Search "IELTS fee" and you will find dozens of confident tables — almost none of them dated. Fee pages go stale quietly: the number sits there looking official for years after the price moved. Every figure on this page was checked on 24 August 2026, and every one of them is approximate — confirm the exact fee on your own centre's booking page before you pay. Even the official IDP fee pages we checked carry no visible last-updated date of their own, which is exactly why we date ours.
The fee itself is not really the story, though. The story is that the fee is the smallest amount of money IELTS can cost you. Booking the wrong version, or retaking the whole test when one skill would have done — those mistakes cost a full extra fee each time, plus weeks of your timeline.
The failure
The mistake this page prevents is paying twice. It happens three ways:
- Booking the wrong version. Academic and General Training cost the same at IDP Canada (~$361 each, checked 24 Aug 2026) — but they are not interchangeable. IRCC's Express Entry page is blunt: "You must take the IELTS General Training option." Book Academic by mistake and your ~$361 buys a result Express Entry cannot use. You pay again, in full.
- Retaking the whole test when One Skill Retake would have been accepted. In Canada, a full retake is ~$361 and a One Skill Retake is ~$253 — but the real saving is that OSR means re-sitting one section instead of four.
- Booking One Skill Retake when your receiving organisation refuses it. The reverse trap. IRCC states outright: "We don't accept IELTS One Skill Retake for Express Entry" (canada.ca, modified 22 June 2026). Pay ~$253 for an OSR aimed at Express Entry and you have bought nothing.
Before you pay for anything, know two things: which version your receiving organisation requires, and whether it accepts One Skill Retake. Both answers come from the organisation's own page, not from a prep site — and not from this one either.
The fees we could verify — as checked 24 Aug 2026
Canada (CAD, from IDP's cost-of-IELTS-in-Canada page):
| Test | Fee (approx., before tax) |
|---|---|
| IELTS Academic | ~$361.00 |
| IELTS General Training | ~$361.00 |
| One Skill Retake | ~$253.00 |
IDP's own caveats, verbatim: "Fee does not include taxes & GST" and "the IELTS fee can vary depending on the test centre, city, and province". So ~$361 is a starting point, not your final receipt — the same test can cost different amounts at different centres in the same country. No paper-based fee is listed for Canada, consistent with IDP's statement that it "no longer offers the IELTS on paper test" there.
India (INR, from IDP India's booking page — no tax wording given):
| Test | Fee |
|---|---|
| IELTS on Computer | INR 19,000 |
| IELTS on Computer for UKVI | INR 19,250 |
| IELTS Life Skills (A1 and B1) | INR 18,000 |
| One Skill Retake | INR 12,650 |
One oddity worth naming: IDP India's page still listed "IELTS on Paper — INR 19,000" on 24 Aug 2026, even though ielts.org announced on 5 March 2026 that "From mid-2026, we will no longer offer IELTS as a paper-based test." Officialdom disagrees with itself here — a live demonstration of why fee pages need dates. Do not plan around a paper sitting anywhere without confirming it still runs at your centre.
Worked example — one candidate, three prices for the same problem
You sat IELTS on computer in Canada and your Writing came back half a band short. Your options:
- Full retake — ~$361 + tax. Four sections again, including the three you already passed. Any of the four can come back lower this time. This is the default most people reach for.
- One Skill Retake — ~$253 + tax. Writing only. Eligibility, per ielts.org: your full test was IELTS on computer, at a centre offering OSR, within 60 days of the full test, and "you can only retake One Skill Retake once per original test." You get a new Test Report Form carrying the updated score alongside the original three — and you choose which TRF to use. If your receiving organisation accepts OSR, this is ~$108 cheaper and three sections less risky.
- The ~$253 mistake. If your goal is Express Entry, OSR is not the cheap option — it is money spent on a result IRCC will not take. ielts.org itself says: "We recommend that you check with the organisation directly to see if they accept IELTS One Skill Retake before booking your test." For Express Entry, that check takes one sentence on canada.ca and it says no. Full retake it is.
Same shortfall, and the right answer swings by hundreds of dollars depending on one acceptance rule you can check in two minutes.
What we could not verify — and will not invent
- UK fees. The British Council booking page blocked our checks, so no GBP figure appears here. Any UK fee you see elsewhere, treat with the scepticism this page has been teaching you.
- Cancellation and transfer terms. No official refund amounts, transfer fees or deadline rules were in our verified sources, so we publish none. Centres set these terms — read your centre's cancellation and transfer policy before booking, because deadlines in such policies typically decide whether you get money back, and we cannot tell you where those deadlines sit.
- Final tax-inclusive totals. IDP Canada says fees exclude taxes and GST and vary by centre, city and province — the number on your payment screen is the only one that counts.
What actually costs you
- Trusting an undated fee table — including a stale cached copy of this one. Confirm at booking.
- Booking Academic when your route requires General Training (or the reverse) — a full fee, wasted.
- Paying for One Skill Retake without checking acceptance — IRCC refuses it for Express Entry.
- Retaking all four sections when OSR was available and accepted — ~$108 more in Canada, and three extra sections of risk.
- Assuming the fee is the same at every centre — IDP says it varies by centre, city and province.
- Not reading your centre's cancellation and transfer terms before paying — we could not verify them, which means you must.
Try one
Before you spend a test fee, find out what you would score today — for free.
[Try a full mock test →] — one full task, marked, no card required.