The team behind the Duolingo English Test (DET) has released a study that lines up each of its four skill subscores with the matching IELTS Academic band. Until now, universities could only compare the two tests at the level of the overall score, using a table first published in 2022. That overall table has not been changed by the new work.
Key facts
- What New DET to IELTS concordance for the four skill subscores
- Published 26 August 2026
- Overall table Unchanged since 2022
- Sample 1,942 people with both DET and IELTS Academic scores
How the study was done
DET score reports began showing separate Speaking, Writing, Reading and Listening subscores on 1 July 2024. For the study, Duolingo invited people who sat the DET between 26 April and 13 September 2024 to share official IELTS Academic results. The final group was 1,942 people with both sets of scores: 591 took IELTS after the DET and 1,351 took it before.
The paired scores correlated at 0.73 overall and between 0.53 and 0.68 for the individual skills. Reading and Listening could be mapped across the whole score range. Speaking reached an IELTS equivalent of 8.5 at the top. Writing stopped at 7.5 or 8.0, which the authors put down to how few people score at the very top of IELTS Writing rather than to any weakness in the DET task.
The authors advise extra care at the ends of the scale, roughly below 60 or above 150 on the DET.
What this means
This is a research publication, not a change to the test itself. Your DET score, its 10 to 160 scale and the way it is calculated stay the same. What may change is how some universities set or read subscore requirements, since they now have an official table for each skill. If a university asks for, say, IELTS 6.5 with no skill below 6.0, check whether it has published its own DET equivalents per skill, and use those rather than any table you find elsewhere. Before you book, read the admissions page of every university on your list and, if the requirement is unclear, email admissions and ask which DET subscores they accept.