Duolingo English Test questions, answered

No. This is an independent practice platform. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Duolingo, Inc. "Duolingo" and "Duolingo English Test" are trademarks of Duolingo, Inc.

Book the official test through Duolingo directly. We only help you prepare for it.

A government-issued ID showing your full legal name, full date of birth, a recent photo of your face, a valid expiry date and the issuing country. Passports are the most widely accepted; driving licences and national ID cards are accepted in many countries but not all, and Duolingo lists which documents each country can use.

Photocopies, handwritten IDs, damaged IDs and a picture of an ID on your phone are refused, and the name you type must match the ID exactly, middle names included.

From your Duolingo English Test account: open My Tests, choose Share Score on a certified result, pick the institution (adding its Application ID if it uses one) and press Send. You can select up to 40 institutions, and more only if Duolingo's support approves a request.

Sending a score is not an application — you still apply to each institution yourself — and the score has to be within its 2 years validity. Check yours with the score validity checker.

No to all three. Duolingo's rules say to remove headphones and earbuds, keep paper and notes out of the testing space and take no notes, and remove extra screens and devices. You also close every program except the test's desktop app, turn off predictive-text and proofreading tools, and sit the test alone. Wearing headphones or earbuds on its own is enough for a result not to be certified.

Eight. Four individual subscores — Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening — and four integrated subscores, each of which is the average of two individual ones:

• Literacy — Reading + Writing
• Comprehension — Reading + Listening
• Conversation — Listening + Speaking
• Production — Writing + Speaking

Because each skill feeds two integrated subscores, one weak skill pulls down two numbers at once.

Yes. Duolingo's rules have you use your phone's camera to capture your head, shoulders, screen and keyboard, and not interfere with that recording while you test. Only one phone is allowed in the testing space. The test itself runs in Duolingo's desktop app on your computer, which needs a working webcam and microphone as well.

No. Duolingo's rules forbid both, and every program except the test's desktop app has to be closed — browsers, chat and video-call software, streaming tools and remote-desktop software included. If your computer runs an always-on VPN or you only have a virtual machine, sort that out before test day rather than during setup.

Through your Duolingo English Test account: Duolingo accepts all major credit cards, and Alipay in China. The fee is $70 USD per attempt — we do not sell the official test — and once you have paid you have 21 days to take it. Someone else can pay for you by signing in to your account, but refunds only go back to the original payment method. See what the DET costs.

You can purchase three tests in any 30-day period. There is no cap on the total number of times you can take it over a longer period, and there is no penalty for retaking beyond paying again.

Yes. Duolingo sells a Faster Results option that cuts the usual turnaround from 2 days to about 12 hours. Your session still gets the same human proctoring and AI scoring, faster results do not guarantee a certified result, and the purchase is not refundable. Standard results arrive within 2 days, which is quick enough for most deadlines.

Yes, remotely. You are video and audio recorded for the whole session and human proctors review the recording before your result is certified. There is no live person watching you in real time, but the review is real and results can be withheld.

Looking away from the screen repeatedly, anyone else being audible or visible, leaving the frame, using a phone or notes, or your face being unclear. The most common cause is simply looking away too often — people glance around while thinking and it reads as searching for help.

Take the test somewhere quiet, alone, well lit, with nothing on the desk.

The DET is shorter (about one hour, against about 2 hours 45 minutes for IELTS and about 2 hours for TOEFL iBT), cheaper, always taken at home rather than usually at a test centre, and returns results in 2 days — IELTS takes around 3–13 days depending on format, TOEFL 3 days. It is scored 10–160, while IELTS uses 0–9 bands and TOEFL iBT has reported 1–6 since January 2026 (with a comparable 0–120 score shown until January 2028).

Comparison tables between the three exist, but treat them as approximate: the tests measure overlapping but not identical things, and institutions set their own equivalences.

You can usually try again at no extra cost. Each test you buy is one credit, and a credit gives you three attempts to complete and upload the test — every start counts as one. If a dropped connection or another technical error stops your test being uploaded or certified, you can retake it while attempts remain on that credit. An ID problem only needs you to resubmit a valid ID, not to sit the test again.

No, and we would not claim otherwise. They follow the same structure, the same 13 current question types, the same adaptive logic and the same 10–160 reporting scale, and they are written to the same difficulty range.

What they cannot do is reproduce Duolingo's calibrated question bank or their exact scoring model, both of which are proprietary. Treat your result here as a well-founded estimate of where you are, not as a prediction of your official score.