TOEIC to IELTS conversion: the honest, sourced range

You have a TOEIC score, someone has asked you for an IELTS band, and the TOEIC to IELTS conversion tables you find online disagree with each other. One puts TOEIC 870 at IELTS 7.0. Another puts the same score near 6.0. Almost none of them say where the numbers came from.

Here's what explains the mess. There is no official concordance between TOEIC and IELTS. ETS has never published one, and nor has IELTS. What each test publishes is its own separate alignment to the CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference, and even those alignments are looser than they look. This article shows exactly what the two testing bodies do publish, how far you can honestly stretch it, and the thing a TOEIC score cannot tell you at all.

What ETS and IELTS actually publish

Start with the source material, because this is where the online tables quietly part company with it.

ETS publishes TOEIC cut scores by section, not by total. For Listening & Reading, the CEFR minimums are Listening 400 and Reading 385 for B2, and Listening 490 and Reading 455 for C1. Those are two separate hurdles. ETS does not publish "a TOEIC total of X equals CEFR level Y," and the alignment stops at C1.

IELTS publishes a CEFR alignment, with its own warnings attached. IELTS states plainly that its bands and CEFR levels "should not be interpreted as reflecting strong claims about exact equivalence," that IELTS "is not a level-based test," and that there is no one-to-one correspondence. It also flags specific bands as borderline: band 6.5 is where "many 6.5 test takers would be at C1, [but] a number will be marginally below," band 8 is borderline for C2, and 8.5 and above is C2.

So the bridge exists, but it is two fuzzy mappings chained together. Anything built on it is a range, and the ends of the range are soft. That is the honest starting point, and it is already more than most tables admit.

The TOEIC to IELTS conversion you can defend

Here is what you get if you sum ETS's section minimums into rough totals and read them against the IELTS alignment. The TOEIC totals are my arithmetic, not ETS's publication, and I've marked them as such.

TOEIC L&R (derived total)	CEFR	IELTS
~945 and up	C1	7.0–8.0 (8.0 borderline C2)
~785–940	B2	5.5–6.5 (6.5 borderline C1)
~550–780	B1	4.0–5.0
(not measured)	C2	8.5–9.0

The table stops at B1 on the way down for a reason: IELTS publishes no CEFR alignment for bands below 4.0, so there is nothing official to pair a low TOEIC score with. You'll see tables that fill those cells anyway. They are inventing them.

Two health warnings on that first column. It is derived by adding ETS's Listening and Reading minimums together (400 + 385 = 785, 490 + 455 = 945), which ETS never asked anyone to do. And it breaks for lopsided scores: a candidate with Listening 495 and Reading 305 has a total of 800, which the table calls B2, while their Reading is nowhere near the B2 minimum of 385. If you want your real CEFR level from TOEIC, read your two section scores against those minimums, not your total. No conversion table on the internet will tell you that, because the total is the number people want to type in.

TOEIC L&R also aligns no higher than C1, so no TOEIC score corresponds to IELTS 8.5 or 9.0. And notice the width of every row: one CEFR level swallows a full band of IELTS and a 150-point stretch of TOEIC. That width is the actual resolution of the only bridge these two tests share.

Why the tables you find disagree

Search this and you'll meet tables far more precise than the one above: TOEIC 970–990 for IELTS 7.5, 870–970 for 7.0, 820–870 for 6.5, on down the scale. Neat, specific, and almost never sourced.

They disagree with each other for a simple reason. There is nothing official to agree on. Each one is somebody bridging the same gap I just bridged, with their own arithmetic or their own learner data, and then printing the result without the working. Some land more generously than the CEFR route does: a TOEIC 870 sits inside the derived B2 span, and IELTS reads B2 as 5.5–6.5, so calling 870 a flat 7.0 reaches past where the CEFR chain lands, even allowing for 6.5 being a C1 borderline.

I am not going to tell you those tables are simply wrong, because no one, including me, has the official concordance that would settle it. What I will say is that a table giving you one number, with no source and no range, is claiming a precision that neither ETS nor IELTS claims for itself. If you have ever looked at one and felt the figure was too kind to be true, that instinct deserves more credit than the table does.

TOEIC score by score

Read it from the TOEIC side, since that's the score you're holding. Every line below assumes your two sections are reasonably balanced; if they aren't, go back to the section minimums.

TOEIC 600. Around B1 on the derived totals, which puts IELTS 4.0–5.0 in view. Solid everyday comprehension, short of what a university or a visa usually asks.

TOEIC 700. Still B1, still that 4.0–5.0 range. The jump from 600 to 700 feels large on the TOEIC scale and moves you nowhere on the CEFR one, which tells you something about how differently the two scales stretch.

TOEIC 800. Just inside the derived B2 threshold (~785), so IELTS 5.5–6.5 is the honest range. This is the score most people are holding when they start looking at IELTS, and the range stays wide because TOEIC has said nothing about half of what IELTS marks.

TOEIC 900. Comfortably inside B2, below the derived C1 line (~945). The range is still 5.5–6.5, with 6.5 reachable and 6.5 itself sitting on the C1 border. The popular "TOEIC 900 equals IELTS 7.0" is a step beyond what the CEFR chain supports.

TOEIC 990. A perfect score clears the derived C1 line, which reads as IELTS 7.0–8.0. C1 is also where TOEIC L&R stops measuring, so past this the comparison has nothing left to say.

IELTS band by band

Going the other way, for target-setting.

IELTS 5.5–6.5 is B2, roughly TOEIC 785–940 on the derived totals, with 6.5 borderline C1. Most undergraduate and many visa requirements sit here.

IELTS 7.0–8.0 is C1, roughly TOEIC 945 and up, with 8.0 borderline C2. A near-perfect TOEIC is the paper entry ticket to this range.

IELTS 8.5–9.0 is C2, which TOEIC L&R does not reach.

For TOEFL, CEFR and Eiken in the same frame, the full score conversion table covers all five tests, including TOEFL's 1–6 scale. For the EIKEN side on its own, see EIKEN to IELTS.

The half of IELTS your TOEIC score says nothing about

This is what the conversion tables skip, and it is what decides your actual band.

TOEIC Listening & Reading tests listening and reading. That's the whole test. IELTS tests four skills, and two of them, Writing and Speaking, are things you produce rather than recognise. Your TOEIC score is silent on both. It isn't a weak predictor of your IELTS Writing; it isn't a predictor at all, because it never measured anything of the kind.

That gap has a shape. IELTS Writing is marked on four separate criteria: Task Achievement or Task Response, Coherence and Cohesion, Lexical Resource, and Grammatical Range and Accuracy. Someone arriving from TOEIC 900 usually has the vocabulary and grammar recognition to handle the receptive half, then meets Task 2 and finds that recognising a complex sentence and producing one inside 40 minutes are different abilities. Speaking is a live interview with an examiner. Nothing in a multiple-choice reading paper rehearses that.

So the honest read of "TOEIC 900" is this: your Listening and Reading are probably in range for a 6.5, and your Writing and Speaking are unmeasured. Your overall band is the average of all four sections, so the two you have never been tested on are the two that will set it. The mechanics of that average are in how the IELTS band score is calculated.

What to do with the conversion once you have it

Treat the range as a starting hypothesis about half your score, then go and find out about the other half. Sit one timed Writing Task 2 and one Speaking practice, and mark them against the four criteria rather than as a total. That single sitting tells you more than any table, because it measures the part TOEIC left blank.

That per-criterion read is what IELTS Drills is built around. Feedback comes back tagged to a single Band Descriptor rather than one number, so a TOEIC-strong learner can see the usual pattern (Lexical Resource holding up, Task Response and Coherence lagging, because nobody drills those for TOEIC) and work the weak axis in five minutes a day instead of re-reading vocabulary they already know. If you're at the top of B2 and want the next half band, breaking the 6.5 ceiling covers the same ground.

Sources, and what is mine

Splitting these apart is the whole point.

• Published by IELTS: the CEFR alignment from band 4.0 upward (B1 = 4.0–5.0, B2 = 5.5–6.5, C1 = 7.0–8.0, C2 = 8.5 and above), with nothing published below band 4.0, plus the caveats that it makes no claim of exact equivalence, that IELTS is not level-based, and that 6.5 and 8.0 are borderline (ielts.org).
• Published by ETS: TOEIC L&R CEFR minimums by section, B2 at Listening 400 / Reading 385 and C1 at Listening 490 / Reading 455, with the alignment stopping at C1 (ETS CEFR mapping).
• Mine, not theirs: the derived TOEIC totals (~550 / ~785 / ~945) that come from summing those section minimums, and every TOEIC-to-IELTS row that follows from chaining the two alignments.

There's no fourth bullet, because no official TOEIC–IELTS concordance exists to cite. Any table handing you a direct one-to-one figure has filled that gap the same way I did, usually without saying so.

Frequently asked questions

What is TOEIC 900 in IELTS? Chaining the two official CEFR alignments, TOEIC 900 lands inside B2, which IELTS reads as 5.5–6.5, with 6.5 on the C1 border. Tables calling it a flat 7.0 go further than the sources support. And TOEIC 900 says nothing about your Writing or Speaking.

What is TOEIC 800 in IELTS? Also B2, so the same 5.5–6.5 range, nearer the bottom of it: the derived B2 threshold is around 785, so 800 has only just crossed it.

What is IELTS 6.5 in TOEIC? IELTS 6.5 is B2 (and borderline C1), which corresponds to roughly TOEIC 785–940 on the derived totals. Don't read it as a promise: a TOEIC 900 holder hasn't been tested on the two IELTS sections that most often pull a band down.

Why do TOEIC to IELTS conversion tables disagree? Because there's no official concordance for them to follow. Each is someone's own bridge through CEFR or their own data, and the CEFR alignments themselves carry borderline bands and an explicit no-exact-equivalence warning. Disagreement is the honest outcome; a single confident number is not.

Can I check my CEFR level from my TOEIC total? Not reliably. ETS publishes minimums per section, so a total can hide a weak half. Check Listening and Reading separately against 400/385 for B2 and 490/455 for C1.

Can I submit a converted score to a university? No. Institutions accept the test they name at the score they name. A conversion tells you roughly where you stand before you book; it carries no weight on an application.

I have TOEIC 900. How long until IELTS 7.0? There's no honest number, because it turns on the two skills TOEIC never measured. The useful first step is one marked Writing task and one Speaking practice, scored per criterion, which turns the question into a specific gap rather than a guess.

The bottom line

There is no official TOEIC to IELTS conversion. What exists is ETS's per-section CEFR minimums and IELTS's CEFR alignment, which IELTS itself says is not an exact equivalence and which goes borderline at 6.5 and 8.0. Chain them and TOEIC 785–940 reads as B2, so IELTS 5.5–6.5; TOEIC 945 and up reads as C1, so 7.0–8.0; and nothing on the TOEIC scale reaches 8.5. Those totals are arithmetic on ETS's section minimums, not an ETS publication, and if your two sections are uneven the total lies to you.

More useful than any of it: your TOEIC score covers two of the four skills IELTS marks, and the two it skips usually set your band. Convert if you need a rough starting point, then go and measure the half you've never been tested on, five minutes a day.