If you have spent any time looking at English-proficiency exams, you have probably hit the same wall most international applicants hit. IELTS and TOEFL feel old. They are expensive, they want you in a test centre, and the slots in your city fill up months ahead. So the Duolingo English Test enters the picture — cheaper, faster, taken at your kitchen table. The catch is that nobody quite agrees on what it costs in 2026, who actually accepts it, and what you need on your desk before you start.
This guide pulls all of that into one place. We will go through the price (yes, $65 — with the small print), how acceptance works at 5,500+ programmes around the world, the 60-minute test length, ID rules that trip up real candidates, and what it costs in markets like Pakistan and India where the dollar price hits differently. We will not cover study tactics in detail — our Duolingo English Test tips guide handles question types and scoring strategy. This page is for the logistics.
You will leave knowing whether the test fits your application, what you need on test day, and the gotchas that cost candidates their certificates. Let us start with the headline numbers.
The price has crept up over the last few years. Five years ago you could sit the test for $49. Today the standard rate sits at $65 for the certified version, the only one universities accept. Duolingo bundles in two free score sends — meaning you can deliver your result to two institutions without paying extra. After that, additional sends cost nothing. That is genuinely different from IELTS or TOEFL, where every score report is metered.
You may see references to a $69 price in older blog posts. That number came from a brief experiment with regional pricing in late 2025 and is no longer the headline figure. The current US-dollar fee is $65, charged at the point of registration. There is no separate booking fee, no test-centre surcharge, and no rescheduling cost — because there is no scheduling. You sit down when you are ready and the test starts.
That price covers one attempt. If you score lower than you hoped, you can buy another attempt for $65. Duolingo lets you sit the test up to twice every 30 days, which gives a fast loop for retakes. Compared to IELTS, where a retake means another £200 and another two-week wait for a slot, the Duolingo model lets you iterate. Sit it, see the score, study the gaps, sit it again three weeks later.
If you fail the integrity review — more on that further down — you do not lose your fee. Duolingo will refund it or grant a free retake, depending on what went wrong. The catch is that the score is invalidated and never released, so any clock you were running against an application deadline keeps ticking. Plan for a buffer of at least three weeks between your test date and your application deadline. That is the gap real candidates wish they had built in.
The certified version that universities accept costs $65. Duolingo does offer a free Practice Test inside the same platform, but that is a sample experience only — it gives you an estimated score range and a feel for question types, and it cannot be sent to any institution. If you see "free Duolingo English Test" on a study site, it almost always refers to that practice version. The real certified test for university applications is paid.
Acceptance has gone from niche to mainstream over the last five years. In 2021 a few hundred US universities accepted the certificate. Today the count sits north of 5,500 institutions worldwide, with the official list updated regularly on the Duolingo English Test website. The big growth came during 2020 to 2022 when in-person testing collapsed and admissions offices needed a working alternative.
What that 5,500 number hides is uneven coverage. US universities are the most consistent — virtually every Ivy League, every large state system, and most liberal arts colleges accept the score for undergraduate and graduate admissions. The UK is more conservative. Russell Group universities accept Duolingo for many programmes but not all, and some specialty courses (medicine, law, teacher training) still require IELTS Academic. Canada is in between — most universities accept Duolingo, but a few provincial visa pathways prefer IELTS or CELPIP.
Australia and New Zealand have lagged. Duolingo is accepted for many university applications but rarely meets the requirements for student visa applications, which fall under separate immigration rules. If you are applying to an Australian university and need a student visa, plan to pair Duolingo for admissions with a separate IELTS sitting for the visa stage. That changes the calculation. Two tests cost more than one, even with Duolingo being cheaper individually.
For employment purposes, acceptance is patchier still. Some multinationals (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, parts of the consulting industry) accept Duolingo for English-proficiency screening. Many do not, and HR teams default to TOEFL or IELTS out of habit. If you are using the test for a job application, check directly with the recruiter before booking. The cost is low enough that a wasted sitting is not catastrophic, but the lost time is annoying.
Programme-level rules matter more than university-level rules. A university may broadly accept Duolingo while one specific department — usually creative writing, journalism, or law — still demands IELTS or TOEFL. The Duolingo English Test database lets you filter by programme, not just by institution, and that is the filter you want to use. Check before you book, not after you have your result and discover the programme you wanted wants a different test.
Near-universal acceptance for undergraduate and graduate admissions. Every Ivy League school accepts it. Most state systems do too.
Russell Group universities accept it for most programmes. Specialty courses (medicine, law, teacher training) may still require IELTS Academic.
Strong university acceptance. Some provincial student-visa pathways prefer IELTS or CELPIP — check before applying.
Many universities accept it for admissions, but Duolingo is not on the approved SELT list for student visas — plan a separate test.
Acceptance varies by country. Most international-degree programmes in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy now take it.
Growing acceptance at international branch campuses. Domestic universities in Japan, Korea, and the Gulf are still mixed.
The full test runs about 60 minutes from the moment you click start. Of that, roughly 45 minutes are the adaptive test itself — reading, listening, speaking, and writing tasks that shift in difficulty based on how you are performing. The remaining 15 minutes cover the setup phase: ID check, room scan, microphone test, and the recorded video interview at the end, which schools watch alongside the score.
The 60-minute number is shorter than IELTS (about three hours) and TOEFL iBT (about three hours) by a clean margin. That is part of the appeal. You can sit it on a lunch break. You can sit it the morning before a flight. The trade-off is intensity. There are no breaks. From start to finish, you are on. Two minutes of looking away from your screen, even to reach for water, can trigger the proctoring system and invalidate your test.
The first ten minutes are the most fragile. The setup process — ID check, environment scan, microphone calibration — has tripped up more candidates than the actual questions. Get the setup right and the rest of the test feels manageable. Rush the setup and you may find your test rejected during the integrity review without ever knowing which step failed.
Plan to start the test at a time when you have a clear two-hour window. Sixty minutes for the test itself, fifteen minutes for setup and acclimatising, and a buffer in case you have to restart from a technical failure. Restarts do happen — usually network blips or microphone-detection issues — and Duolingo will let you retry without losing the fee, but the clock you keep is your own. Build the buffer in.
The first 10-15 minutes cover ID verification, environment scan, and microphone calibration. Pick up your laptop and rotate it 360 degrees to show the room. Hold your passport up to the camera with your face visible at the same time. Test your microphone by reading the on-screen sentence. Most score voids happen here — rush the setup and the integrity review will catch it later.
About 45 minutes of mixed question types. Reading passages, listening clips, dictation tasks, speaking prompts, writing samples. The difficulty adjusts based on how you are performing — get easier questions right and you will see harder ones, get hard ones wrong and the difficulty drops. There are no section breaks; tasks flow from one to the next.
The final five minutes are a recorded video where you respond to one or two open prompts. This is not scored numerically. Universities watch it as supporting evidence alongside the headline score. Speak naturally, look at the camera, and avoid reading from any notes. The integrity team flags candidates whose eyes drift to scripts.
Within 48 hours you get an email with your score, the certificate PDF, your video recording, and a writing sample. You log in to send the score to your selected universities. The first two sends are free; additional sends cost nothing. Score releases held for integrity review take three to five business days — plan a buffer between your test date and your application deadline.
You need a government-issued photo ID with your full name and date of birth. A passport is the safest choice and the one Duolingo recommends. National identity cards are accepted in countries where they include a photo and date of birth — most of Europe, much of Asia, most of Latin America. A driver licence is accepted in some markets but not all. Student IDs, work IDs, and library cards are never accepted, no matter how official they look.
The name on the ID must match the name on your application exactly. Middle names, hyphens, and accented characters cause more rejections than you might expect. If your passport reads "Maria Jose Garcia-Lopez" and you register as "Maria Garcia", expect a hold on your score while the integrity team reviews. They will usually clear it, but it takes three to five business days, and you cannot send the score to a university until they do. That delay is the most common cause of missed application deadlines.
Expired IDs are a hard fail. Even if it expired yesterday. Even if you have the renewal scheduled. Even if you can show a receipt for the new one. The integrity team checks the expiry date as part of the automated review, and an expired document means the result is voided without appeal. If your ID expires within the next six months, renew before you sit the test.
Photocopies and screenshots are not accepted. The proctor needs to see the physical document, held up to the camera, with your face visible at the same time. Hold it close enough that the text is readable on the recording. The integrity team reviews every test, and a blurry ID image will hold your score for manual review even if everything else went perfectly.
The test is online-only. There is no test centre option. You sit it on your own computer in your own room, supervised by Duolingo's AI proctoring system rather than a human invigilator in the room with you. That model is what enables the low price and the on-demand timing, and it is also what makes some institutions slow to accept the score.
Your computer needs a working microphone, a working webcam, and a stable internet connection. The minimum browser is the latest stable version of Chrome, Edge, or Safari. Firefox is not officially supported and will sometimes fail the system check. Mobile phones and tablets cannot run the test — you need a laptop or desktop. If your only device is a phone, plan to borrow a laptop from a friend rather than trying to sit the test on mobile.
The environment scan asks you to pick up your laptop and slowly rotate it 360 degrees to show the room you are in. The room must be empty of other people, clear of notes and books on the desk, and quiet enough that background noise will not bleed into your speaking responses. Bedrooms work well. Kitchens rarely do. A coffee shop will fail the scan immediately, even if it is otherwise quiet.
If anyone walks into the room during the test, your score is voided. If a phone rings nearby, voided. If you read your speaking response from a script taped to the wall behind the camera, the integrity team will spot it on the recording and void the score. The system is strict because the schools that accept it need to trust that the result reflects the candidate's own ability. That strictness is also why many universities now treat a Duolingo score as equivalent to a centre-based IELTS or TOEFL.
The Duolingo English Test certificate is valid for two years from the date you sit the test. That mirrors IELTS and TOEFL exactly. If you are applying to a university next September and you sit the test this June, you are fine. If you sat it three years ago, even if your English has not deteriorated, the score will not be accepted. Most universities will not even let you upload an older certificate to their portal.
Scores run from 10 to 160 on a single overall scale. There are no separate sub-scores in the way that IELTS breaks down listening, reading, writing, and speaking into four band scores. You get one number. That single-number model is loved by some admissions offices and hated by others, because it does not show whether a candidate is balanced or strong in one skill and weak in another. The detailed sub-scores do exist behind the scenes and can be requested by institutions during admissions review.
Score Ranges roughly map to CEFR levels — 10 to 55 is A1 to A2, 60 to 85 is B1, 90 to 115 is B2, 120 to 145 is C1, and 150 to 160 is C2. Most universities want B2 or higher for undergraduate admissions, which translates to a Duolingo score of around 105 to 120. Graduate programmes typically want 120 to 135.
Top US universities have started asking for 135 or higher. Look up the exact requirement for your target programme — not just your target university — because the difference between needing 115 and needing 135 is the difference between three weeks of casual prep and two months of focused study.
The price is set in US dollars and converted to your local currency at the point of payment. There is no separate "Pakistan price" or "India price" listed by Duolingo. What changes is the effective cost after conversion, and that effective cost has been the single biggest reason candidates pick Duolingo over IELTS in South Asia.
In Pakistan, the $65 fee converts to roughly Rs 18,000 to Rs 19,000 depending on the exchange rate on the day you book. Compare that to IELTS Pakistan at around Rs 73,000, and the gap is roughly four times. The same maths applies in India — Duolingo at about Rs 5,400 versus IELTS at roughly Rs 17,000. In Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nigeria, and the Philippines the ratios are similar. The dollar price stays $65, the conversion does the work.
One thing to watch for in South Asia is payment-method reliability. Duolingo accepts credit and debit cards plus selected regional wallets, but some local cards have intermittent failures with US-dollar charges. If your first attempt to pay bounces, try a different card or a virtual card from a fintech app rather than re-trying the same one — the system sometimes flags a second attempt as suspicious activity and blocks both the payment and the booking attempt for 24 hours.
For applicants in Pakistan and India specifically, the lower fee plus the no-travel-to-test-centre logistics has driven a huge shift in test choice over the last three years. The biggest universities in the US and Canada now see more Duolingo certificates from South Asian applicants than IELTS scores. UK universities still see more IELTS, partly out of inertia and partly because the UK Visa and Immigration office maintains a separate approved list that Duolingo is not on.
After the test, your score is released within 48 hours. You receive it by email along with a downloadable certificate PDF, a video recording of your spoken responses, and a writing sample. The full package is what universities receive — not just the number — and admissions offices increasingly review the video and writing along with the score.
To send the score to a university, you log into your Duolingo English Test account and select the institution from a searchable database. The send is instant and digital — no posted certificates, no waiting weeks for delivery. The two free sends are included with your fee, and additional sends cost nothing. That is genuinely different from IELTS, where each additional send costs around £20.
If a university or employer is not on the Duolingo list, you can request a custom send. Duolingo's team will contact the institution and arrange a one-off delivery. This usually takes three to five business days and works for niche programmes and for employer screening at companies that have not yet been added to the standard list.
Some applicants choose to never share their first score and to send only the second or third attempt. That is allowed — Duolingo treats each test as independent, and you choose which scores to send. Universities do not see your full attempt history unless you choose to share it. That said, the cost-iteration model encourages you to sit it again if you are close to a threshold rather than agonising over one attempt. Better to spend another $65 and clear the bar.
If you are using the certificate for a visa application, double-check the country's specific rules. The US student visa officers accept Duolingo because the universities accept it; visa officers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand often require a separate Secure English Language Test (SELT) from an approved provider, and Duolingo is not on that approved list in those countries. Plan for a separate test if your destination requires SELT.
Run through the practical list one more time the night before. Quiet room, empty desk, fully-charged laptop or one plugged in, stable internet (a wired connection is more reliable than Wi-Fi for the speaking section), passport or other accepted photo ID, water within reach but off the desk, and a 90-minute window you can defend against interruptions.
On the test itself, you do not need to study format in the same way you would for IELTS. The adaptive engine will introduce question types as you go, and the on-screen instructions explain each task in a few seconds before you begin. What you do need is the speed habit — practice tests build the rhythm of moving from one task to the next without freezing. Try a few Duolingo English Test sample questions in the week before to get comfortable.
If you are aiming for a specific score band, look up the requirement for your target programme and pick a score target that gives you a cushion. Hitting exactly the minimum is risky — universities sometimes shift their requirement upward between application cycles, and a score you submit a year in advance may sit on file. Aim ten points above the stated minimum. That extra margin protects you against requirement creep and small day-of variance in your score.
And one final note. The Duolingo English Test is not the easy option. It is the cheap option and the convenient option, but the test itself is hard. Sixty minutes of constant cognitive load, no breaks, no second chances on individual questions, and an integrity system that voids your score for a single mistake.
Treat it with the same seriousness you would give IELTS or TOEFL and you will come out the other side with a useful certificate. Treat it as something you can wing because the price is low, and you may spend $130 across two attempts and still not have a usable score.