How BandVisa works
From signup to your first band score in about 15 minutes — here's the whole journey.
1 · Create your free account
Sign up with your name, email and a password — that’s it. No card, no trial timer. Tell us your target test, band and destination so we can point you at the right tasks and show your gap on the dashboard.
2 · Get your baseline — the free diagnostic
Start with a short diagnostic: one section per skill, about 25 minutes, free. At the end you get an estimated score on your test’s scale, the skill holding you back, and exactly what to practise first. It can’t be drilled — its questions never appear in practice — and a re-sit waits a fortnight so the number stays honest. Academies on BandVisa can also run it for a whole class, trainer-supervised, with the trainer seeing the full marked paper.
3 · Choose a writing task
Pick from original IELTS tasks (Academic Task 1 charts, General Training letters, Task 2 essays) or PTE tasks (Summarize Written Text, Write Essay). Every prompt is original and written to match the real exam’s style, timing and word limits.
4 · Write under real exam conditions
The editor gives you exactly what the exam gives you: a countdown timer, a live word count that warns you below the minimum, and nothing else. Your work autosaves every few seconds — a dropped connection never loses your writing.
5 · Submit and get graded in under a minute
Our AI examiner scores your writing against the official criteria — Task Achievement, Coherence & Cohesion, Lexical Resource and Grammar for IELTS; content, form, grammar, vocabulary and spelling for PTE. The same script always gets the same score, so your progress is real, not noise.
6 · Learn from every mistake
Your feedback quotes your exact sentences, names each problem, and shows the corrected version. You also get a model answer written for the exact prompt you attempted — so you can see what your target band looks like in practice.
7 · Track your band to the target
Your dashboard shows your best score against your target, your history over time, and which criterion is holding you back — so every practice session has a purpose.
A few honest limits
- Scores are careful estimates for practice — your official band comes from the real test.
- There's a fair-use daily limit on AI gradings so the service can stay free for everyone.
- Full mock tests are opened by a trainer, not self-served — and the diagnostic waits 14 days between self-serve sittings — because a score you could retake all afternoon would stop meaning anything.