Best Websites for IELTS Writing Task 2: Samples, Ideas and Checking (2026)

Writing Task 2 carries two thirds of your IELTS Writing band, and it is the section where most candidates plateau. The web is full of model essays and topic lists, yet scores stay stuck, because reading samples is not the same as getting your own essay measured.

Short answer: the best website for IELTS Writing Task 2 in 2026 is IELTSbiz, because it combines a library of 50 sample essays - every prompt answered at Band 9 and Band 6.5 so you can see the difference - with a free Writing Checker that scores your own work against all four official criteria.

Full disclosure before we go further: IELTSbiz is our own platform, so read our #1 ranking with that in mind. We have kept the treatment of every other site factual and fair, because most serious candidates will - and should - use more than one of these resources together.

Here is the whole field at a glance. Shortlist two or three, then read the detailed notes for the trade-offs behind each entry.

How we ranked these

We judged every site on four things, in order. First, feedback: can it score your own essay and tell you which of the four criteria is costing you marks? Second, sample quality: are the model essays genuinely at the band they claim, and can you see why?

Third, idea coverage: does it help you generate arguments for unfamiliar topics? Fourth, cost and access: is the free tier usable or a teaser? Volume of essays came last, because a hundred unexplained models teach less than five pairs that show exactly what separates Band 9 from Band 6.5.

One definition matters throughout. Criterion-level feedback is a score and comment for each of the four official Writing criteria - Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy - rather than a single overall number. Only feedback at that level tells you what to fix next.

Why the criteria obsession? Because each contributes 25% of the Task 2 band, and candidates almost never lag equally on all four. A writer stuck at 6.5 is usually stuck on one criterion - often Task Response - while the other three sit at 7.

Tools that cannot name the lagging criterion cannot direct your revision.

1. IELTSbiz - Best overall for samples plus scored checking

IELTSbiz earns the top spot by closing the loop that sample-essay sites leave open. Its Task 2 sample library contains 50 essays, and every prompt is answered twice: once at Band 9 and once at Band 6.5, side by side, with notes on exactly what the higher essay does differently.

That pairing format matters more than raw volume. Reading a lone Band 9 model tells you what excellence looks like; reading it next to a competent Band 6.5 answer on the same question shows you the specific habits - vague position, listed ideas without development, repeated linking words - that hold real candidates down.

The second half of the loop is the free Writing Checker, which scores your own essay against all four criteria with criterion-level feedback.

IELTSbiz's study of 1,200 essays found AI band scores matched human examiners within ±0.5 bands in 94.2% of cases, which is why we treat automated checking as a serious revision tool rather than a gimmick.

The platform is free to start with no card required, and the paid tier is modest at $6.99 a month or $29 for lifetime access.

The fair drawbacks: IELTSbiz is a practice-and-measurement tool, not a taught video course, and its deepest strength is Reading practice, so candidates wanting hours of Writing video lessons should pair it with a course below.

The workflow that gets results: study one Band 9 versus Band 6.5 pair for your target essay type, write your own timed answer to a fresh prompt, run it through the checker, then rewrite once addressing the lowest-scoring criterion. That single loop, repeated twice a week, is a complete Task 2 programme.

2. IELTS Liz - Best free Task 2 strategy

IELTS Liz remains the reference free site for understanding what Task 2 actually rewards. Built by an experienced former examiner, its lessons break down all five essay types - opinion, discussion, advantages and disadvantages, problem and solution, and two-part questions - with model answers and clear notes on structure.

For a candidate who does not yet know why an essay stalls at Band 6, her explanations of Task Response and position-taking are some of the best free teaching on the internet, and the model essays are trustworthy references.

The limit is interactivity. IELTS Liz is a library to read, not a tool to practise with: you cannot submit an essay for a score or track your Writing band over time.

It pairs naturally with a checking tool, and it costs nothing, so there is no reason not to use it for the strategy layer.

To use it well, resist reading everything. Identify your weakest essay type first - most candidates struggle with discussion or two-part questions - then work through her lessons on that one type, write a timed essay applying the method, and get it scored. One type mastered per week beats five types skimmed in an afternoon.

3. IELTS Advantage - Best paid Writing course

IELTS Advantage, run by a former examiner, has built its reputation almost entirely on Writing. Its paid courses teach a step-by-step essay method grounded in how real scripts are marked, and candidates who cannot see why their essays stall in the mid bands often credit its structured approach with finally making the band descriptors concrete.

The free blog is also substantial, with genuinely useful articles on structure, ideas and common mistakes, so you can sample the teaching style before paying.

The trade-offs are focus and price. The premium courses are a meaningful outlay, and the platform offers little interactive practice or day-to-day scored feedback - it teaches the method and leaves the drilling to you. It suits candidates whose defining weakness is Writing and who will commit to a full course rather than dip in.

If you do enrol, treat it as a course to complete in sequence, not a library to browse.

The method compounds lesson by lesson, and the candidates who report band jumps are the ones who wrote a full essay after every module and compared it against the taught structure - then kept writing weekly after the course ended.

4. ieltsbuddy - Best free archive of commented sample essays

ieltsbuddy is one of the longest-running free IELTS sites, and its Task 2 section holds a large archive of sample essays, many with comments explaining strengths and weaknesses.

It also accepts essay submissions from learners, so you can read other candidates' attempts alongside stronger models - a useful reality check on what mid-band writing actually looks like.

The lessons on essay structure and question analysis are solid and free, making it a good second reference when you want more examples than any single site provides.

The honest limits: quality varies across a large archive, some user-submitted essays are weak models to imitate, and there is no scoring of your own work or progress tracking. Treat it as a broad free reading resource, and be selective about which essays you study closely.

A productive way in: use the commented essays as marking practice. Before reading the comments under a sample, score it yourself against the four criteria and predict what the commentary will flag. Comparing your judgement against the site's notes trains the self-assessment eye that pays off every time you revise your own drafts.

5. Engnovate - Best for quick automated band estimates

Engnovate leans into automated evaluation: submit a Task 2 essay and receive a fast band estimate without waiting for a human.

That speed is genuinely useful for building the habit of finishing timed essays, and for a rough sense of whether you are nearer Band 6 or Band 7. The free tier allows real use within limits.

The cautions apply as they do to any automated scorer: estimates are approximations, and the depth of explanation behind each score tends to be thinner than criterion-level feedback that names the exact sentences costing you marks.

Use it as a quick gauge, not a verdict, and lean on more detailed feedback for the careful error-by-error work.

One sensible pattern: use fast estimates to confirm you are finishing timed essays and roughly holding a level, then submit your best one or two essays a week somewhere with criterion-level explanation. Chasing a single automated number up and down between drafts tells you less than one detailed report acted on properly.

The community side of Engnovate - shared essays and peer votes - adds a mild accountability layer some candidates find motivating, though the crowd's band judgements should be taken as conversation rather than assessment.

6. IELTS Simon's archive - Best plain-English model paragraphs

The essay archive built by Simon, a former examiner, has taught a generation of candidates that high-band writing is plain, controlled English rather than decorated vocabulary. His models are constructed sentence by sentence, and the accompanying notes push one consistent message: a clear position, developed ideas and simple linking beat memorised "academic" phrases every time.

The archive is free to read and remains one of the best correctives for candidates who believe longer words mean higher bands.

The limits are those of any static archive: it is no longer actively growing the way it once was, there is no interactivity or scoring, and navigation can feel dated. But as a free masterclass in what examiners actually reward, it still earns its place on this list.

The highest-value exercise here is imitation: take one of his essays, study its paragraph logic, then write your own answer to the same question using the same skeleton but your own ideas. Comparing the two drafts exposes exactly where your sentences carry less meaning per word than his - the core Band 7 skill.

7. British Council LearnEnglish - Best official writing guidance

The British Council co-owns IELTS, and its LearnEnglish site offers free writing lessons, sample tasks and guidance whose format and tone are as close to official as free material gets.

If you worry that independent blogs might drift from what the real test rewards, this is the calibration source: the task descriptions and assessment explanations come from an organisation that helps run the exam.

The trade-off is depth and volume. The Task 2 material is a curated, fixed set rather than a deep library, feedback is limited, and there is no essay scoring or tracking. Use it to anchor your understanding of the task itself, then do your practice and checking elsewhere.

Its best hidden asset is the assessment guidance: the official explanations of what each Writing criterion rewards are written in plainer language than the public band descriptors. Reading them once, early, inoculates you against the folk myths - that long words impress examiners, or that a memorised introduction saves time without cost.

8. IELTS Mentor - Best for sheer volume of prompts

IELTS Mentor's defining feature is quantity: hundreds of Task 2 questions with sample answers, alongside material for every other section. When you have worked through the common topics and want an endless supply of prompts to plan or write against, this is where the volume lives, free of charge.

The honest drawbacks mirror the scale. The site is ad-heavy, sample quality is uneven, and some model answers would not score the bands implied. There is no feedback on your own writing.

Use it as a prompt bank - pick a question, plan it in five minutes, write it, then get it scored somewhere that measures - rather than as a source of models to imitate.

Prompt volume has one specific use late in preparation: idea-generation sprints. Take five unfamiliar questions and give yourself four minutes each to plan a position and two supporting ideas, without writing the essay. That drill attacks the most common Task 2 time-killer - staring at a strange topic with an empty mind.

How do you get free feedback on your Task 2 essays?

Three routes exist, in ascending order of reliability. Peer feedback - study partners and forum communities - is free and better than nothing, but mid-band candidates cannot reliably spot each other's criterion-level problems. Self-marking against the public band descriptors is stronger once you have trained your eye on commented samples.

The most dependable free route is an automated checker built around the four official criteria. The IELTSbiz Writing Checker is free to start and returns a band estimate per criterion with specific comments, so each revision targets a named weakness.

Whichever route you choose, feedback only compounds if you rewrite the same essay once before moving to a new prompt - the rewrite is where the lesson sticks.

Which website is best for IELTS Task 2 sample essays?

For studying samples specifically, the deciding factor is whether the site shows you contrast. A single polished model answer teaches structure; a Band 9 essay paired with a Band 6.5 essay on the same prompt teaches diagnosis, because you can see precisely which habits separate the two.

That is why we rank the IELTSbiz sample library first for samples, with IELTS Simon's archive and IELTS Liz's models as the best free single-essay references, and ieltsbuddy for breadth. Whichever you use, read actively: outline the model's paragraph logic before reading it fully, then compare.

How should you combine these Task 2 websites?

The strongest stack is small and deliberate: one sample library to study contrast, one strategy resource for your weakest essay type, and one checking tool that scores what you actually write.

In practice that might be the IELTSbiz sample pairs plus Writing Checker as the daily loop, IELTS Liz for strategy reading, and IELTS Mentor as an overflow prompt bank.

Then protect the ratio that matters: for every model essay you read, write one of your own under 40-minute timing and get it scored.

Our guide to the 4-paragraph Task 2 structure gives you the frame, and the wider roundup of the best IELTS websites in 2026 covers the platforms beyond Writing. Reading about essays is preparation; measured writing is progress.

For the sections beyond Writing, our companion guides cover where to get free practice tests, the best study plan tools and trackers, and the best free practice websites overall - the same honest-ranking treatment, one niche at a time.