Why we built it
Most free English level tests are multiple-choice quizzes. They can tell whether you recognise the right word, but not whether you can use it. Yet writing is what universities, employers and exam boards ask you to do, and it’s the skill learners find hardest to judge for themselves.
CEFR Test gives you a writing task and assesses the language you actually produce. In 10 to 20 minutes you get an estimate of your level, a separate level for vocabulary, grammar and coherence, and specific things to practise next. It costs nothing and you can take it as often as you like.
What we believe
- Writing, not guessing. You show your level by writing, the way you would in a real exam, not by picking answers from a list.
- Honest about uncertainty. Every result shows a probability for all six levels and a confidence rating. If you sit between two levels, we say so.
- Sourced, not invented. Every exam-score conversion is taken from the organisation that publishes the exam, and linked so you can check it yourself.
- Free and private. No sign-up and no adverts. We don’t keep the text you write.
How the assessment works
Your writing is compared with descriptions of what writing looks like at each CEFR level, written in our own words from the Council of Europe’s descriptors for written production. Jev, an AI evaluation model from TypeSafe, reads your text and estimates which level it most resembles overall, and then for vocabulary range, grammatical accuracy and coherence. For English, a vocabulary profile built from published CEFR word lists colours each word by level, worked out entirely in your browser.
It is an estimate, not an exam. It judges writing only, and a single short text can’t show everything you can do. Read more in the guide to the test, or see what each result means in the CEFR level guide.
Who is behind it
CEFR Test is an independent project, built for language learners everywhere. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Council of Europe, IELTS, ETS, Duolingo, Cambridge University Press & Assessment or the Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. Their names appear only to explain how our estimates relate to their scales.
Help us improve
After a result you can tell us your official exam score, if you have one. That anonymous comparison is the best way we have to check our estimates against real exams. Spotted a problem, or have an idea? Get in touch — we read every message.