them on what matters: who accepts them, what they cost in India, how fast they return a score, and where each one quietly fails.

Two gates, not one

There is no such thing as “the English requirement for studying abroad”. There are at least two separate requirements and they are set by different organisations with different rules.

The university gate is set by the admissions office, department by department in many cases. It decides which tests it will read and what minimum it wants. Some universities accept four tests, some accept two.

The visa gate is set by the immigration department of the country. It decides which tests are legally valid evidence for a visa application, which can be a much shorter list than the university’s.

For a large number of Indian applicants there is a third gate that nobody warns them about: the funding gate. If you plan to pay for an American master’s with a teaching assistantship, the university may accept one test for admission and refuse the same test when it appoints teaching assistants. The University of Illinois Graduate College accepts the Duolingo English Test for admission, then states plainly that it cannot be used to satisfy the English requirement for teaching assistants. A student who used Duolingo has to sit TOEFL or IELTS later, or take the campus English Proficiency Interview after arriving.

So the order of operations is not “book a test, then apply”. It is: finish your shortlist, open each university’s international admissions page, write down which tests it names, check your destination’s visa rules, and only then book. Our guide on how to shortlist universities for an MS abroad covers the first step, and it is the step that saves the money here.

What the four tests cost in India

This is where the common assumption breaks. TOEFL has a reputation in India as the expensive American test. It is not. ETS prices TOEFL iBT by country, and India is one of the cheapest markets in the world for it.

Test	Fee for an Indian test taker	Approx INR	Score turnaround
TOEFL iBT	USD 173	about 16,600	a few days after the test
PTE Academic	₹18,000 (15,254 plus 18% GST)	18,000	typically within days
IELTS Academic	₹19,000	19,000	1 to 13 days by format
IELTS for UKVI	₹19,250	19,250	same as IELTS Academic
IELTS One Skill Retake	₹12,650	12,650	one section only
Duolingo English Test	cheapest of the four by a wide margin, shown at checkout	lowest	results in 2 days

Read that table again. The gap between TOEFL iBT and IELTS Academic for an Indian test taker is roughly ₹2,400, in TOEFL’s favour. IELTS for UKVI, the version the UK visa system needs when it needs a test, costs ₹19,250, and that surcharge buys you nothing at a university that would have taken plain IELTS Academic.

The IELTS One Skill Retake is the genuinely useful pricing quirk. If you land 6.5 overall but 5.5 in writing and your university wants 6.0 in every band, you can resit that one section for ₹12,650 rather than pay ₹19,000 again. But check first whether your university will read it, because not all of them do. Purdue’s graduate school states that it does not accept the One Skill Retake.

Duolingo is in a different price bracket entirely, and that is the whole reason it is tempting. It is taken at home, the scored part runs 45 minutes inside a roughly one hour process, and results arrive in two days. Duolingo says more than 6,500 institutions accept it. Six and a half thousand sounds like everyone. It is not everyone, and the ones missing from that list are often the ones an Indian MS applicant is aiming at.

The TOEFL score scale changed in January 2026

If you sit TOEFL iBT now, you are being scored on a scale that did not exist two years ago, and a lot of the advice you will read online has not caught up.

From 21 January 2026, TOEFL iBT reports scores from 1 to 6 in increments of 0.5. Your overall score is the average of your four section scores, rounded to the nearest half band. Under the old system the overall score was the sum of the four sections out of 120. A section score of 5 aligns with CEFR level C1.

ETS knows this creates confusion, so for two years every score report carries three things: your CEFR level, your 1 to 6 overall and section scores, and a comparable score on the old 0 to 120 scale. After January 2028 only the 1 to 6 scale is reported.

You can see universities working through the same transition. The University of Illinois Graduate College lists TOEFL iBT thresholds as 79 for limited status and 103 for full status for tests taken before 20 January 2026, and 4.0 and 5.0 for tests taken after. Purdue lists 80 before 21 January 2026 and 4.0 after. Cornell notes that its requirements change for exams taken from 21 January 2026.

Two practical consequences. First, when a blog, a forum answer or a coaching brochure tells you that “you need 100 in TOEFL”, ask which scale it means, because that number is now historical. Second, if you took TOEFL before the change and are applying now, you are inside the two year transition window and your report still shows the 0 to 120 figure, so it remains readable.

Which test each destination accepts

USA: the university decides, and some accept only two tests

There is no English test requirement in the US student visa process itself. The consular officer conducts the interview in English and forms a judgement, which is a different thing from a test score, and our page on F-1 visa interview questions deals with that separately. The test requirement is entirely the university’s.

The range is wider than most applicants expect. Three real examples, all from the universities’ own graduate admissions pages:

University	IELTS	TOEFL iBT	PTE	Duolingo
Cornell Graduate School	7.0 overall	accepted, section minimums	not accepted	not accepted
Illinois Graduate College	6.5 limited, 7.5 full	79 or 4.0 limited, 103 or 5.0 full	not listed	115 limited, 135 full, but not for teaching assistants
Purdue Graduate School	6.5, One Skill Retake not accepted	80 or 4.0, Home Edition accepted	not listed	115 with integrated subscores

Cornell’s Graduate School is blunt about it. It accepts IELTS Academic and TOEFL iBT, and says it does not accept any other English proficiency exams, naming TOEFL Essentials, Pearson and Duolingo DET as examples. So the cheapest test and the test most heavily advertised in India both fail at that door. Note also that IELTS 7.0 overall is a real bar, well above the 6.5 that most Indian applicants target.

Also watch which version of TOEFL a university will read. Purdue states that it does not accept TOEFL MyBest scores, and TUM in Germany accepts only the Test Date Score. MyBest, which stitches your best section scores across sittings, is a score type many universities refuse.

UK: the visa list is short and Duolingo is not on it

The UK has the clearest two gate structure of the four. At the visa level, if UK Visas and Immigration requires a test, it must be a Secure English Language Test from an approved provider. From outside the UK, the approved providers are PSI Services (UK) Ltd, the IELTS SELT Consortium, LANGUAGECERT and Pearson. TOEFL is not among them. Duolingo is not among them.

For a Student visa you need CEFR B2 if you are studying at degree level or above, and B1 below degree level.

Then comes the part that saves most Indian applicants the SELT fee. If you are studying at degree level or above with a Higher Education Provider, the provider can assess your English itself, and may ask you to do a different test. That is the doorway through which Duolingo and TOEFL enter British universities. It is also why a Duolingo score can be perfectly valid for a UK master’s and completely useless for a pre-sessional English course or a below degree level programme, where the SELT rule bites. Our guides on UK universities without IELTS and the UK student visa for Indian students go into the application mechanics.

Canada: the study permit asks for no test

This one causes more wasted money than any other misunderstanding on this page. The document list Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada publishes for a study permit contains a letter of acceptance, a provincial attestation letter, proof of identity, proof of funds, and conditionally a medical exam and police certificate. There is no language test on it.

The familiar figure, IELTS 6.0 with no band below 6.0, was the rule for the Student Direct Stream. The SDS and Nigeria Student Express ended on 8 November 2024 at 2pm Eastern, and applications since then are processed under the regular study permit stream. So that band requirement is not a Canadian visa rule any more. Your Canadian university will still have its own English requirement, and that is the one to satisfy. The Canada student visa guide has the current document list.

Australia: the strictest list, and a booking trap in TOEFL

Australia legislates which tests count. For tests taken on or after 7 August 2025, the Department of Home Affairs accepts Cambridge C1 Advanced, CELPIP General, IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training (including One Skill Retake), LANGUAGECERT Academic, the Michigan English Test, OET, PTE Academic and TOEFL iBT. The Duolingo English Test is not on that list.

The trap is inside TOEFL. Home Affairs states that to keep your TOEFL iBT result valid for Australian visa purposes you must select “Taking TOEFL for Australia” when you register. Results not registered under that pathway may not be accepted. That is a box on a booking screen, months before you apply, and getting it wrong means a valid score that the visa system will not read.

Tests taken on or before 6 August 2025 remain usable for visa purposes until 6 August 2028, depending on the visa. See the Australia student visa guide for the rest of the application.

Germany and the rest of Europe: PTE does well here

German universities set their own requirements and they tend to be more generous about test variety than American ones. TUM, to take a widely applied to example, accepts TOEFL iBT at 88 with Test Date Score only, IELTS Academic at 6.5, IELTS Online Academic at 6.5, PTE Academic at 65, PTE Academic Online at 65, and Cambridge CAE or CPE at grades A, B or C. Duolingo is not listed.

Germany is also where the no test route is most real. For some TUM master’s programmes, enough credits earned in English modules during your bachelor’s counts as proof, and for some programmes an English language bachelor’s thesis that has already been submitted and graded will do. If you did a BTech taught and examined in English, that is worth checking before you book anything. Start with Germany universities without IELTS and the Germany student visa guide.

The at-home versions that some gates reject

Every test provider now sells a version you can take from your bedroom. Universities have largely made peace with these. Visa departments have not.

Australia’s Department of Home Affairs does not accept evidence from English tests delivered completely online, also described as remote proctored or at-home. It names CELPIP Online, IELTS Online, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online, MET Digital taken at home, OET@Home and TOEFL iBT Home Edition as examples it will not accept.

Now put that beside the university side. Purdue’s graduate school accepts TOEFL iBT Home Edition. TUM accepts IELTS Online Academic and PTE Academic Online. So the exact same at-home sitting can be good enough for a university offer and worthless at an Australian visa desk. If Australia is anywhere on your shortlist, book a test centre sitting and pay the extra.

When you can skip the test, and when the exemption costs more

Indian applicants often hear that a degree taught in English removes the requirement. Sometimes it does, and it is worth checking, but the UK version of this exemption is a good lesson in reading the price before celebrating.

For a UK Student visa you can prove your English with a UK school qualification, a degree from a UK institution, or a degree from a non-UK institution that was taught in English. That last route, the one that applies to Indian graduates, requires an assessment from Ecctis, which issues a code confirming your qualification is equivalent to a UK bachelor’s or higher and was taught in English.

The Ecctis English Proficiency and Qualification Comparison service costs GBP 210 and Ecctis aims to deliver an outcome within 20 working days. Convert that and compare it with an IELTS booking at ₹19,000. The free sounding exemption is the more expensive option, and it is slower. It is the right choice if your English is genuinely rusty or you cannot sit a test in time. It is the wrong choice if you were going to score comfortably anyway.

Germany’s version is better value, because a university checking your English taught bachelor’s credits or your English thesis normally charges nothing for it. Same idea, very different bill.

Which test to pick, by situation

Your situation	Sensible default	Why
USA, self funded, broad shortlist	TOEFL iBT at a test centre	cheapest of the mainstream tests in India and accepted at the universities that accept only two
USA, hoping for a TA or RA	TOEFL iBT or IELTS Academic	Duolingo can be refused for assistantship eligibility
UK master’s at a university	whatever your provider names	the provider can assess English itself at degree level
UK pre-sessional or below degree level	IELTS for UKVI or another SELT	only approved SELT providers count
Canada	whatever your university names	no test on the study permit list
Australia	IELTS or PTE at a test centre	Duolingo and all at-home versions are excluded from the visa list
Germany or Europe	PTE Academic or IELTS, or your English taught degree	wide test acceptance and real exemptions
Mixed shortlist across countries	IELTS Academic at a test centre	the widest single overlap across both gates

If your shortlist crosses countries, the honest answer is that IELTS Academic taken at a test centre is the safest single purchase, even though it is not the cheapest. It is on Australia’s legislated list, it is a SELT for the UK when a SELT is needed, Cornell and Purdue and TUM all read it, and no gate on this page refuses it outright. You pay roughly ₹2,400 more than TOEFL for that coverage. If your shortlist is all American, TOEFL iBT is both cheaper and equally safe.

Faz's rule

Choose the test your gates accept, then look at the price. Never the other way round.

The most expensive English test is the second one. I have watched students take Duolingo in June because it was cheap and fast, get an offer, and then discover in September that the visa list for their country does not include it, or that their assistantship needs a different score. Two tests, two fees, and a panic in the middle of visa season. Write down every gate you have to pass, university and visa and funding, find the overlap, and book once. Even if that means paying ₹19,000 when ₹5,000 was on the table.

The honest closing take

The English test is one of the few parts of this whole process where you can get the right answer cheaply just by reading. Every fact on this page came from a government page or a university admissions page, not from an agent. Twenty minutes of that reading is worth more than any amount of argument about which test is easier, because the easier test is not a bargain if a gate you need refuses it.

And be careful with the numbers you inherit. TOEFL’s scale changed in January 2026. Canada’s test requirement disappeared in November 2024. Australia’s accepted list was rewritten in August 2025. A guide written a year ago is not just stale here, it is wrong.

FAQ

Where these figures come from

• UK Visas and Immigration, prove your English language abilities with a SELT
• GOV.UK, Student visa: knowledge of English
• Ecctis, English Proficiency and Qualification Comparison price and timeframe
• Australian Department of Home Affairs, English language visa requirements
• IRCC, documents you need for a study permit
• IRCC, end of the Student Direct Stream and Nigeria Student Express
• ETS, TOEFL iBT score scale update
• ETS, TOEFL iBT registration fees by country
• IDP IELTS India, IELTS test fees
• Pearson India, PTE Academic test fee
• Duolingo English Test, test format and turnaround
• Cornell Graduate School, English language proficiency requirement
• University of Illinois Graduate College, international applicants
• Purdue Graduate School, English proficiency requirements
• Technical University of Munich, language certificates

Checked against the sources above in September 2026. Test fees, score scales and accepted test lists change, so confirm the current figure on the official page before you book.