BestMyTest vs Magoosh for IELTS Prep: Which Should You Choose?

The Short Version

• Choose BestMyTest if you want to improve your English, not only rehearse questions. It is the only course of the two with AI Tutor skill exercises built from your own mistakes, instant band scores on every Speaking and Writing answer, and reviews by IELTS certified teachers.
• Choose Magoosh if you mainly want to work through video lessons and expert-written questions with unlimited AI grading, and you are comfortable without a human reviewer.
• Question bank: BestMyTest has over 3,000 IELTS questions covering every question type for Academic and General Training. Magoosh lists 850+ practice questions.
• Full-length tests: BestMyTest includes 50 full-length practice tests with a diagnostic score report after each one. Magoosh offers up to 10 mock tests, generated from the same question pool you practice with.
• Try before you pay: BestMyTest's free trial is unlimited. You can use the course free for as long as you want, with no credit card and no time limit. Magoosh's trial lasts seven days.
• Both courses cover Academic and General Training, including Writing Task 1 letters for General Training and charts, graphs, and processes for Academic.

What Magoosh Does Well, and Where It Stops

Magoosh is a self-paced video course. You watch lessons, answer questions from its bank, and read or watch an explanation for each one. It is a tidy product, and it is clear about what it is. Here is what you get, according to its own plans and features pages in October 2026:

• 850+ practice questions, each written by an IELTS expert to mimic the exam, with an explanation video.
• 120+ video lessons covering Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking for Academic and General Training.
• Up to 10 full-length mock tests. The tests are generated from your pool of unanswered questions, so every test you build uses questions from your practice bank.
• Unlimited AI grading of Speaking and Writing practice, an AI tutor that explains any question, a score predictor, study schedules, flashcards, and a mobile app.
• Email help from Magoosh experts when you have a question.
• A 7-day free trial with no credit card, a 7-day refund window, and a target-band guarantee: if you tell Magoosh your target band before the test, watch every lesson, complete two mocks and all the questions, use the AI grading, follow a study schedule, and ask an expert for help, and still miss your target, you get a full refund.

Where Magoosh stops is the part of IELTS prep that moves band scores most: diagnosing why you lose marks and training that skill. Its explanations tell you why an answer is right. They do not give you a grammar, pronunciation, or paraphrasing exercise built from the pattern of your own errors. And its grading is AI only: no IELTS certified teacher listens to your Part 2 answer or reads your Task 2 essay.

What You Get with BestMyTest

BestMyTest was built around one loop: practice, review, fix the skill, practice again. Every part of the course feeds that loop.

• 3,000+ IELTS practice questions for Academic and General Training: all 14 Reading question types on Academic passages and General Training texts, all four Listening parts, Speaking Parts 1, 2, and 3 on the topics that come up most, and Writing Task 1 (Academic charts, graphs, maps, and processes, and General Training letters) and Task 2.
• 50 full-length IELTS practice tests under real timing, each ending in a diagnostic score report with a band per section and a breakdown by question type.
• A free instant AI band score on every Speaking and Writing answer, scored on each criterion instantly, with feedback and AI Tutor skill exercises built from your performance on that answer. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors.
• A detailed AI review of any Speaking or Writing answer you choose. For Speaking it scores every criterion and your pronunciation word by word. For Writing it scores every criterion, corrects and explains every grammar mistake, and gives you a high-scoring rewrite. Every review also builds AI Tutor skill exercises from your performance on that answer. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors.
• An IELTS certified teacher review of any Speaking or Writing answer you choose, within three business days. For Speaking you get a score on every criterion with audio feedback. For Writing you get a score on every criterion and your essay corrected by the teacher. Every review also builds AI Tutor skill exercises from your performance on that answer. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors.
• AI Tutor skill exercises that target the specific weakness behind a mistake: True/False/Not Given logic in Reading, relative clauses and conditionals in Writing, a vowel sound you keep mispronouncing in Speaking.
• 200 IELTS and English lessons and vocabulary training with 5,000+ IELTS words, with flashcards and exercises.
• Ask an Instructor when you need a human to explain something, plus a score forecast that tracks how your practice bands are trending.
• An unlimited free trial with no credit card, plans from a 7-day pass up to two years, a score improvement guarantee, and the TOEFL course plus BestMyLingo included with your IELTS subscription.

The practical difference is simple. On Magoosh, a wrong answer ends with an explanation. On BestMyTest, a wrong answer ends with an exercise on the skill you missed, and a way to check whether the fix worked on your next answer.

BestMyTest and Magoosh Side by Side

The table uses the figures each company publishes about its own IELTS course.

What the Student Data Shows

Most prep companies ask you to trust testimonials. We publish our numbers. The BestMyTest IELTS learner performance data is updated from our own records and explains how every figure is measured. Magoosh publishes a target-band guarantee, which is a refund policy rather than an outcome; it does not publish how many of its students improved or by how much.

Among BestMyTest students who received three or more reviews of their answers from our AI and teachers, 91% raised their Writing band, by an average of 2.6 bands, and 82% raised their Speaking band, by an average of 2.2 bands.

The numbers come from real volume. 65,686 students have completed at least one full practice test section on BestMyTest, and our AI and teachers have reviewed 62,346 Speaking answers and 21,345 Writing tasks.

We cannot draw the same chart for Magoosh, because Magoosh has not published comparable figures. If it does, we will add them here. Every student's before-and-after band is listed on our IELTS student score improvements page.

Speaking and Writing Feedback: The Biggest Difference

Listening and Reading are self-correcting. You pick an answer, you learn whether it was right. Speaking and Writing are not. You need someone or something to tell you what a band 6 sounds like compared to a band 7, and what to change. This is where the two courses are furthest apart.

On Magoosh

You get unlimited AI grading of your Speaking and Writing practice, with a band estimate and feedback. All grading is by AI; there is no teacher review.

On BestMyTest

Every Speaking and Writing answer you submit gets a free instant AI band score on each criterion, with feedback. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors. On any answer you choose, you can add a detailed AI review or an IELTS certified teacher review.

• The detailed AI review scores each criterion. For Speaking it colour-codes every word of your transcript by how accurately you pronounced it, scores each sound and syllable, and gives you a pronunciation exercise for every mispronounced word. For Writing it corrects and explains every grammar mistake and gives you a high-scoring rewrite. It then builds AI Tutor skill exercises from your performance. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors.
• The teacher review gives you a score on each criterion and AI Tutor skill exercises built from your performance. For Speaking you get audio feedback on what to change. For Writing the teacher corrects your essay. The scoring aligns with the official IELTS band descriptors.

Then the review hands you off to the AI Tutor. If the teacher marks your Part 2 answer low on lexical resource, you get exercises on topic vocabulary. If the AI finds you drop final consonants, you get exercises on those sounds. You can read more on our IELTS speaking review and IELTS writing review pages.

Price, Trials, and Guarantees

Magoosh charges $109 for one month or $129 for six months, with the six-month plan also available as four payments of $32.25. You can try it free for seven days with no credit card and request a full refund within seven days of purchase. The target-band guarantee refunds your purchase if you miss the target you declared before the test, provided you watched every lesson, completed two mock tests and all the questions, used the AI grading, followed a study schedule, and asked a Magoosh expert for help.

BestMyTest starts with an unlimited free trial: you can use the course free for as long as you want, with no credit card and no time limit. Paid plans run from a 7-day pass for a test next week, through one to six month plans, to one and two year plans. Prices are shown in your local currency on the IELTS plans page. Every plan carries a score improvement guarantee: at least a 1 band improvement on Custom plans and on Premium plans of two to four months, and at least 2.5 bands on Premium plans of six months or more, with a refund if you complete the course and your official score does not improve by that much. You do not need a previous IELTS score. Your first practice test in the first seven days sets your baseline.

Two things to weigh beyond the sticker price. A BestMyTest IELTS subscription also includes the TOEFL course and BestMyLingo. And a single IELTS retake costs more than either course, so the course that fixes your weaknesses before test day is the better value.

Who Each Course Is Right For

Pick Magoosh if

• You learn best from video lessons and self-schedule your study.
• You want unlimited AI grading and are happy without a teacher's review.
• You already score well in Speaking and Writing and mainly need Listening and Reading practice.

Pick BestMyTest if

• You want to know why you lose marks and fix that skill, not only see the right answer.
• Speaking or Writing is holding your band back and you want an IELTS certified teacher's review as well as AI scores.
• You want 50 full-length practice tests with a diagnostic report after each one, for Academic or General Training.
• You want to try the full course free for as long as you like before paying, then pick a plan length that matches your test date.

Start your unlimited free trial

Frequently Asked Questions

How We Compared the Two Courses

Magoosh figures were read from ielts.magoosh.com/plans, ielts.magoosh.com/features, and ielts.magoosh.com/score-guarantee in October 2026. BestMyTest figures are the course contents at the same date, and the student figures on this page are generated from our published dataset each time it is refreshed. We sell one of the two courses, and both offer free trials you can use to check the comparison yourself; BestMyTest's has no time limit.

IELTS is a registered trademark of the British Council, IDP IELTS, and Cambridge University Press & Assessment. BestMyTest is not affiliated with them or with Magoosh.