CLB Calculator

Only tests the government has approved can be used as proof, and you sign up and pay the fee yourself through an approved agency. The accepted English options are IELTS General Training, CELPIP-General and PTE Core, while people taking a French test can choose TEF Canada or TCF Canada. The full list is on the official test page. With IELTS, you must book the General Training option, and Express Entry won't accept a One Skill Retake (a resit of just one part of the test).

Your results must be less than two years old on the day you create your Express Entry profile, and still less than two years old on the day you send your application for permanent residence, as the official rule says. Check those dates before you pay for a test. You type your scores into the profile yourself, and if the system asks for them, you also add the certificate number and PIN printed on your test report.

For each skill, find your IELTS score in that skill's column and read the CLB level at the start of its row. Each skill is converted on its own, so your four levels can differ. Each number is the lowest score for that level. In your skill's column, start at the top and stop at the first number your score reaches; the level at the start of that row is yours.

Here is an example. A report with 6.5 in reading, 6.0 in writing, 7.5 in listening, and 7.0 in speaking gives you CLB 8 for reading, CLB 7 for writing, CLB 8 for listening, and CLB 9 for speaking. Here is another: 6.5 in listening is CLB 7, because CLB 8 needs 7.5. The official page is the source to trust.

CELPIP-General is the easiest report to understand, because each score on it matches the CLB level with the same number. If you scored 9 in listening, your listening level is CLB 9, and the same is true for every skill from 4 to 10. A 10, 11 or 12 gets the most points for language.

PTE Core gives you a score for each skill, and the government sorts those scores into ranges. Find the range that contains your score; that row is your level.

With TEF Canada, the ranges you use depend on when you took the test. If you took TEF Canada after 10 December 2023, use this table. If you took it between 1 October 2019 and 10 December 2023, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses older ranges; pick that version of TEF Canada in the calculator and it uses them for you.

With TCF Canada, reading and listening are scored on a scale up to 699, while writing and speaking are graded out of 20.

The level you need depends on your program, and for some programs also on how your job is classified under Canada's job classification system, the NOC. Some language requirements depend on your job's category, called TEER; the Find my NOC tool can help you find that category. For the Canadian Experience Class (for people with work experience in Canada), a job in TEER 0 or 1 needs CLB 7 (or NCLC 7 in French) in all four skills, and a job in TEER 2 or 3 needs CLB 5 (or NCLC 5). The Federal Skilled Worker Program (for skilled workers from abroad) asks for CLB 7 in every skill. The Federal Skilled Trades Program (for trades such as electricians and welders) asks for CLB 5 in speaking and listening and CLB 4 in reading and writing. The official requirements list each program, so check your four levels against it. Look at all four levels, not just your strongest.

If a disability kept you from finishing one or more sections of your test, the missing part can be scored as an average of your other results. Ask for this through IRCC's language averaging tool, unless the test company already did it for you.