Best Free IELTS Apps (2026): Re-Checked for Android & iPhone

Short answer: For most candidates the best free IELTS app in 2026 is IELTSbiz - a web app, not a download - free with no card, covering all four papers, with trap-level Reading feedback and per-question-type band tracking.

Among native installs, KeenIELTS (Android and iPhone) gives away full mock tests and IELTS by IDP is the free official app. The British Council IELTS Prep and BBC Learning English apps have closed.

What changed since this list first ran (re-checked 24 September 2026): the British Council's IELTS Prep app no longer appears on Google Play or the App Store - its official prep now lives on the free IELTS Ready website - and the BBC closed its Learning English app on 13 December 2023, while keeping every programme free online and as podcasts.

KeenIELTS added an iPhone app, and IDP's app now bundles two preparation courses. Entries below keep their numbers so older links still land in the right place.

A disclosure first: IELTSbiz is our own product, so read our top ranking critically. We keep it at number one because the free tier is verifiable in one session, and because we state below exactly where each fully free native app beats a freemium web app.

Free hides three different models, and knowing which you are holding stops disappointment later. Fully free apps cost nothing forever, funded by public money or goodwill. Freemium apps give you a real slice of a paid product with limits.

Official free apps offer authentic but deliberately finite material from the test owners. Each model fails in a different place.

One more filter applied before ranking: provenance. App stores are littered with IELTS-labelled apps that are wrappers around scraped content, and free is no guarantee of harmless.

Every app below is an established product from an identifiable organisation, checked against its current store listing as of September 2026 - lookalikes with similar names did not make the cut.

That matters more than usual now: with the British Council app gone, several unrelated "IELTS Prep" apps sit where it used to appear in search.

Here are the eight options at a glance, re-checked in September 2026.

How we ranked these free apps

Same four criteria as every roundup we publish, weighted for a zero budget. First, feedback depth: does the free tier explain your errors, or only mark them? Second, measurement: can you watch your level move over weeks without paying?

Third, free access: how much of the real product is actually free, and does it need a card? Fourth, price of the upgrade path, in case you later hit a ceiling.

We weight feedback first because it is the rarest thing given away free. What makes automated feedback worth ranking on is whether you can check it: the IELTSbiz Writing Checker quotes the sentence behind every correction, so you can check its feedback against your own essay.

Our guide to what AI marking can and cannot do sets out the limits.

A further gate: no card required. A free tier that demands payment details is a subscription with a delay, not a free product, and forgetting to cancel is part of its business model. Everything ranked below can be used at genuine zero cost without entering a card number anywhere.

1. IELTSbiz - Best free practice with real feedback, no install

IELTSbiz tops this list because its free tier hands over the valuable part of the product, not a demo. Free users get daily Cambridge-style reading practice organised by all 11 question types, and every submission returns trap-level feedback - feedback that names the specific distractor behind each wrong answer instead of a bare right-or-wrong mark.

Free users also get the measurement layer: the progress dashboard tracks an estimated band per question type across sessions, so even at zero cost you can watch a Not Given weakness improve. No card is required, so there is no trial to remember to cancel.

The free tier extends beyond Reading: a monthly allowance on the Writing Checker scored against all four official criteria, scored Listening parts with one-play audio, Speaking practice for Parts 1 to 3 marked on the four official criteria, the daily Word Coach, and the Band Score Calculator.

Writing and Speaking run on a monthly allowance, Reading and Listening on a daily one, and none of them drops to zero. The one exception is the Band 8 Writing Trainer, whose marking is Pro only.

The honest limits: it is freemium, so daily practice volume is capped and unlimited drilling sits behind the paid tier from $7.99 a month or $50 lifetime - and being a web app, there is no offline mode. But as free feedback goes, nothing else here is close.

Start with a free session of reading practice.

Use the free tier as a diagnostic engine rather than casual practice. Pick the question type you suspect is weakest - Not Given is the usual culprit - drill only that format for a week, and read every feedback note instead of racing to the next question.

Because the tracking is broken down by type, you will see within days whether your accuracy on that format is genuinely climbing.

2. IELTS Prep by British Council - Most authentic fully free app

Update, September 2026: the IELTS Prep app itself is gone. It no longer appears on Google Play or the App Store, and the British Council's own free-apps page now lists only its LearnEnglish Podcast and LearnEnglish Videos apps.

Apps with similar names that still show up in store search are from unrelated developers, not the British Council.

The official material did not disappear - it moved to IELTS Ready, which runs free in any phone browser.

As of September 2026 the free tier includes a 50-minute Mini Mock Test with AI feedback and an estimated band, two full IELTS mock tests with feedback and model answers, and short guided modules on each skill and question type.

Book your test with the British Council and IELTS Ready Premium unlocks free, adding 40 full practice tests, self-study courses and webinars. Our IELTS Ready review walks through both tiers.

Because the British Council co-owns the exam, this is still the most trustworthy free material you can open on a phone. The catch is the official pattern: the free set is finite and nothing tracks your level per question type across sessions. It calibrates you honestly; it does not coach you.

Best for: every candidate as the free authenticity benchmark - bookmark IELTS Ready instead of hunting for the old app, work through it, and do your daily drilling somewhere with feedback.

Get the most from it by rationing: work through half the practice material early to set a baseline, and save the rest for the final weeks as a transfer check. Because the set is finite, burning through everything in week one leaves you with no authentic benchmark later, when you need it most.

3. KeenIELTS - Best free full mock tests

KeenIELTS gives away what most platforms charge for: complete four-section IELTS mock tests with instant results and no card.

As of September 2026 it runs on the web and in free apps for both Android and iPhone, funded by ads rather than a paywall, and it layers free AI scoring on Writing and Speaking attempts plus question-type drills - at a price of zero, unmatched.

The trade-offs: the free experience carries ads, Reading and Listening feedback is answer-key level rather than trap-level, the automated Writing and Speaking numbers are estimates rather than examiner marks, and its tracking works by module rather than by question type. It measures where you are today more than it changes tomorrow.

Best for: a free full mock every week or two under strict timing. Analyse the misses elsewhere - our KeenIELTS alternative page shows the pairing that works.

A good rhythm: sit each mock with your phone silenced and the sitting treated as a checkpoint rather than a study session. The learning happens afterwards - take the question types you missed, drill them somewhere that explains the traps, and return for the next mock only when the tracking says the weakness has moved.

4. BBC Learning English - Best fully free daily habit

Update, September 2026: there is no BBC Learning English app to install any more. The BBC closed it on 13 December 2023, and the old app no longer opens even if it is still on your phone.

What made it this list's best daily habit survives for free, though: 6 Minute English, news-based vocabulary lessons and grammar programmes, all with transcripts, live on the BBC Learning English website, and 6 Minute English is a free podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast apps, where episodes download for offline listening.

So the practical setup is a podcast app on your phone subscribed to 6 Minute English, plus the website when you want the transcript and quiz. Ten minutes a day compounds into precisely the general English level that IELTS measures.

For more shows in the same vein, see our guide to the best podcasts for IELTS Listening.

Its limit is that it is not an exam tool. Nothing is in IELTS format, nothing is band-scored, and no dashboard tracks you toward a target. It raises your English; it cannot tell you what that English scores.

Best for: daily listening and vocabulary exposure for anyone more than a month from test day - alongside, never instead of, exam-format practice.

The habit matters more than the content choice: pick a fixed slot - breakfast, a commute - and attach the podcast to it. Listen once cold, once with the transcript, and note the words you misheard. Ten focused minutes daily beats an hour on Sunday, because listening growth compounds through frequency, not duration.

5. IELTS by IDP - Best free app if IDP runs your test

IDP's official app is free and does double duty: it handles booking, test management and results delivery, and carries preparation articles, videos, podcasts, quizzes, an English self-assessment and a free 7-day preparation challenge.

With the British Council app withdrawn, it is the one official IELTS-partner app on this list still in both stores (re-checked September 2026). If your test centre is IDP-run, it earns its place for the results alert alone.

It has also grown two courses.

The Macquarie University preparation course (15+ tutorials) is free for 14 days with an option to upgrade, and E2's IELTS preparation adds a score estimator, lessons and live classes, with more content behind a paid upgrade; a Cambridge IELTS preparation module is listed for India only.

Our IDP IELTS prep app review goes through each.

As a study tool it shares the official-app ceiling: curated content, largely answer-key feedback, no per-question-type measurement over time. It is a companion to the exam process more than a training engine, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Best for: IDP candidates, and anyone who wants an official app on the phone now that the British Council one has gone - British Council candidates should use the free IELTS Ready site alongside it. The exam itself is identical either way.

If you have not yet booked, the app is also the quickest free way to compare nearby test dates and centres - worth installing for the logistics alone, even if your daily practice lives entirely elsewhere.

6. One IELTS - Best free sample of high-volume drilling

One IELTS advertises over 15,000 practice questions and more than 1,000 mock tests on its Google Play listing (as of September 2026), with AI scoring on Writing and Speaking, and its free tier lets you sample that volume with limited practice sets and occasional free mock access - the rest sits behind in-app purchases.

For familiarising yourself with the computer-delivered test interface at no cost, it is genuinely useful.

The free tier is a shop window, though: the volume that makes the app distinctive sits behind the subscription, and explanations are brief at any tier. Free users get a taste of scale rather than scale itself.

Best for: trying computer-based mock formats free before deciding whether volume is what your preparation actually lacks - a question our One IELTS alternative page helps answer.

Use the free tier to answer one specific question: does the computer-based interface change how you read and answer? If your accuracy drops on screen, that is a format problem worth training deliberately before test day - and free interface exposure is exactly what a sampler tier is good for.

7. LearnEnglish apps - Best free targeted drills

The British Council's free LearnEnglish family splits skills into single-purpose apps: LearnEnglish Grammar with thousands of graded exercises, Sounds Right for pronunciation, plus Podcasts and Videos for listening.

Each is small, focused and completely free, and all four were still listed on the App Store in September 2026 - Podcasts and Videos are also the two apps the British Council itself now recommends for IELTS candidates, and both download episodes for offline use.

The weakness is that nothing connects: no shared progress, no IELTS formats, no band scores. These are patches, not a plan. Used against a named weakness - articles, conditionals, a vowel contrast - they are excellent patches.

Best for: fixing one specific grammar or pronunciation gap at zero cost while your main tool handles measurement.

Start with the one app that matches a named weakness rather than installing the whole family. If an examiner would notice your articles, take Grammar; if a vowel contrast muddies your speaking, take Sounds Right. One targeted app finished is worth more than four sampled and abandoned.

8. Anki (AnkiDroid) - Best free vocabulary engine

AnkiDroid on Android and the desktop Anki app are free, open-source implementations of spaced repetition - a review schedule that resurfaces each word just before you forget it, which is the most efficient known way to retain vocabulary. Shared IELTS decks are free to import, or you can build your own from your reading mistakes.

The costs are effort and platform: the interface is spartan, the first hour of setup is real work, and on iPhone the official AnkiMobile app is a one-off purchase ($24.99 on the US App Store as of September 2026; the free workaround is AnkiWeb in your browser). It also does nothing beyond memory.

Best for: candidates weeks or months out who want vocabulary to stick permanently. Feed it new words from a daily source like the Word Coach.

The highest-value deck is the one you build yourself from your own reading mistakes, because words you personally misread carry context no shared deck can match. Add five to ten cards after each practice session and let the scheduler do the rest - fifteen minutes of review a day sustains a growing deck indefinitely.

How do you build a free weekly plan from these apps?

Anchor the week around measurement. Monday to Friday: twenty minutes of IELTSbiz reading drills with feedback, plus a ten-minute 6 Minute English episode and a short Anki review. Saturday: one full timed KeenIELTS mock, phone silenced.

Sunday: review every mock miss, harvest new vocabulary into your deck, and check the progress dashboard to pick next week's target question type.

That plan costs nothing, touches all four ranking criteria - feedback, measurement, authenticity and habit - and takes under five hours a week. The commonest failure mode is not the plan but drift: practising whatever feels comfortable instead of what the tracking says is weak. Let the numbers, not your mood, choose each day's drill.

Can you prepare for IELTS completely free on your phone?

Largely, yes - if you stack models deliberately.

A complete free phone setup: IELTSbiz in the browser for daily reading drills with real feedback and tracking, the British Council's free IELTS Ready site for authentic calibration, KeenIELTS for a fortnightly full mock, and the 6 Minute English podcast or AnkiDroid for the daily habit.

That covers feedback, authenticity, stamina and retention at zero cost.

The one thing no free stack fully replaces is unlimited scored feedback on your weakest skill, plus live speaking with a human. Those are the two places a modest spend earns its keep, and our guide to the best paid IELTS prep websites covers when that upgrade makes sense.

What is the best free IELTS listening app for Android?

It depends on the job, because no single free Android app does all three. The shortlist, re-checked on Google Play in September 2026:

Use the scored option three or four times a week and the offline one daily. The full comparison, including iPhone and paid options, is in our roundup of the best IELTS listening apps.

What do free IELTS apps usually leave out?

Three gaps recur across every free tier, and naming them lets you plan around them. First, explanation: free tools mark answers but rarely explain the trap, so the same error repeats.

Second, measurement: a mock score tells you where you are today, not whether inference questions improved this month. Third, volume: official free content is finite by design.

There is also a quieter cost to some free tiers: attention. Ad-funded apps interrupt precisely the sustained focus that reading and listening practice are meant to train, which is one reason the ad-free official apps and no-card freemium tiers feel calmer to study in.

When an ad break lands mid-passage, the practice value of that passage drops with it.

And when you eventually hit a free ceiling - the daily cap, the finite official set - hit it deliberately. A ceiling reached after three weeks of consistent use is evidence you have outgrown the tier; one hit on day two usually means the tool was a teaser. Only the first kind deserves your money.

Cover the first two gaps with the strongest freemium tier you can find, and the third with the big free mock libraries.

If Reading is your weak skill, the fastest free start is a session of IELTSbiz reading practice - and for the browser-based free landscape beyond apps, see our roundup of the best free IELTS practice websites.

The full paid-and-free field is in the 10 best IELTS preparation apps.