Short answer: IELTS Buddy (ieltsbuddy.com) is a long-running IELTS lesson site, and its core is free: lessons for all four skills, sample essays, practice tests, forums, a podcast and YouTube.
As of September 2026 the paid extras are ebooks (all four Writing ebooks for $25) and courses on ieltsbuddy.courses, including ex-examiner band scores. We rate it 7.5/10.
Its limit is structural: a free library cannot mark you, and the paid band score comes without reasons. For measured practice, IELTSbiz is the stronger platform.
"Free IELTS website" usually means a thin teaser wrapped around a sales page. IELTS Buddy is the honourable exception - a site that has spent years simply giving the material away - which makes it worth reviewing on its actual merits.
What is IELTS Buddy?
IELTS Buddy (ieltsbuddy.com) is a long-established free IELTS preparation website built by experienced IELTS teachers. Its catalogue spans all four skills: strategy lessons, grammar and vocabulary guides, sample essays with comments, practice reading and listening tests, and speaking topics with model responses.
Around the core site sit satellite channels: a YouTube channel with training videos across Writing, Reading, Listening and Speaking, a podcast discussing the site's best lessons, and community forums where test takers share essays, questions and experiences.
The business model is refreshingly simple: the lesson site is free, and the paid layer sits beside it - ebooks for candidates who want the material curated into downloadable form, and, on a separate course site (ieltsbuddy.courses), paid courses and marking from an ex-IELTS examiner.
Who is IELTS Buddy for?
The site suits self-studiers at the start and middle of preparation: candidates building their understanding of what each task demands, what band descriptors reward, and what good answers look like. As a free foundation course in written form, it covers remarkable ground.
It particularly suits Writing students on a zero budget - the sample essay collections, spanning common Task 2 question types with commentary, teach the shape of scoring answers without costing anything.
It fits less well for candidates in the final weeks who need volume under timed conditions with scoring, or anyone whose plateau requires diagnosis rather than more explanation.
What you actually get
Lessons across all four skills
The lesson library is organised by skill and task type: Task 1 report structures, Task 2 essay types, reading strategies for each question format, listening tips and speaking frameworks. The writing is clear, practical and teacher-authored - closer to a coursebook than a blog.
Sample essays and model answers
The sample essay collections are the standout free asset: real question types answered at scoring standard, often with commentary on why the answer works. Studied actively - outline first, write your own, then compare - they function as a free writing course.
Practice tests
Free reading and listening practice with answers covers the main question formats. The volume is respectable for a free site, though smaller than dedicated test-bank platforms, and marking is answer-key style: you learn what was right, less about why you chose wrong.
Forums, podcast and YouTube
The forums give the site its "buddy" character: visitors post essays for comment, ask about test experiences and share results. The podcast and YouTube channel repackage the site's teaching for audio and video learners. Community answers vary in quality, as community answers do - weight teacher-authored pages above forum replies.
Is IELTS Buddy free, and what do the paid courses add?
The lesson site is free: every lesson, sample essay, practice test, the forums, the podcast and the YouTube channel. What you pay for, as of September 2026, lives on ieltsbuddy.courses, which advertises teaching and support from an ex-IELTS examiner:
- Writing ebooks - all four Writing ebooks for $25 (advertised as 30% off).
- Courses - Writing courses (including an Academic Task 1 and 2 course that the course listing says includes essay feedback), virtual Writing classrooms, computer-delivered practice tests, and Reading, vocabulary and grammar courses.
- Writing band score - timed computer-based Task 1 and Task 2 practice; an ex-examiner returns a band for one Task 1 and one Task 2, usually within 48 hours. The course page is candid that you get an overall band per task, "not feedback on why you received that score".
- Premium bundle - six months of access to all current courses, band scores for Listening, Reading, a mock Speaking test and one Task 1 and Task 2, plus weekly exercises (one-to-one tuition excluded).
Course prices appear at checkout rather than on the listing pages, so check their site for current pricing; new sign-ups were offered 10% off a first purchase in September 2026. IELTS Buddy also offers a money-back guarantee on any product you do not like.
Pricing (as of 2026)
| Tier | What you get | Price (as of September 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Website, forums, YouTube, podcast | Lessons, samples, practice tests, community | Free |
| Writing ebooks | Four Writing ebooks, downloadable | $25 for the bundle |
| Courses and band scores (ieltsbuddy.courses) | Video courses, practice tests, ex-examiner band scores, Premium bundle | Shown at checkout - check their site |
Pros and cons
Pros
Genuinely free at a depth most "free" sites never approach. Teacher-authored lessons with coursebook clarity. Excellent sample essay collections. An active community for peer support. Multiple formats - text, video, audio - covering the same curriculum.
Cons
No feedback loop on the free site: it explains and models, but cannot mark your essays or tell you why your reading answers were wrong - and the paid band-score service returns a number per task without the reasons behind it.
No measurement - your band, and its movement, stay invisible. Practice volume is finite. And the site's design shows its age, which matters little for learning but makes navigation less efficient than modern platforms.
Verdict: 7.5/10
IELTS Buddy earns a 7.5/10. Judged as what it is - a free, teacher-written IELTS library with a community attached - it is close to the best of its kind, and its generosity deserves plain acknowledgment. The ceiling is the format: explanation without examination.
It will teach you the test thoroughly and then leave you to discover, on test day, what band all that understanding is worth.
The best alternative: IELTSbiz
Full disclosure before this section: IELTSbiz is our own platform, so weigh that as you read. We think the case stands on the facts either way.
IELTS Buddy answers "how does this test work?"; IELTSbiz answers "how am I actually doing at it?"
Its Cambridge-style reading passages are generated fresh by question type, every wrong answer comes back with trap-level feedback naming the exact trap that caught you, and your estimated band is tracked per question type - so the plateau that a library cannot explain shows up as data you can act on.
The AI Writing Checker turns IELTS Buddy's sample-essay study into a closed loop: write your own answer to the same question, get a four-criteria band estimate in seconds, fix the lowest criterion, repeat.
The feedback is checkable: the IELTSbiz Writing Checker quotes the sentence behind every correction, so you can check its feedback against your own essay (how we check our marking).
And the pricing respects free-first students: the practice loop is free to start with no card, with Pro from $7.99/month or a one-off $50 lifetime plan (pricing) only when the free limits genuinely bind.
The honest pairing: keep IELTS Buddy as your free reference shelf - its explanations cost nothing and read well - and run your actual daily practice where wrong answers get explained and progress gets measured.
If you do buy an ex-examiner band score from IELTS Buddy, the checker is how you find the reasons behind it: run the same essay through it and see which of the four criteria sits lowest.
IELTS Buddy vs IELTSbiz at a glance
| Feature | IELTS Buddy | IELTSbiz |
|---|---|---|
| Price (as of 2026) | Free site; $25 Writing ebook bundle; courses priced at checkout | Free to start; from $7.99/month or $50 lifetime |
| Writing feedback | Sample essays and forum comments free; paid ex-examiner band per task, no reasons given | AI four-criteria band report in seconds, every correction quoted |
| Reading practice | Free tests with answer keys | Unlimited generated passages with trap-level feedback |
| Band tracking | None | Per-question-type band tracking across sessions |
| Free tier | Nearly everything | Full practice loop with daily limits, no card |
A sample study week built on IELTS Buddy
Here is how the site's free material assembles into a working routine. Monday and Tuesday: one writing lesson plus its sample essays, ending with your own timed answer to the same question type. Wednesday: a reading strategy page followed by one of the site's practice passages, marked and reviewed.
Thursday: speaking - take one topic from the collections, prepare with the site's framework, record yourself for two minutes, and listen back once critically. Friday: a listening practice set, plus the podcast on your commute as low-effort reinforcement.
Weekend: the comparison hour. Reread Monday's sample essay against your own attempt and list three concrete differences - this single exercise, done weekly, teaches more than any amount of additional reading. Then post the essay to the forums if you want encouragement, and run it through a criterion-level checker if you want a number.
Total cost of the week: nothing. Total gap in the week: nobody marked anything you produced except you - which is the precise shape of the hole a measurement platform fills.
The forums, examined
Community is IELTS Buddy's most distinctive feature and its most variable one, so it deserves a fair look. At their best, the forums deliver two things paid products struggle with: recent test-taker experience - what topics appeared, how strict timing felt, what surprised people - and the plain morale value of preparing alongside others.
At their weakest, they deliver confident wrong answers. Peer band estimates on posted essays scatter wildly against what examiners would give, and grammar corrections from fellow learners are right most of the time, which is a dangerous ratio.
The usage rule that keeps the value and dodges the risk: trust the forums for experience and encouragement, trust teacher-authored pages for technique, and trust neither for scoring - measurement needs an instrument, not a vote.
IELTS Buddy across the four skills
Writing is the deepest shelf: task-type lessons plus the commented sample collections amount to a real free course, and the General Training letters material is better than most paid platforms bother to make. Speaking is next: topic lists, model responses and the frameworks for developing answers.
Reading and listening are solid but thinner - good strategy pages and a respectable set of practice tests, without the volume or the timing engine that heavy drilling requires. Most candidates will outgrow the practice sections before they outgrow the lessons.
That profile suggests the natural division of labour: IELTS Buddy as your theory and models layer, a practice platform as your volume and measurement layer.
When a free library stops being enough
Every self-studier hits the same inflection point, usually six to eight weeks in: understanding stops being the bottleneck. You know what True/False/Not Given wants; you still miss four of them per test, and re-reading the strategy page changes nothing.
The library has done its job, and the remaining gap is diagnostic - which traps catch you, which criterion caps your essays.
The signals you have arrived: practice scores plateau for two consecutive weeks; you recognise every tip on the page; your errors feel random rather than ignorant. At that point more explanation is comfort, not progress, and the next band lives in measured feedback on your own answers.
How to use IELTS Buddy well
Study the samples actively. For each sample essay: cover it, outline your own answer to the question, write it timed, then compare against the model and its commentary. Passive reading of good essays feels productive and changes little; the compare step is where the learning lives.
Use the forums for morale and test-day intelligence, not for scoring - peer band estimates are guesses, warmly meant. When you want a number you can plan around, get a criterion-level estimate, not a single headline number.
For the wider free field, see the best free IELTS practice websites and the best IELTS websites in 2026; for the trap patterns answer keys never explain, start with the five common Reading traps.
Bottom line: who should choose what
Choose IELTS Buddy as your free reference shelf: it explains the test, models good answers and offers community warmth at a depth few genuinely free sites match. Foundation-stage candidates and zero-budget Writing students get the most from it.
Recognise the handover point: when understanding stops being your bottleneck - flat practice scores, familiar tips, random-feeling errors - the library has done its work, and more reading will not move the band.
Choose IELTSbiz for what comes after the handover: trap-level feedback that explains every wrong reading answer, per-question-type band tracking, and a writing checker that marks all four criteria separately - free to start, so the transition costs nothing, with Pro from $7.99/month or $50 lifetime when the limits bind.
The two make a natural sequence rather than a rivalry: learn the test on the buddy system, then measure yourself against it. Free study plus free measurement is the strongest zero-cost start available in 2026 - and the measured half is the one that finishes the job.