About
About PTE Core Free Practice
A free practice platform for PTE Core, the English test IRCC accepts for Canadian immigration. Built by someone who sat the test, for the people who are about to.
Who runs it
PTE Core Free Practice is run by The PTE Core Free Practice team, based in India. Built by a PTE Core test taker for Canada PR applicants. Every page is written and reviewed by a person, then checked against Pearson’s official score guide.
It is a small operation by design. There is no content farm and no outsourced writing. The person who answers the support email is the person who wrote the guides and built the scorer, which is why corrections tend to be made the same week they are reported.
Why it exists
Canada's Express Entry system rewards a strong Comprehensive Ranking System score, and English proficiency is one of the biggest levers a candidate controls. PTE Core is one of the language tests Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada accepts, but most of the preparation material online was written for PTE Academic. It schedules tasks PTE Core does not have, leaves out the two it does, and quotes word limits and scoring rules from the wrong test. Candidates following that advice turn up to a test they have not actually practised.
The second gap was price. Serious practice tools charged for every mock test, which meant the people with the least money did the least timed practice. The platform here is free, with a Google or email sign-in and no card, and pays for itself with ordinary advertising on the public pages. Nothing is held back for a paid tier.
What the platform does
- All 19 PTE Core task types on screens that match the test: the same preparation and recording timers, the same word counters, audio played once where the test plays it once.
- Automated scoring on every attempt, with an estimate for each trait Pearson scores and the CLB level next to it.
- Practice All, every task in the test's own order with the real timers, so the clock stops being a surprise.
- Analytics by task and by skill, so you can see which skill is furthest from your target.
- Free guides: a task page for every question type, method guides for the tasks that carry the most marks, a 30-day plan, and tools that convert scores to CLB and CLB to CRS points.
How the scoring works, in one paragraph
Spoken answers are transcribed by your browser's speech recognition and matched word by word against the text or the expected answer, with a short look-ahead so one stumble does not throw off the rest of the match. Fluency is measured from the audio itself: mid-phrase pauses, pitch changes and words per minute, counted only while you are speaking. Written answers are checked for form (word count, sentence count), for content against the prompt, and for grammar, vocabulary and spelling. The traits are then weighted the way Pearson's score guide weights them and shown on the 10 to 90 scale. It is an estimate, built to rank your attempts the way the real scorer would rank them, so that an improvement here is an improvement there. No practice tool sees your real test, and no practice score is a Pearson result.
How the guides are written
Every page is written from scratch for this site. Exam facts (task formats, timings, score ranges, the CLB table) are checked against Pearson's published PTE Core score guide and test-format pages; immigration facts are checked against IRCC. Where a page gives a figure Pearson does not publish, such as how much a task counts toward a skill score, it says the figure is our estimate. Sample texts, sentences, charts and emails in the guides are written for the guides and are not taken from any question bank or from a real test. The full process, including how pages are dated and corrected, is in our editorial policy.
Who it is for
Most people using the platform are preparing for Express Entry, a Provincial Nominee Program or another Canadian pathway that accepts PTE Core, and many of them have switched from IELTS or CELPIP after finding the scheduling or the scoring hard to work with. Some are aiming at CLB 7 to qualify; most are aiming at CLB 9 in all four skills, because that is where the CRS bonuses double. The platform is built around that second goal: find the skill that is capping you, and practise it the way it is scored.
Independent, not affiliated
Independent practice platform. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Pearson. PTE is a trademark of Pearson PLC. Scores here are practice estimates, not Pearson results.
We are also not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada or the Government of Canada. Information on this site about CLB levels, Express Entry or the Comprehensive Ranking System is general educational context, not immigration advice. The disclaimer sets this out in full.
Get in touch
Questions about the platform, a study plan or your target score, or a correction to a page: a real person reads every message.
Response times and what to include in a message are on the contact page.