How Long Are IELTS, PTE and Duolingo Results Valid, and What Happens When Yours Expires?

How long are IELTS results valid, and is it the same for PTE and Duolingo?

Two years for all of them. Every major test in this market settles on the same window, and each provider publishes it on its own site rather than leaving the coaching industry to guess.

The IELTS partners recommend that a result shows a candidate's English for a maximum period of two years, and the reason they give is second language loss, the ordinary fading of a language you stop using.

The same page says a Test Report Form older than two years should only be accepted if it comes with proof that the test taker has actively maintained, or tried to improve, their English, which is a door left ajar rather than an extension you can claim.

Pearson states that a PTE score report is valid for two years from the date you took your test, and that scores never assigned inside that window cannot be sent afterwards.

ETS puts TOEFL iBT scores at valid for 2 years and tells test takers to download and keep a PDF of the score report while they still can.

Duolingo says its results are valid for two years, after which you can no longer share the result or view the certificate, and institutions lose the ability to view it too.

So the headline answer is boring and consistent. Two years, from the day you sat the test. What follows is the part that actually goes wrong.

Test	Validity the provider publishes	What ends when it expires
IELTS Academic and General Training	Two years, recommended by the IELTS partners	No more additional Test Report Forms sent on your behalf
PTE Academic and PTE Core	Two years from the test date	Scores can no longer be assigned to institutions
TOEFL iBT	Two years	ETS stops reporting the score, so keep your own PDF
Duolingo English Test	Two years	Certificate cannot be shared or viewed, by you or an institution

If you are still choosing between them, our guides to the IELTS test format and scoring, the PTE item types and score scale and the Duolingo English Test and who accepts it cover what each one asks of you. BandVisa is not affiliated with the IELTS Partners, Pearson, ETS or Duolingo.

What date does the two year clock actually start from?

The test date, not the result date. That sounds like a technicality and it is worth several weeks.

Your Test Report Form carries the date you sat the test, and that is the date every authority counts from. Results take a few days on a computer delivered test and longer on paper. None of that waiting is credited back to you. A candidate who sat IELTS on 3 March 2025 and received the result on 16 March 2025 holds a certificate that dies on 3 March 2027, not the sixteenth.

The second date matters just as much, and it belongs to whoever is reading your file. A visa authority checks the certificate against the date you lodged the application. A university often checks it against the day your course begins. Those two dates can sit six or eight months apart on one application, which is how a single certificate manages to be acceptable and expired at the same time.

What stops working the day your score expires?

Not the paper. The machinery behind it.

An expired certificate is not deleted from the world, and this is where people talk themselves into trouble. You may still be holding the printout. What you have lost is the ability to make anybody else look at it.

IELTS will send additional Test Report Forms to organisations on your behalf, but that service runs for up to two years from the date of your test date and stops with the certificate.

Pearson stops you assigning the score, so an institution has no way to receive it. Duolingo marks the certificate expired and closes off third party viewing, which means an admissions office cannot verify it even if you email them a screenshot. ETS stops reporting older TOEFL scores, which is exactly why its own page tells you to save a PDF while you can.

The pattern is the same everywhere. Verification is what an institution actually accepts, and verification is the first thing to switch off. A score you cannot get verified is a score you do not have.

There is no renewal, no extension and no top up fee. This is the commonest false hope in the whole subject, and it is worth stating flatly: nobody sells more time on an expired English test.

How long is an English test result valid for a UK visa application?

Two years, read at the date of your application. Of the four destinations here, the UK is the clearest, because it names both the window and the reference date in the same place.

For UK immigration, as of 24 August 2026, the Home Office states that secure English language test results are valid for 2 years from the date the test is awarded and must have been awarded in the two years before the date of your application.

Home Office caseworker guidance, as of 24 August 2026, also describes a narrow discretion where a certificate expired shortly before the application was made, allowing the case to be held while a new test is taken, but that is guidance written for the decision maker rather than a right you can rely on, so do not build a timeline around it.

Two years is also, in practice, what most UK universities apply, though they frequently measure it against enrolment rather than application. Our page on the IELTS band a UK student visa actually needs takes that split apart in more detail, including why the university requirement and the Home Office minimum are two different numbers with two different owners.

How old can a language test be for Canada?

Less than two years old, and Canada checks it twice.

For Canada, as of 24 August 2026, IRCC requires that your test results be less than 2 years old both when you complete your Express Entry profile and when you submit your application for permanent residence.

The double check is the trap. An Express Entry profile can sit in the pool for up to a year before an invitation arrives, so a result that was comfortably fresh when you created the profile may be stale by the time you are invited to apply. Candidates lose a whole round this way, then rebuild the profile with a new score and a new ranking.

On the same page, as of 24 August 2026, IRCC also says it doesn't accept IELTS One Skill Retake for Express Entry, so the cheap fix for one weak skill is worth nothing on this particular route.

If Canada is your route, treat the language test as something you refresh on a schedule rather than something you finish. A score with fourteen months left on it is a score with a deadline attached to your invitation.

Why does Australia allow three years instead of two?

Because it sets its own window rather than adopting the test provider's recommendation, and for several visa subclasses that window is three years.

Australia reads the clock differently. As of 24 August 2026, the Department of Home Affairs asks for a qualifying score achieved in the 3 years before your visa application, depending on the visa subclass.

A second Australian clock runs alongside it: as of 24 August 2026, results from a test taken on or before 6 August 2025 may be used as evidence of English for visa purposes until 6 August 2028, and which visas that covers depends on the visa.

Read the subclass page, not the summary. Australia's three years comes with a qualifier attached, and the qualifier does the work: the window depends on the visa you are applying for. A candidate who reads three years on a general page and then applies on a subclass wanting something fresher has done the reading and still got it wrong.

What is New Zealand's rule on the age of a test result?

Two years, measured at the date you apply, with a format restriction attached.

New Zealand keeps to two years. As of 24 August 2026, Immigration New Zealand requires that your result be no more than 2 years old at the time you apply.

As of 24 August 2026, Immigration New Zealand states that tests taken remotely outside a test centre, such as 'at home' tests are not acceptable, and Home Affairs says the same for Australian visa purposes.

That format rule deserves more attention than it gets in this region, because the at-home test is exactly the option a candidate on a budget is drawn to. Cheaper, faster, and for these two visa authorities worth nothing. Admission is a separate decision, so a remote test can win you an offer and then fail the visa it was supposed to lead to, which is the worst possible order for that to happen in.

Do universities use the same two year rule as visa authorities?

Mostly two years, often measured from a different date, and always worth checking in writing.

The University of Toronto states plainly that TOEFL, IELTS Academic, and Duolingo test scores are valid for two years from the date the test was taken, while the graduate school at the University of British Columbia asks, as of 24 August 2026, for a test taken within the last 24 months at the time you submit your application.

Those two rules describe the same length of window and two different reference points. Toronto's phrasing runs from the test date. British Columbia's runs to the date you submit. Neither is unusual, and an institution that measures to the start of studies rather than to the application is common enough that you should assume it until you are told otherwise.

Where a score sits slightly over the line, some admissions offices will look at it if you can show you have kept using English. Ask early, ask in writing, and treat a yes as a favour rather than a plan. An email in June is a conversation. The same email in September is a problem.

Can you fix a result instead of resitting it, and how long do you have?

Sometimes, and the clocks are short. Two of the three options close before the result is two months old, which is why the order you consider them in matters.

A remark, formally an Enquiry on Results, can be requested within 6 weeks of the IELTS test date on your Test Report Form, and the outcome can take up to 21 days to come back.

A remark can move a score up or leave it where it was, and it never moves it down. That makes it a low risk option when you believe a section was marked below what you produced, particularly on writing or speaking, where judgement is involved.

You must sit it within 60 days of your original test, and you get one retake for each full IELTS test, so it is not a decision you can postpone and revisit.

One Skill Retake is the better tool when one component let you down and the other three landed where you need them. It is also not accepted universally, which is the detail that catches Canada bound candidates, so confirm acceptance with whoever will read your file before you book.

A full resit has no deadline at all, which is precisely why it gets postponed. Here is the order that works:

• Check the result against the requirement on the day it arrives, component by component, never on the overall band alone.
• If a single section looks mismarked, the remark window is the shortest of the three, so decide on that first.
• Where one component is genuinely below target and the rest are fine, One Skill Retake inside sixty days is usually cheaper and faster than a full test.
• Only when two or more components need work is a full resit the right answer, and then book it immediately rather than after another month of preparation.

How do you plan a resit so the score is alive when you apply?

Work backwards from the date somebody will read the certificate, not forwards from today. Almost every avoidable failure in this subject comes from planning in the wrong direction.

Start with the latest date the score must be valid on. For a visa that is the lodgement date. For a university it is more often the start of the course. Take whichever falls later, subtract two years, and you have the earliest test date that still counts. If your current certificate predates it, you are resitting, and the only question left is when.

Then add the practical delays nobody budgets for. Seats at a test centre in Lahore or Karachi are not always available in the week you want. Results take days on computer and longer on paper. A resit, if the first attempt lands short, needs its own slot after that. Two months is a realistic minimum from booking to a usable score, and three is safer if there is any chance of a second attempt.

If you are switching tests rather than repeating one, decide that before you book. The which test quiz narrows it by route and by which of your skills is strongest, and it takes a couple of minutes. Sitting the wrong test on a tight timeline is a more expensive mistake than sitting the right one twice.

A worked example with real dates

Sana sat IELTS Academic in Lahore on 12 October 2024 and scored 6.5 overall with 6.0 in writing. Her certificate is valid until 12 October 2026. She holds an offer from a UK university for a September 2027 intake, and plans to lodge her visa application in June 2027.

Every date in that paragraph falls after her certificate expires. She does not have a small problem. She has to sit the test again, and she has plenty of time to do it well, which is the good news buried in the bad.

Worked backwards, her plan looks like this. The score has to be valid in June 2027 for the visa and in September 2027 for enrolment, so the later date governs, and the earliest useful test date is September 2025, which has already passed. Any test she sits from now on is fine. She books for late November 2026, which leaves a clear run to a resit in January or February 2027 if writing comes in below 6.5 again, and still finishes months before the visa file goes in.

The mistake she nearly made was assuming the October 2024 result would carry her because the university had already made an offer. An offer is not a certificate. Offer conditions are checked again, later, by somebody who was not part of that conversation.

The mistakes that cost people an intake

Four of them account for most of the damage.

• Counting from the result date instead of the test date, which quietly steals two or three weeks from a plan that had none to spare.
• Checking the certificate against the visa application and forgetting that enrolment comes later, or the reverse.
• Treating an offer as proof that the English requirement is settled, when offer conditions are verified again nearer the start date.
• Booking an at-home test for a route where the authority requires a secure test centre, and finding out after paying.

None of these are difficult questions. They are all questions nobody asks until the answer has become expensive.

What comes after the score

A valid certificate is the beginning of a file, not the end of one. Once the score is current, the work moves to the parts of the application where most refusals actually happen, and none of them are about English.

The admission comes first: choosing courses that match your profile, meeting the conditions, and getting the offer confirmed in time for it to matter. Then the visa file, where financial evidence, the study plan and the credibility of your intentions carry the decision. A candidate with a strong band and a thin financial history is in more danger than one with a modest band and a clean, well documented file.

And refusals happen. A refusal notice is a document that tells you, in specific terms, what the officer was not satisfied about. Reading it properly decides whether the stronger route is a fresh application answering that doubt directly, or an appeal. That judgement is hard to make about your own file, and getting it wrong costs another fee and another intake.

BandVisa is free and stays free because Borders & Bridges, the Lahore consultancy that built it, earns on what happens after the score rather than on the practice. Working with students since 2016, registered with SECP and FBR, ICEF accredited, and a British Council verified agent. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your English score sits inside a wider application, talk to an advisor before you book anything.