Short answer: IELTS Simon is ex-examiner Simon Corcoran's IELTS school, and it is no longer free.
His blog closed with its host in September 2025; the lessons now live on ielts-simon.study, a members' site at £50 a month as of September 2026, with a new lesson daily, homework he corrects, his ebooks and a weekly Zoom class. We rate it 8.5/10.
For measured practice with instant feedback between those corrections, IELTSbiz is the stronger platform.
Some IELTS teachers built brands; Simon built a doctrine. "You don't need difficult grammar to get Band 9" is still, fifteen years on, the most quietly radical sentence in IELTS preparation - and it happens to be true.
What is IELTS Simon?
IELTS Simon is the teaching identity of Simon Corcoran, a former IELTS examiner from Manchester who left his university job in 2010 to teach IELTS full time.
His daily-lesson blog became one of the most widely read IELTS resources ever created: short posts, each making one point, backed by model answers written to genuine Band 9 standard.
A practical 2026 note: the original blog's hosting platform shut down at the end of September 2025, and the content migrated to ielts-simon.study, the current members' site, alongside the long-standing ielts-simon.com homepage.
If you find dead links to old blog posts around the web, that is why - the material is not gone, just moved.
The business model moved with it. Where the paid catalogue used to be a few one-off ebooks and a video course, as of September 2026 everything sits inside one membership.
The ielts-simon.com homepage lists what it includes: a new lesson every day, homework tasks that Simon checks and corrects, his ebooks and video courses, and a live Zoom lesson every Friday.
Is IELTS Simon still free in 2026?
No. The free blog ended when its host closed in September 2025.
On ielts-simon.study, lesson titles are public but the lessons themselves sit behind a member login, and the registration page lists one plan: £50 a month, renewing automatically until you cancel (as of September 2026; a discount-code field is shown).
There is no free tier on the new site that we could find.
Is it still updated? Yes.
When we checked on 24 September 2026, the member site listed a new lesson for every day from 14 to 23 September, rotating across Reading, Listening, Writing Task 1 and 2, General Training letters and Speaking (for example, a True/False/Not Given Reading lesson on 22 September and a Task 2 introduction on 21 September).
Who is IELTS Simon for?
Simon suits candidates drowning in complexity: anyone who has been told they need "advanced vocabulary" and "complex structures" and watched their score fall as their sentences inflated. His method strips writing back to clear position, clear paragraphs, precise simple language - and examiners reward it because clarity is what the descriptors actually describe.
He also suits self-studiers who will actually do the homework: at £50 a month, the membership pays off for candidates who submit tasks for his correction every week, and a two- or three-month run is the realistic budget.
He fits less well if you need a free resource, instant marking, or polished modern production - the materials are text-first, minimal and unchanged in spirit from the blog era, and corrections arrive on a human timetable.
What you actually get
The lesson archive
The migrated archive is the foundation: years of daily lessons covering every module, organised by paper on the members' site. The Writing Task 2 material is the crown jewel - dozens of full Band 9 essays with the thinking explained, demonstrating again and again that simple, well-organised English scores at the top of the scale.
The ebooks
The ebooks collect and organise the method into downloadable PDFs. Their value is curation: the blog's best decade, arranged as a syllabus instead of a scroll.
As of September 2026 the ebooks page lists Ideas for IELTS Topics (with an audio version) and 365 IELTS Exercises, which members download as PDFs; we found no separate purchase option.
The video course
The video course walks through the method on real-style tasks across all parts of the exam, in the same plain register as the writing: no theatrics, just an examiner's eye moving through a task the way he wants you to.
On the members' site it is organised by paper - 10 Reading lessons, 2 Listening, 10 Speaking, 8 Academic Task 1, 5 General Training letters, 8 Task 2 and 7 on the Writing band descriptors, as of September 2026.
Homework correction and Zoom lessons
This is the part that is new since the blog era, and the most valuable: members get homework tasks that Simon checks and corrects himself, plus a live Zoom lesson every Friday, with 55+ past Zoom lessons listed by topic.
It turns a teach-and-model resource into one with a human feedback loop - slower than instant marking, but from the examiner whose method you are learning.
Pricing (as of 2026)
| Tier | What you get | Price (as of September 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Old blog (ielts-simon.com) | Closed with its host at the end of September 2025; the homepage now points to the members' site | - |
| ielts-simon.study membership | Daily lessons, homework correction, ebooks, video lessons, Friday Zoom lessons | £50 a month, renews until you cancel |
That is a change of model: Simon's material used to be a free blog plus modest one-off purchases. Check the registration page for the current price and any discount code before you join, and cancel when you stop submitting homework - that is where the money earns its keep.
Pros and cons
Pros
Genuine ex-examiner authority - the method describes the descriptors from the inside. The most convincing Band 9 model answers in the business, precisely because they avoid showing off. Homework corrected by the examiner himself, plus a weekly live lesson.
Still updated daily in 2026. A "simple is better" doctrine that measurably helps over-complicated writers. Fifteen years of consistency.
Cons
No longer free: the old blog's open archive is now behind a £50 monthly membership. Feedback runs on a human timetable - Simon corrects homework, but nothing marks your answers instantly or tracks your band. The materials are static and text-first, with production values from the blog era.
The 2025 migration left broken links scattered across the wider web. And there is no practice engine or measurement - you study the method, then must source timed practice and scoring elsewhere.
Verdict: 8.5/10
IELTS Simon earns an 8.5/10. As pure writing instruction it is still arguably the best-calibrated material available anywhere, from a teacher whose examiner credentials show in every model answer - and the membership now adds his own corrections.
The missing points are the modern ones: no instant feedback, no practice engine, no measurement, and a monthly bill where there used to be a free blog. Simon can correct this week's homework; he cannot tell you, essay after essay, how far from Band 9 you currently are.
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.
Simon's method and IELTSbiz's measurement are two halves of the same preparation. Once his lessons teach you that a clear, simple essay scores Band 9, the operational question becomes: is my essay that essay yet?
The IELTSbiz Writing Checker answers it in seconds, grading against all four official criteria with sentence-level reasons - and every correction quotes the sentence it is about, so you can check the feedback against your own essay (how we check our marking).
Reading gets the same treatment Simon's static materials cannot provide: Cambridge-style generated passages by question type, trap-level feedback on every wrong answer, and per-question-type band tracking that turns weeks of practice into a visible trend.
Pricing keeps the Simon spirit: free to start with no card, then from $7.99/month or a one-off $50 lifetime plan (pricing) - the lifetime option being exactly the kind of pay-once fairness his ebooks pioneered.
The honest pairing: Simon's membership for the doctrine and his weekly corrections, IELTSbiz for the daily loop in between - write, check, fix one criterion, repeat - so the essay you send Simon is already your third draft, not your first.
IELTS Simon vs IELTSbiz at a glance
| Feature | IELTS Simon | IELTSbiz |
|---|---|---|
| Price (as of 2026) | £50/month membership (September 2026) | Free to start; from $7.99/month or $50 lifetime |
| Writing feedback | Model answers, plus homework corrected by Simon | AI four-criteria band report in seconds, every correction quoted |
| Reading practice | Lessons and strategies, static | Unlimited generated passages with trap-level feedback |
| Band tracking | None | Per-question-type band tracking across sessions |
| Free tier | None on the new site; the old free blog closed in 2025 | Full practice loop with daily limits, no card |
Beyond Writing: the reading and speaking materials
Writing made the name, but the other modules deserve a note.
The reading lessons teach a spare, repeatable passage-attack method - read the questions' demands first, locate by keyword and paraphrase, answer from the text rather than from opinion - that pairs naturally with his general distrust of tricks.
There are no speed-reading gimmicks, just procedure, which is why it holds up under exam pressure.
The speaking materials apply the same simplicity doctrine out loud: full, natural answers in plain English, with model responses that sound like a fluent person talking rather than a textbook reciting. For candidates who have been coached into overwrought "advanced" answers, the recalibration is often worth half a band by itself.
Listening gets the lightest coverage of the four - reasonable, since listening improves through volume of practice more than through method, and volume is exactly what a lesson archive cannot provide.
The cross-module constant is the voice: one examiner's judgment, consistently applied. That coherence is rare and valuable - and it is also why the materials pair so well with a practice platform that supplies the volume and the measurement the archive deliberately does not attempt.
Why simple English outscores complex English
The doctrine deserves its own section because so many candidates disbelieve it. The Writing descriptors reward accurate and appropriate language at every level - and penalise error density hard.
A candidate producing error-free simple and compound sentences demonstrates more control than one producing broken conditionals, and control is what the Grammatical Range and Accuracy descriptor actually measures.
Simon's model essays prove the point by existing: they contain no exotic vocabulary and no acrobatic grammar, and they would score Band 9 because every sentence is precise, every paragraph coheres and every part of the question is answered. The sophistication is structural, not decorative.
The practical translation for your next essay: only write a sentence pattern you can finish correctly under pressure. Range grows in practice, not in the exam hall - the exam is where you deploy what is already reliable.
Ebooks or video course: which to buy first
As of September 2026 you no longer have to choose: one membership unlocks both, so the real question is which to open first.
For most candidates it is the Writing material - the Task 2 videos and model answers - because Writing is where the method is most distinctive, where self-study most often goes wrong, and where model answers carry the most information per page.
The video lessons earn their place for candidates who process demonstration better than text - watching the method applied to a live task teaches pacing and decision-making that the page cannot. Reading-weak candidates should note the reading materials specifically: the passage-attack method is simple and repeatable.
Because membership is monthly, sequencing now costs money: in month one, download the ebooks, work the Task 2 videos and submit homework every week; renew only if the corrections are still changing how you write.
What the 2025 migration means for you
Practically, three things. First, old bookmarks and forum links to the blog-era URLs are dead - search for the lesson title at ielts-simon.study instead, as the material largely survives at the new home (behind the member login).
Second, membership and its downloads now run through the new site, so treat it as the canonical source and ignore third-party rehosts of his PDFs, which are both unauthorised and frequently outdated.
Third, the migration is a useful reminder about single-teacher resources generally: archives move, platforms close. Take notes as you study rather than relying on the URL being there next year - the method fits comfortably in a notebook, which was always rather the point of it.
How to study the Simon method properly
Do not read model answers - reverse-engineer them. Take a Band 9 model, outline its paragraph logic in four lines, then write your own answer to the same question from that outline before re-reading his. The gap between the two drafts is your personal syllabus.
Then quantify the gap: run your version through the Writing Checker and see which criterion sits lowest. Simon's simplicity doctrine most often lifts Grammatical Range scores - because error-free simple sentences beat broken complex ones - but only measurement tells you whether that is your cap or whether Task Response is.
For the surrounding field, see our guides to the Band 7 essay structure, how Writing is actually scored, and the best IELTS websites in 2026.
Bottom line: who should choose what
Choose IELTS Simon if you want the clearest doctrine in IELTS writing from a genuine ex-examiner, with his own corrections on your homework: join for a month or two at £50 a month and submit every task you are set.
Over-complicated writers - the Band 6.5 candidates drowning in memorised "advanced" phrases - benefit most and fastest.
Look elsewhere first if you need a free resource, instant marking or modern production; the materials are deliberately spartan, and corrections arrive on a human timetable rather than in seconds.
Choose IELTSbiz for the loop the archive cannot close: a four-criteria checker to score the essays Simon teaches you to write, generated reading passages with trap-level feedback, and per-question-type band tracking - free to start, from $7.99/month or $50 lifetime.
The method tells you what Band 9 looks like; the measurement tells you your distance from it, essay by essay.
Together they cover doctrine, human correction, daily practice and verification - Simon for what Band 9 looks like and an examiner's corrections, IELTSbiz for the instant marking in between. Few pairings in IELTS preparation are this complete.