What Bandzen is
Bandzen is an IELTS preparation product. You practise on real question types, your work is marked, and what the marking finds decides what you are asked to do next.
What is built
All four modules — Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking — have a marking engine behind them.
Reading and Listening are marked by a pure function — no model is involved, the answer key is fixed, and the same attempt would score the same every time. Writing and Speaking are marked by a language model against the IELTS band descriptors: Writing reads your essay, Speaking listens to your recording directly. Both reports name four criteria, quote your own answer back to you, and say what to fix.
Speaking practice is Pro
Reading, Listening and Writing practice are on every plan, including Free. Free gets one Speaking assessment — inside the diagnostic — and the rest of the module is Pro. See Plans and limits.
Everything else follows: your estimated band, your study plan, the skill matrix on Progress, and what Coach knows about you.
What is not built
Reading practice is currently marked on the Academic conversion scale for both Academic and General Training candidates, and so is Listening. General Training converts differently and more generously; until that ships, read a GT reading or listening band as conservative.
Your study plan responds to your Listening, Reading and Writing bands. Speaking is marked and shown on Progress, but it does not yet change what the plan asks you to do next.
Estimates, not scores
Every band Bandzen shows you is an estimate produced by this product. It is not an IELTS score, it does not come from IELTS, and no one here can tell you what you will get on the day.
Bandzen is an independent IELTS preparation platform and is not affiliated with or endorsed by IELTS, the British Council, IDP, or Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Band estimates provided by Bandzen are for practice purposes and are not official IELTS scores.
The product holds itself to that everywhere. Progress shows no projected band and no "you could reach 7.0" line, because there is no basis on which to promise a gain. Activity counts minutes spent inside timed attempts only, because nobody measures how long you spend reading a lesson, and an estimate there would be a guess dressed as a figure.
Where to go next
- Just signed up? Setting up covers what Bandzen asks before it can plan anything.
- Want a starting number? The diagnostic.
- Want to know what Free includes? Plans and limits.