Duolingo English Test for Visas: Ireland Study Yes, UK No

The Duolingo English Test is on neither of the two UK Home Office SELT lists, the one for tests taken in the UK and the one for tests taken outside it. It is not accepted for Canadian Express Entry or citizenship, it is absent from every Australian list we read, and it is not among the seven tests Immigration New Zealand lists for a skilled residence visa, while New Zealand's Accredited Employer Work Visa page separately rules out any test taken remotely outside a test centre. Of the authorities we checked, Ireland is the one that names it, and it names it on its study visa standards rather than for Irish immigration generally.

The mistake that costs money is not picking the wrong test. It is seeing that a university accepts DET and assuming the immigration authority behind that university accepts it too. Those are two separate decisions, made by two separate bodies, and only one of them issues your visa.

One warning before any of the tables below, because it decides which list you are even reading. A country's general English language page is not guaranteed to be the last word. Australia's general page splits its approved tests at 7 August 2025, and that date is the operative one for a subclass that publishes no table of its own. But a subclass page can override it, and at least one does: the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) page splits at 13 September 2025 and lists eight tests rather than nine, dropping Cambridge C1 Advanced from its current table. Home Affairs sends you there from the general page itself: you must check what level of English you need and what evidence you must provide for the visa you want to apply for, through the eligibility page of the relevant visa subclass. So 7 August 2025 is the general page's date, and one subclass we read does not use it.

If you want daily speaking practice while you sort out the paperwork, SpeakShark is free with three AI conversation sessions a day and no card, each capped at five minutes and four turns, with basic speaking feedback.

In this guide: the answer by authority · the UK · Canada · Australia and New Zealand · Ireland · the United States · the traps · what to practise · what we could not verify · how we researched this guide · FAQ

Key takeaways

• The Duolingo English Test appears on neither Home Office SELT list. We downloaded both approved test spreadsheets, one for tests taken in the UK and one for tests taken outside the UK, and a case insensitive search for the string duolingo returns no match in either file. The two files do not hold the same providers: Trinity College London appears only in the in-UK file, PSI Service (UK) Ltd only in the outside-UK file.
• Ireland is the exception, and its study visa table gives DET two different figures: 55 for second level, foundation level or preparatory English courses, and 75 for all other courses. Those are two columns, not a range from 55 to 75, and the conditions in Ireland's own footnotes all hang off the 55 column.
• Canada's study permit eligibility list contains no language test at all, so DET can genuinely support a study permit. A post-graduation work permit applied for on or after 1 November 2024 requires proof of English or French, and IRCC's conversion tables cover only CELPIP General, IELTS General Training, PTE Core, TEF Canada and TCF Canada.
• Australia rules out fully online tests as a category, so DET fails twice there: absent from every Australian list we read, and excluded by delivery mode. It names six rejected online products, and every one of those six brands is accepted in an in-person form, so the bar is on delivery rather than on the brand. Read your own visa subclass page as well as the general one, because at least one subclass, 482, publishes a different cutoff date and a shorter list than the general page.
• New Zealand requires the test to be sat in person at a test centre and the result to be no more than 2 years old at the time you apply, on the skilled residence page and the Accredited Employer Work Visa page alike. DET is not among the seven tests Immigration New Zealand lists on its skilled residence page, and because DET is delivered at home the in person rule blocks it on the Accredited Employer Work Visa route as well.

The answer, authority by authority

Every row below carries the scope condition printed above the list on the official page, because that condition is where these lists go wrong when they are copied.

An approved list split by where you sit the test, or by the date you sat it, is not one list. Flatten it and you tell somebody to book a sitting that will not produce a usable result.

Read the Australian rows as three separate lists, not one. The general English language page carries two of them, split by date, and the subclass 482 page carries its own under a different cutoff, so the row that applies to you depends on the subclass you are applying under as well as on when you sat the test.

The UK: neither Home Office list contains it

gov.uk is blunt about how this works. Its SELT guidance states that if you intend to use an English language test in your immigration or nationality application, you must take one of the tests on the list.

Reputation is not a criterion. Being on the list is the criterion.

The guidance then sets three conditions together: for your results to be accepted, your test must be on the list of approved English language tests, have been sat at an approved test location, and have been awarded in the two years before the date of your application.

Note where that clock starts. The UK counts two years back from the date of your application, which is not the same as counting back from your course start date.

The provider list is published twice, under two headings. Under "If you are in the UK" the approved providers are Trinity College London, the IELTS SELT Consortium, LANGUAGECERT and Pearson. Under "If you are outside of the UK" they are PSI Services (UK) Ltd, the IELTS SELT Consortium, LANGUAGECERT and Pearson.

Trinity appears only on the in-country list. PSI appears only on the overseas list. Duolingo appears on neither, and it is not made approved by the fact that both lists are short. Our guide to which English test a UK visa needs walks through that split in full.

Getting the provider right is not enough here either. gov.uk names the exact product for each provider: IELTS SELT Consortium means "IELTS for UKVI" or "IELTS Life Skills"; LANGUAGECERT means "LANGUAGECERT International ESOL SELT" or "LANGUAGECERT Academic SELT" or "LANGUAGECERT General SELT"; Pearson means "PTE Academic UKVI" or "PTE Home"; PSI Services means "Skills for English UKVI"; and Trinity College London means its Secure English Language Tests for UKVI, which are Integrated Skills in English (ISE) or Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE). Booking IELTS Academic from an approved provider buys you a result the Home Office will not take.

We did not stop at the web page. The Home Office also publishes the approved tests as spreadsheets, one titled for tests taken in the UK and one for tests taken outside the UK. We downloaded both and searched them, and they do not hold the same providers.

Those are the spellings the two files use, so the overseas file writes PSI Service (UK) Ltd where the gov.uk web page writes PSI Services (UK) Ltd. Trinity College London does not appear anywhere in the outside-UK file, and PSI does not appear anywhere in the in-UK file. A case insensitive search for duolingo returns no match in either. If you sit overseas, the fourth provider available to you is PSI, not Trinity.

There is one narrow UK doorway, and it is narrower than people think. For the Student visa, gov.uk says that if you do not have any qualifications that prove your knowledge of English, you will need to pass a SELT from an approved provider. It then adds that if you are studying at degree level or above, your Higher Education Provider can assess your level of English themselves, and may ask you to do a different test, which must still be equivalent to a CEFR level B2.

That is the only route by which a DET result can matter for a UK Student visa, and the condition sits inside the sentence. Below degree level the standard is CEFR B1 and no self assessment route is offered at all.

gov.uk never names Duolingo on that page, so whether a given university uses DET this way is a question for that university. If you need to know what B1 and B2 actually mean before you plan around them, CEFR levels explained for speaking and what a B1 English test is cover the scale.

For the family and settlement routes there is no self assessment doorway at all, which is why the UK spouse visa A1 requirement, the A2 extension test and the B1 settlement speaking test all point at SELT providers. If you already hold an IELTS certificate, check which product it is, because IELTS UKVI, Academic and General are not interchangeable either.

Duolingo's own page about the UK is consistent with all of this, which is worth saying plainly. It states that the Duolingo English Test is accepted as proof of English proficiency by many programs in the UK. Programs, not visas. The page makes no claim about the UK visa or about SELT status.

Canada: fine for the study permit, useless after it

Canada is where DET genuinely works, and where the trap is delayed rather than immediate.

The study permit eligibility list contains no language test. IRCC asks you to be enrolled at a designated learning institution, prove you can pay tuition and living costs, obey the law and hold a police certificate if required, be in good health and get a medical exam if required, and prove to an officer that you will leave Canada when your study permit expires.

No test appears anywhere in that list. So the English standard you actually have to clear is your institution's, and many Canadian institutions accept DET. Duolingo's own Canada page says the same thing accurately: IRCC does not require students to take an English test to apply for a Canadian study permit.

Then the pathway continues, and the list arrives. A post-graduation work permit applied for on or after 1 November 2024 requires proof of English or French language skills, with the only exception being graduates of a PGWP-eligible flight school. IRCC's score conversion tables for that permit cover CELPIP General, IELTS General Training, PTE Core, TEF Canada and TCF Canada.

Express Entry uses the same closed set: CELPIP-General, IELTS General Training, PTE Core, TEF Canada and TCF Canada. For citizenship, IRCC states it does not accept any other third-party test results, even if they are similar.

So a student can arrive on a DET score, spend two years and a full tuition bill, and discover at the work permit stage that they need a test they have never sat. Our guide to English tests for Canadian immigration covers the version conditions in detail.

Getting the brand right is not enough for Canada. IRCC names the exact product: CELPIP must be CELPIP-General, IELTS must be the General Training option, and IELTS One Skill Retake is explicitly not accepted for Express Entry. That last one catches people who used the retake to rescue a single band, which is what the One Skill Retake guide exists to warn about.

If you are choosing between the two best known options, CELPIP versus IELTS for Canada PR compares them, and what CELPIP Speaking involves covers the format.

Australia and New Zealand: two barriers, not one

These two are the cleanest refusals, because each has a second reason on top of the first.

Australia publishes its approved tests under a date heading, and it publishes them more than once. The general English language page carries one pair of lists. A visa subclass page can carry its own, with its own cutoff date and its own shorter set of tests, and subclass 482 does exactly that. Reading only the general page is the Australian version of flattening the two UK provider lists.

On the general page, for tests taken on or after 7 August 2025 the department accepts test scores from tests undertaken at a secure test centre, and lists C1 Advanced, CELPIP General, IELTS Academic, IELTS General Training, LANGUAGECERT Academic, MET, OET, PTE Academic and TOEFL iBT. Duolingo is absent.

One row on that list carries a booking condition, and missing it wastes the fee. Home Affairs prints against TOEFL iBT: to ensure your TOEFL iBT result is valid for Australian visa purposes, you must select "Taking TOEFL for Australia" when registering for your test, and results not registered under this pathway may not be accepted for Australian visa purposes. That is a registration choice you make before you sit, and it cannot be corrected afterwards.

The legacy list is not a way round it. For tests taken on or before 6 August 2025 the department still accepts, up until certain timeframes and only where they were undertaken at a secure test centre, Cambridge English (CAE), IELTS, PTE Academic, OET and TOEFL iBT. Those results may be used until 6 August 2028 inclusive, and Home Affairs adds that this will depend on the visa. Duolingo is absent from that list too, so there is no old DET certificate that qualifies.

Now the subclass page, which is dated differently and is shorter. The Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) publishes its own two tables for the Core Skills and Specialist Skills streams, split at 13 September 2025 rather than 7 August 2025. Duolingo is on neither, but the differences between them are the point.

Read those two tables side by side and the trap is obvious. Cambridge C1 Advanced sits on the general page's current list, but on the subclass 482 page it appears only in the table for tests taken before 13 September 2025. Somebody who books C1 Advanced today on the strength of the general page has bought a test that subclass 482 does not list for a sitting today. The whole subclass 482 requirement also has exemptions, including passport holders of Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

The 3 year clock on that page has a narrower home than people quote it in. Home Affairs prints "take the test within 3 years before you apply" inside the section headed "Core Skills and Specialist Skills streams", directly above those two tables, so it governs those two streams. The Labour agreement stream is a separate section further down with no test table and no 3 year rule. It says only that you must have English language skills suitable to perform your nominated occupation, and that requirements may be specified in the labour agreement between your employer and the Commonwealth. If you are coming through a labour agreement, the agreement is your list.

Then comes the barrier that applies whichever list you are reading. Home Affairs states that it does not accept evidence from English language tests that are delivered completely online, also known as remote-proctored or at-home. It then names six of them: CELPIP Online, IELTS Online, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online, MET Digital taken at home, OET@Home and TOEFL iBT Home Edition. The subclass 482 page carries its own wording of the same restriction and names the same six products.

Read that list of six slowly, because every one of those brands is on Australia's accepted list in an in-person form. Match them against the nine tests the general page accepts for sittings on or after 7 August 2025 and each rejected product has a sibling there: CELPIP Online against CELPIP General, IELTS Online against IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online against LANGUAGECERT Academic, MET Digital against MET, OET@Home against OET, and TOEFL iBT Home Edition against TOEFL iBT. Not one of the six is a brand Australia refuses. Home Affairs is excluding a delivery mode, not a brand. Booking the online product of an accepted brand fails exactly as surely as booking Duolingo, and the logo on the booking page will not warn you.

DET is delivered at home. So even if Duolingo were added to an Australian list tomorrow, the at-home sitting would still fail on delivery mode. Our English test guide for an Australian visa covers what is left.

New Zealand runs the same shape. Its skilled residence page accepts IELTS General or Academic, IELTS One Skill Retake, TOEFL iBT, PTE Academic, B2 First, B2 First for Schools and OET. DET is not there. That page also notes that a higher test result is required for the principal applicant than for a partner or any dependent child aged 16 or older.

Both New Zealand pages carry the same delivery rule, so it is not an Accredited Employer Work Visa quirk. The skilled residence page and the AEWV page each state that you will need to sit the test in person at a test centre, that your result must be no more than 2 years old at the time you apply, and that tests taken remotely outside of a test centre, such as at home tests, are not acceptable.

One scope condition worth carrying: New Zealand's AEWV English requirements apply only to jobs at ANZSCO or NOL skill level 3 to 5. There are no English requirements at skill level 1 or 2, so somebody at those levels may be buying a test they never needed. Our New Zealand visa English guide has the detail.

Note also that New Zealand accepts IELTS One Skill Retake while Canada does not accept it for Express Entry. Two authorities, same product, opposite answers. Of the pages we read, New Zealand's skilled residence page is the only one that names IELTS One Skill Retake as a test in its own right. Australia's general page does not name it at all: its list for sittings on or after 7 August 2025 runs C1 Advanced, CELPIP General, IELTS Academic, IELTS General Training, LANGUAGECERT Academic, MET, OET, PTE Academic and TOEFL iBT, and a retake is not a separate entry there. Australia answers the retake question only on the subclass 482 page, and answers it twice by date: Table 1 says that if your test offers a single skill retake option Home Affairs may accept your result for that skill, while Table 2 says single skill retake results are not accepted. That is why lists have to be read per country, per route and per date rather than remembered.

If you end up on one of the accepted tests, PTE Academic Speaking, the TOEFL Speaking section and Cambridge B2 First Speaking cover the three formats most people switch to. If Australia is your route and you pick TOEFL, select "Taking TOEFL for Australia" at registration; if you pick Cambridge C1 Advanced, check that the subclass page you are applying under still lists it for a sitting on your test date.

Ireland: the one yes, and the two numbers people misread

Ireland's Immigration Service Delivery publishes a table of minimum English standards for study visas, and the Duolingo English Test is on it.

One disclosure before the numbers, because you should know how we read them. We could not reach the live Irish page at the time of writing. irishimmigration.ie serves a Cloudflare security check to every client we tried, a real browser included, and it did not clear. Every Irish figure and footnote below is therefore read from the Internet Archive capture of 16 July 2026, not from the live site, and that captured page carries its own footer stamp saying it was last updated on 16 September 2024. We are not going to dress an archived reading up as a live one, so treat this section as accurate to that capture and check the live page before you book.

The row reads "Duolingo English Test 55 75". That is the single most misread line in this entire topic, because it is not a range.

Which column a degree student sits in depends on what the visa application is for, not on the eventual degree. A student going straight into the degree sits in the second row and needs 75. A student whose application is for a preparatory English course before that degree sits in the first row at 55, because Ireland's own footnote gives exactly that example: wanting to do a degree course while your English needs improving first puts you under the preparatory rules. Somebody who reads the row as a range from 55 to 75, books at the lower end and passes has bought a result that may not meet the standard for their course type, and a DET result cannot be upgraded afterwards.

Ireland is also explicit that this is an immigration standard, not an admissions standard. The page states that the minimum standards on it are for visa purposes, and that the minimum English language standard for your course, as set down by the college concerned, may be different. Directly beneath the table it repeats the point: the table refers to language requirements for immigration purposes only, and the onus is also on each student to ensure they meet the language requirements of their intended college.

So in Ireland you have to clear two standards, not one, and passing the visa standard tells you nothing about the college standard.

The Irish validity clock also runs differently. Ireland states that the certificate of your English language standard must have been issued within 2 years of the expected start date of your course. The UK counts two years back from the date of your application. New Zealand asks that the result be no more than 2 years old at the time you apply. Three authorities, three anchor points, one test result that can satisfy one and miss another.

One caveat on Ireland, and it matters. The page permits online sittings, saying that to address problems being experienced accessing supervised tests because of Covid-19, it will also accept the results of online tests from the test providers. That sentence is framed as a response to Covid-19 rather than as standing policy, and the page's own last-updated stamp is September 2024. A concession can be withdrawn without the list itself changing, so read that line on the day you book.

If Ireland is your route, our Duolingo English Test practice guide covers the format, and Duolingo alternatives covers the app rather than the exam.

The United States: no federal list exists

The United States does not answer this question at all, which is a different thing from answering no.

For F-1 and M-1 students, SEVP regulations require designated school officials to provide information on a school's English proficiency requirements and whether a prospective student has met those requirements on the student's Form I-20. The federal government names no test. The school's requirement is the requirement.

That sentence comes from a 2016 Study in the States post, and DHS prints a banner above it saying the content may be outdated and pointing readers to its current pages. So we checked it against the current English Language Training page, which carries the same rule about the English proficiency field on the Form I-20, and it is that current page we lean the claim on.

There is a second sentence, on that current page, that closes the obvious workaround. SEVP regulation prohibits the issuance of a Form I-20 based on conditional admission, and a DSO can only issue a Form I-20 to students that meet all standards for admission for the program of study listed on the Form I-20, including any English proficiency requirements.

So "the US accepts DET" is not a statement about the US government. It is a statement about one school, and it proves nothing about the school next door.

Naturalization is stricter still and has no commercial route at all. USCIS states that an officer administers a naturalization test to determine whether an applicant meets the English and civics requirements. Age, residency and medical disability exceptions exist, but no test certificate substitutes for that interview.

The traps that cost a booking

Reading Ireland's row as a range from 55 to 75. It is two columns. 55 is for second level, foundation level or preparatory English courses, and 75 is for all other courses. A student going straight into a degree who books at 55 has bought a passing result that fails their own course type. The reverse mistake costs money too: a student whose visa application is for a preparatory English course before the degree sits in the 55 column, and paying to reach 75 buys a number Ireland does not ask them for.

Ignoring the conditions Ireland attaches to the 55 column. Second level counts only in a private, fee-paying school or college, foundation level means NFQ Level 5, and a preparatory English course must not exceed 6 months, must come with a detailed study plan, and requires fees paid in full for both the preparatory course and the first year of the main course.

Assuming UK university acceptance means UK visa acceptance. DET is on neither Home Office list. The only route where a DET result can matter is a Higher Education Provider assessing English itself, and gov.uk limits that to study at degree level or above.

Flattening the two UK provider lists into one. Trinity College London is approved only for tests taken in the UK. PSI Services (UK) Ltd only for tests taken outside it. Booking from the wrong list means paying for a sitting at a location that cannot produce a usable result.

Booking the right UK provider but the wrong UK product. gov.uk names the approved product as well as the provider, so IELTS for UKVI and IELTS Life Skills count while IELTS Academic does not, and Pearson counts as PTE Academic UKVI or PTE Home rather than plain PTE Academic.

Using DET for a Canadian college and assuming it carries through. The study permit has no test requirement, so it genuinely works there. The post-graduation work permit, Express Entry and citizenship all use IRCC's closed list, and the bill for that arrives years later.

Booking the wrong product inside an accepted Canadian brand. CELPIP must be CELPIP-General, IELTS must be General Training, and IELTS One Skill Retake is not accepted for Express Entry.

Hoping Australia might add Duolingo. Australia excludes fully online tests as a category, naming remote-proctored and at-home delivery. That is a second, independent barrier that a list change would not remove.

Booking the online version of a test Australia does accept. Home Affairs names six rejected online products: CELPIP Online, IELTS Online, LANGUAGECERT Academic Online, MET Digital taken at home, OET@Home and TOEFL iBT Home Edition. Every one of those six brands sits on the accepted list in an in-person form, so seeing a familiar name on the booking page proves nothing. Check the delivery mode, not the logo.

Treating the Australian legacy list as a loophole. The general page's list for tests taken on or before 6 August 2025 runs until 6 August 2028, which reads like a way through. DET was never on that list either, and the list applies only to results from a sitting at a secure test centre.

Treating Australia's general English language page as the whole answer. A visa subclass page can publish its own cutoff date and its own shorter list. Subclass 482 splits at 13 September 2025, not 7 August 2025, and its current table has no Cambridge C1 Advanced row even though the general page still lists that test. Not every subclass overrides the general page, but you cannot tell from the general page which kind yours is, so open it before you book.

Registering for TOEFL iBT without the Australian pathway. Home Affairs requires you to select "Taking TOEFL for Australia" when you register, and warns that results not registered under that pathway may not be accepted. It is a checkbox before the exam, not something a score report can fix.

Carrying one country's validity clock to another. The UK counts two years back from your application date, Ireland two years back from your course start date, New Zealand two years back from the date you apply, and subclass 482's Core Skills and Specialist Skills streams require the test to have been taken within 3 years before you apply.

Assuming New Zealand's English rules bite on every job. AEWV requirements apply only at ANZSCO or NOL skill level 3 to 5, and there are none at level 1 or 2.

Reading "the US accepts DET" as a government position. There is no federal list. The school states its own standard and certifies it on the Form I-20, and conditional admission is prohibited.

What to actually practise

Whichever test your route actually requires, the spoken ability underneath it is the same, and it is not built by reading approved lists. If you are aiming at a CEFR level, what an A1 English test is and what an A2 English test is explain the two lowest rungs.

1. Confirm the list before you book anything. Read the official page for your own country and route, and check the heading above the list, not just the rows inside it.
2. Speak daily and unscripted. Every test on every list above measures retrieval under pressure. A 30 day plan to improve speaking covers the habit.
3. Practise talking into silence if your test is computer delivered. Practising English speaking alone covers the days nobody is available.
4. Rehearse ordinary functions rather than answers. Daily use English sentences gives you material that survives any format.
5. Fix clarity, not accent. Six pronunciation fixes in fourteen days and reducing mother tongue influence target what actually blocks understanding.
6. Work on the nerves separately. Overcoming the fear of speaking English addresses the part that fails on the day, whether an examiner is present or not.
7. Get a baseline, then make it daily. Test your English speaking level free, then start a free session. Our free tier is three sessions a day, five minutes and four turns each, with basic feedback, so treat it as a daily habit rather than a cram.

What we could not verify

No UK government page names Duolingo. Our UK conclusion is an absence finding. We consider it a strong one, because we downloaded both Home Office approved test spreadsheets and searched them, and neither contains the string duolingo. But it is still an absence rather than a printed refusal.

We did not verify any specific UK university. gov.uk permits a Higher Education Provider to assess English itself and to ask for a different test, and never names Duolingo. Whether your university uses DET that way is a question only that university can answer.

We could not reach the live Irish page. irishimmigration.ie serves a Cloudflare security check to every client we tried, including a real browser left sitting on the challenge screen, and it never cleared. The Irish facts come from the Internet Archive capture of 16 July 2026, whose own footer states the page was last updated on 16 September 2024. Ireland is the one place this guide says yes, so confirm the Duolingo row and the two columns against the live page before you book.

Our Canadian citizenship source is scoped to citizenship, and we do not stretch it. The IRCC Help Centre answer we cite asks what third-party tests IRCC accepts for a citizenship application. It names eleven, because it also covers the French tests and a two skills CELPIP version, and it introduces them with the word including before closing with the sentence that no other third-party results are accepted. It is not an Express Entry page and we do not use it as one. The Express Entry list of five comes from IRCC's own Express Entry language test page, which we read directly.

We could not reach travel.state.gov either. It serves the same kind of Cloudflare security check as the Irish site, and it did not clear for us in a real browser. Our United States facts therefore rest on DHS and USCIS pages, both reached live, and we make no claim sourced to the State Department.

Duolingo's own consolidated visa help article is behind a sign in wall. We could not record Duolingo's country by country visa claim in one place. The two Duolingo pages we did read, for the UK and Canada, are labelled above as company sources.

We did not verify New Zealand student visas. The New Zealand pages we read cover skilled residence and the Accredited Employer Work Visa. We make no claim about the New Zealand student visa.

We did not verify Irish routes other than study visas. Do not read the Irish finding as Ireland accepting DET for immigration generally.

We read two Australian pages, not every visa subclass. Our Australian facts come from the general English language page and from the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) English proficiency page. Those two already disagree on the cutoff date and the test list. We are not claiming that every subclass republishes the list, because some publish no table and fall back to the general pages. The claim is only that a subclass can override them, so read the page for your own subclass rather than trusting either of ours.

We did not open the Australian legislative instruments. The Australian test lists come from the Home Affairs pages themselves rather than from the instruments they name, which are the Migration (Evidence of Functional English Language Proficiency) Instrument 2025 (LIN 25/014) and the Migration (Specification of Language Tests, Test Scores and Passports) Instrument 2025 (LIN 25/016).

We are not publishing test fees, score validity beyond what the authorities state, or booking lead times.

How we researched this guide

The UK provider lists, the approved product names, the three acceptance conditions and the two year window come from gov.uk's SELT guidance. The Student visa SELT requirement and the degree level self assessment route come from gov.uk's Student visa knowledge of English page. We also downloaded the Home Office spreadsheets of approved tests taken in the UK and taken outside the UK, parsed the SELT provider column of each, and searched both for Duolingo. We report those two files separately, because they do not contain the same providers.

The Canadian facts come from IRCC pages for Express Entry, study permit eligibility and the post-graduation work permit, plus an IRCC Help Centre page on citizenship, and we treat that last one as a citizenship answer only. The three canada.ca pages carried their own date stamps of 22 June 2026, 26 January 2026 and 27 May 2026 respectively. The Australian facts come from two Home Affairs pages read separately: the general English language page, for its date split lists, its TOEFL registration condition and its online test restrictions, and the Skills in Demand visa (subclass 482) English proficiency page, for its own two tables, its own 13 September 2025 cutoff and its exemptions. The New Zealand facts come from Immigration New Zealand's skilled residence and Accredited Employer Work Visa pages, and we checked the delivery rule on both rather than assuming it belonged to one. The Irish facts come from Immigration Service Delivery's English language requirements for study visas, footnotes included.

Every government page we cite above was loaded in a real browser and read after it had finished rendering, rather than by pulling the raw HTML and parsing it, with one exception, and the exception is the page that carries our only yes. irishimmigration.ie served a Cloudflare security check that never cleared for us, so every Irish figure and footnote in this guide was read from the Internet Archive capture of 16 July 2026 rather than from the live site, and we flag that at the point of use as well as here. travel.state.gov blocked us the same way, which is why nothing above is sourced to the State Department. That distinction between rendering and fetching matters more than it sounds. Several of these sites build a table cell with a script, so a plain fetch returns that cell empty, and an empty cell is indistinguishable from a test that is genuinely missing from the list. An extraction that quietly drops a row looks exactly like a confident finding that the row was never there.

Where a list sits under a heading that narrows it, we carried that heading into the table rather than the footnotes, because losing it is how these lists cause wrong bookings. Where a page was unreachable from our environment, we said so above and named the archive capture we used instead of presenting it as a live read. Where Duolingo is the source, we labelled it as a company claim rather than as an authority.

Practise speaking, from SpeakShark

SpeakShark is an AI English speaking practice app, and it is our pick for this situation because of what these lists have in common. Every accepted test above measures speech you produce live, and none of them can be revised for in the way a reading paper can. You talk, the AI answers what you actually said, and you get speaking feedback while the conversation is still going. The free tier gives basic feedback; the detailed pronunciation and grammar breakdown is on Premium.

Start free with three sessions a day and no card, each free session capped at five minutes and four turns, with basic speaking feedback. Paid sessions run ten minutes with unlimited turns. Limits are on the pricing page, and how it works walks through a full session.

We are a speaking improvement tool. We are not an exam preparation provider, not an immigration adviser, and we are not affiliated with the Home Office, IRCC, the Australian Department of Home Affairs, Immigration New Zealand, Ireland's Immigration Service Delivery, DHS, USCIS, Duolingo or any exam board. For test format, booking and official practice material, go to the exam body directly, and for what your route requires, read the government site for that country. Use SpeakShark to make your spoken English stronger, and use official material to learn the test.

• Site: speakshark.com
• Support: speaksharksupport@gmail.com
• Free tier: 3 AI conversation sessions per day, no card

Sources

• GOV.UK, prove your English language abilities with a secure English language test (SELT): the requirement to take a test on the list, the three acceptance conditions, and the provider lists split under "If you are in the UK" and "If you are outside of the UK"
• GOV.UK, Student visa: knowledge of English: the SELT requirement where no qualifying prior qualification exists, and the Higher Education Provider self assessment route limited to degree level or above at CEFR B2
• Home Office, list of approved Secure English Language Tests taken in the UK: the in-country spreadsheet we downloaded and searched, whose SELT provider column holds the IELTS SELT Consortium, LanguageCert, Pearson and Trinity College London
• Home Office, list of approved Secure English Language Tests taken outside the UK: the overseas spreadsheet we downloaded and searched, whose SELT provider column holds the IELTS SELT Consortium, LanguageCert, Pearson and PSI Service (UK) Ltd, and no Trinity rows
• IRCC, Express Entry language test results: the five accepted tests and the exclusion of IELTS One Skill Retake
• IRCC, study permit eligibility: the eligibility list that contains no language test
• IRCC, post-graduation work permit language results: the requirement for applications on or after 1 November 2024 and the tests covered
• IRCC Help Centre, third party language tests for citizenship: a citizenship answer rather than an Express Entry one, cited for the eleven tests it names for a citizenship application and for the statement that no other third party test results are accepted
• Australian Department of Home Affairs, English language visa requirements: the general page's two date split test lists, the secure test centre condition, the TOEFL registration pathway, the 6 August 2028 expiry, the online test restrictions and the six online products named beneath them, and the instruction to check the eligibility page of the relevant visa subclass
• Australian Department of Home Affairs, English proficiency (subclass 482): the subclass's own Table 1 and Table 2, its 13 September 2025 cutoff, the absence of Cambridge C1 Advanced from Table 1, the 21 January 2026 TOEFL note, the 12 February 2024 Cambridge paper-based condition, the 3 year rule printed inside its Core Skills and Specialist Skills streams section, the separate Labour agreement stream, and the passport holder exemptions
• Immigration New Zealand, English language requirements for skilled residence visas: the seven approved tests, the in person and two year rules on that same page, and the higher standard for the principal applicant
• Immigration New Zealand, English language requirements for an Accredited Employer Work Visa: the in person requirement, the two year rule and the skill level scope
• Immigration Service Delivery, English language requirements for study visas: the Duolingo English Test row at 55 and 75, the three column footnotes on private fee-paying schools, NFQ Level 5 and preparatory English courses, the visa purposes framing, the course start date clock and the online test concession. Read from the Internet Archive capture of 16 July 2026, because the live page serves a Cloudflare security check that never cleared for us
• US Department of Homeland Security, Study in the States, English proficiency testing and the Form I-20: the per school requirement certified by a DSO, carrying DHS's own "this content may be outdated" banner
• US Department of Homeland Security, Study in the States, English language training: the current page we leaned the Form I-20 claim on, and the prohibition on issuing a Form I-20 based on conditional admission
• USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 12, Part E, Chapter 2: the officer administered naturalization English and civics test
• Duolingo English Test blog, is the DET accepted in the UK: a company source, cited only for what Duolingo claims about UK programmes
• Duolingo English Test blog, is the DET accepted in Canada: a company source, cited only for what Duolingo claims about the Canadian study permit

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