10 Best IELTS Preparation Apps in 2026: Free, Android & iPhone

Short answer: The best IELTS preparation app for most candidates in 2026 is IELTSbiz, a web app that needs no install, is free to start with no card and covers all four papers.

Among native apps, KeenIELTS gives away full mocks on Android and iPhone, One IELTS has the biggest question bank, and IELTS by IDP is the official app. The British Council and BBC apps have closed.

Being a web app rather than a download is exactly why IELTSbiz wins: it runs in any phone browser and pairs unlimited Cambridge-style reading practice with trap-level feedback and per-question-type band tracking that native apps rarely match.

Full disclosure before we go further: IELTSbiz is our own product, so treat our number-one ranking with the scepticism it deserves. We have kept the ranking anyway because the criteria below are ones any candidate can verify in an afternoon, and because we say plainly where each native app beats us.

One definition matters up front. A web app is an application that runs entirely in your phone's browser - Chrome, Safari, anything - with nothing to install, no app-store account, and no storage used.

IELTSbiz is a web app; most of the rest are native apps from Google Play or the App Store. Both approaches work on Android and iPhone, which is why they belong in the same roundup.

Re-checked on 24 September 2026, two entries changed shape: the British Council's IELTS Prep app is no longer in either store (its free material moved to the IELTS Ready website), and the BBC Learning English app closed on 13 December 2023 (its programmes are free online and as podcasts).

We kept both slots, rewritten around where to find the material now, so the numbering and older links still line up.

Here is the whole field at a glance, with prices checked as of September 2026. Shortlist two or three, then read the detailed notes for the trade-offs.

How we ranked these apps

We judged every app on the same four criteria, in this order. First, feedback depth: does the app explain why an answer was wrong, or just mark it? A thousand questions with a bare answer key teach less than fifty that name the trap.

Second, measurement: can you see your level by skill and question type over time, or only a single score at the end of a mock? Third, free access: is the free tier genuinely usable, or a teaser that expires in a day?

Fourth, price: what does the full product cost against what it actually unlocks.

Feedback and measurement outrank volume because they are what change your next attempt. One reason for that weighting: 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.

1. IELTSbiz - Best overall, and you never have to install it

IELTSbiz is the one entry here that is not in an app store, and that is a feature. Open ieltsbiz.com in any phone browser and you get the full product: no download, no storage, no permissions, and nothing to update. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app anyway.

What you get is the deepest Reading feedback loop on this list. It generates unlimited Cambridge-style passages on demand, organised by all 11 question types, so you can drill matching headings or True/False/Not Given one format at a time.

When you submit, the feedback names the exact distractor that tempted you and explains why the right answer wins - what we call trap-level feedback, meaning feedback that identifies the specific trap behind each wrong answer rather than just marking it.

The progress dashboard then tracks an estimated band per question type, so you can watch your Not Given accuracy move week by week.

Around the Reading core sit a scored Listening practice (Parts 1 to 4, one-play audio), an AI Writing Checker scored against all four official criteria, graded Speaking practice for Parts 1 to 3, a guided four-skill mock that ends in an estimated overall band, and a daily Word Coach for vocabulary.

The Band 8 Writing Trainer, marked paragraph by paragraph, is the one Pro-only feature.

The fair drawbacks: there is no native app, so no offline mode and no push notifications, and there is no live speaking practice with a human.

Pricing is free to start with no card, then from $7.99 a month or a $50 lifetime licence - a low paid ceiling for unlimited practice. Try a session of reading practice and judge the feedback yourself.

2. IELTS Prep by British Council - Best official free app

Update, September 2026: the IELTS Prep app has been withdrawn. It no longer appears on Google Play or the App Store, and the British Council's free-apps page now lists only LearnEnglish Podcast and LearnEnglish Videos. Similarly named apps in store search come from unrelated developers.

The British Council co-owns IELTS, so its material is still the most authentic free benchmark you can get - it simply lives in the browser now, on IELTS Ready.

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

Booking your test with the British Council unlocks IELTS Ready Premium free, with 40 full practice tests and self-study courses. Our IELTS Ready review covers both tiers.

The limits are the usual official ones. The free set is finite, so a committed user works through it in a few weeks, and there is no per-question-type band tracking across sessions.

Best for: every candidate, as the authentic benchmark alongside a feedback tool. It is free, so bookmark IELTS Ready on your phone's home screen in place of the old app.

A practical way to use it: sit its practice sets cold in your first week to establish an honest baseline, then return to the untouched remainder in your final fortnight as a transfer check.

Sandwiching your daily-drilling weeks between two official checkpoints tells you whether your third-party practice has been tracking the real exam all along.

3. IELTS by IDP - Best for booking plus prep in one app

IDP is the other co-owner of IELTS, and its official app doubles as test administration and preparation. You can book a test, manage your booking, check results when they arrive, and work through preparation articles, videos, podcasts, quizzes and an English self-assessment in the same place.

If you are taking the exam with IDP, that alone makes it worth installing - and with the British Council app withdrawn, it is the official IELTS-partner app on this list still in both stores.

As of September 2026 its Google Play listing also bundles two courses: a Macquarie University preparation course (15+ tutorials), free for 14 days with an option to upgrade, and E2's IELTS preparation, with lessons and live classes and more content behind a paid upgrade. Our IDP IELTS prep app review covers what each unlocks.

As a pure study tool it is solid rather than deep. The practice material is authentic, but it is a curated set with largely answer-key feedback, and it is not designed for high-volume daily drilling of a single weak question type. There is no distractor-level explanation and no long-run measurement.

Best for: IDP candidates who want booking, results and authentic practice in one place, paired with a feedback tool for the daily grind.

4. KeenIELTS - Best free full mock tests on a phone

KeenIELTS has built its reputation on one generous offer: free full-length IELTS mock tests across all four sections, with instant results and no card required.

As of September 2026 its website and its free Android and iPhone apps mirror the real exam's structure, funded by ads rather than a paywall, and it layers AI feedback on Writing and Speaking attempts plus question-type drills, which is rare at the free tier.

The honest cautions: mock volume is its strength, but the feedback on Reading and Listening leans toward answer keys rather than trap-level reasoning, and automated Writing and Speaking estimates are approximations rather than examiner marks. It is a place to sit exams more than a place to diagnose and fix a specific question-type weakness.

Best for: free, realistic full mocks under timed conditions. Sit one every week or two, then drill the formats it exposes somewhere with deeper explanation - our KeenIELTS alternative page maps that split in detail.

One timing tip: treat the free mocks as scheduled events rather than casual scrolls. Book a quiet hour, put the phone on do-not-disturb, and sit the whole section in a single pass the way test day will demand - a mock interrupted twice measures your interruptions, not your English.

5. One IELTS - Best for sheer question volume

One IELTS is the volume champion among native apps, advertising more than 15,000 practice questions and over 1,000 mock tests on its Google Play listing (as of September 2026) for both Academic and General Training, with AI scoring on Writing and Speaking and with timed conditions that simulate the real computer-delivered exam.

If your preparation style is repetition at scale, this is the biggest bank in a single install.

The trade-off is depth per question. With that much material, explanations tend to be brief, and the app is stronger at telling you your score than at explaining the reasoning behind each miss or tracking a band per question type over weeks.

The free tier is real but limited, with a subscription unlocking the full library.

Best for: high-volume drilling and computer-based mock familiarity. Our One IELTS alternative comparison shows how volume and feedback-depth tools complement each other.

6. Magoosh IELTS - Best video lessons in app form

Magoosh brings its trademark clear video teaching to IELTS: as of September 2026 its Premium course lists over 120 video lessons, 850 practice questions with explanation videos, up to 10 full-length mock tests and unlimited AI Writing and Speaking grading, plus free companion apps for lessons and vocabulary flashcards.

For candidates who want to be taught concepts step by step, the structure and production quality are the best here.

The value cautions are the usual course ones.

The plans page listed $109 for one month or $129 for six months in September 2026 - a higher price point than most of this list - the course now runs mainly in the browser (the iPhone app was last updated in 2019), the question bank is finite, and the Reading feedback is not built around naming the specific trap behind each wrong answer.

It teaches well; it drills less well.

Best for: learners who want a taught foundation before independent practice. See our Magoosh IELTS alternative page for how the two approaches pair.

7. BBC Learning English - Best free daily English habit

Update, September 2026: the BBC closed its Learning English app on 13 December 2023, and it no longer opens.

The content is still free and still the best daily habit on this list: the long-running 6 Minute English series, news-based vocabulary and grammar lessons with transcripts sit on the BBC Learning English website, and 6 Minute English is a free podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast apps.

BBC Learning English was never an IELTS product, and that is its value. Ten minutes a day in a podcast app quietly builds the general English level that IELTS ultimately measures - our guide to the best podcasts for IELTS Listening lists more shows like it.

The obvious limit: nothing here is in IELTS format. There are no band scores, no exam question types, and no measurement toward a target. It raises the water level rather than steering the boat, which is exactly what you want from a habit app but never enough on its own.

Best for: daily listening and vocabulary exposure for any candidate more than a month from test day.

8. LearnEnglish apps - Best free grammar and pronunciation drills

The British Council's LearnEnglish family - LearnEnglish Grammar, Sounds Right for pronunciation, LearnEnglish Podcasts and LearnEnglish Videos - is a set of free, focused single-purpose apps. Grammar in particular offers thousands of graded practice questions, and Sounds Right is a genuinely useful phonemic chart for fixing pronunciation habits before the Speaking test.

The limitation is fragmentation and format: each app does one thing, none is IELTS-specific, and progress does not connect across them. Treat them as free drills for a named weakness - articles, say, or a vowel sound an examiner would notice - rather than a preparation system.

Best for: patching specific grammar and pronunciation gaps at zero cost.

9. TED - Best stretch listening with transcripts

The free TED app is one of the best IELTS Listening trainers never designed for IELTS.

Thousands of talks by academic speakers mirror the lecture style of Listening Part 4, and the app's subtitles, full transcripts and adjustable playback speed let you train the exact skill of following an argument you cannot pause in real life.

The limit is that nothing is scored or exam-formatted. There are no questions, no band estimate, and accents and speeds vary far beyond what the test uses - which is good stretch training but poor calibration. Use it to build the ear, and use exam-format practice to measure it.

Best for: candidates targeting Band 7+ who find real lectures harder than practice audio.

10. Anki - Best vocabulary retention engine

Anki is the reference implementation of spaced repetition - a scheduling method that shows you each flashcard just before you would forget it, so vocabulary moves into long-term memory with minimal reviews. AnkiDroid on Android and the desktop app are free; the official iPhone app is a one-off paid purchase that funds the project.

The honest cost is setup effort. Anki gives you an engine, not a curriculum: you build or import decks, and the interface is famously utilitarian. It also does nothing for skills beyond vocabulary. Candidates who put in the first hour, though, rarely go back to anything else for word retention.

Best for: serious vocabulary building over months. Pair it with a daily source of new words such as the IELTSbiz Word Coach.

What should an IELTS app actually charge you for?

A simple rule keeps app-store spending honest: pay for feedback and measurement, never for information. Tips, model answers and word lists are abundant free across this list; what earns money is a tool that scores your work, explains your specific errors and tracks your level over weeks - the loop that actually shortens preparation.

By that rule, most candidates need at most one subscription. The paid ceilings here run from IELTSbiz's lifetime licence (from $50) to course subscriptions several times that per month, while the official apps cost nothing at all.

Decide which skill needs the paid loop, buy one tool for it, and keep everything else free - our guide to the best paid IELTS prep websites goes deeper on where an upgrade genuinely pays off.

Do you actually need a native app to prepare for IELTS?

No - and it is worth being clear-eyed about this, because app stores are not where preparation quality lives. A native app earns its install when you need offline audio, push-notification habits, or booking integration. Everything else - practice, feedback, scoring, tracking - works identically in a phone browser.

The real question is the one from our ranking criteria: which tool gives you feedback deep enough to change your next attempt, and measurement honest enough to prove you are improving? Sometimes that is a native app.

In our view the strongest answer in 2026 is a web app, but the criteria matter more than our conclusion - apply them yourself.

How should you combine these apps?

The strongest phone setup is a small stack, not a full home screen. Use one measurement-and-feedback tool as the daily driver - IELTSbiz in our lineup. Add one authentic official source for calibration, the IDP app or the British Council's IELTS Ready site.

Add one habit app matched to your gap: a 6 Minute English podcast or TED for listening exposure, Anki for vocabulary.

Which IELTS app is best for beginners?

Beginners - roughly Band 5 and below - need structure before volume.

A sensible first month: Magoosh or the free IELTS Ready modules to learn how each section works, BBC Learning English (6 Minute English) or the LearnEnglish Grammar app for daily general English, and short IELTSbiz drills on one question type at a time, where the feedback explains every miss rather than just marking it.

Leave full mocks such as KeenIELTS until the section formats feel familiar, because a first mock sat too early mostly measures unfamiliarity.

Then stop installing. Two or three apps used every day beat ten opened once, and the fastest gains come from pointing your daily tool at your weakest skill.

Find that skill with the free Band Score Calculator, and if it is Reading - it usually is - start with a few sessions of targeted practice and let the feedback set the agenda.

For the browser-based side of the same decision, our roundup of the best IELTS websites in 2026 covers the full field.