Duolingo English Test Scores Explained: Your Guide to Understanding DET Results

The Duolingo English Test will also start to include individual sub-scores (Speaking, Writing, Reading, and Listening) along with integrated subscores (Literacy, Comprehension, Conversation, and Production).

This is to ensure that universities or students are able to compare these skills for Duolingo with IELTS and TOEFL.

The Duolingo English Test score helps determine your understanding of the English language based on four skills: Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking. It also helps determine your score on usage of one or more skills together. All of this together forms the overall score.

Here’s how the proficiency is determined based on your overall Duolingo score:

What is a good Duolingo English Test Score?
 

A Duolingo score of 120 is generally considered good and is equivalent to 6.5 in IELTS.

Most top universities accept a score of 120. However, score requirements may vary depending on the program or university you choose.

Read more: Find out the minimum Duolingo scores accepted by countries/ universities across the world

The sub-scores determine how well you have performed in different skills of the English language and combination of those.

Along with your overall score, the Duolingo English Test scorecard also contains two types of sub-scores:

Individual Subscores 

These measure your skills in four key areas:

• Speaking: Are you a good communicator?
• Writing:  Do you have a flair for writing?
• Reading: Can you grasp key information?
• Listening: Are you a good listener?

Integrated Subscores

These subscores determine how well your skills work together in real-life situations.  It provides a detailed picture of your strengths and weaknesses in each skill.

Each integrated subscore evaluates your two language proficiency skills at once as follows:

• Production: Your writing and speaking abilities
• Literacy: Your reading and writing abilities
• Comprehension: Your listening and reading abilities
• Conversation: Your speaking and listening abilities

Important note: The overall score and subscores are calculated independently based on different sets of questions that affect each score. Your overall score is not an average or sum of the individual subscores.

DET Score Report
 

The DET score report includes both your overall scores and subscores. Here’s what each part means:
 

• Overall Score: As we mentioned, your overall score ranges on a scale of 10-160. This score is not an average of 4 subscores. It’s just a way to define your skills and language capabilities.
• Sub-Scores: These scores analyse how well you can use language in a variety of settings, providing a complete picture of your language proficiency.

Duolingo English Test Certificate
 

The DET offers a very convenient and affordable way to view your results through a test certificate. You can view, save, download and print it as per your requirement.
 

 A unique URL is given for each test to ensure its authenticity. The test certificate includes:

• Name
• Date of the test.
• Overall score
• Sub-scores
• Description for each sub-score

Below is a sample Duolingo English Test scorecard which includes all the details of the test taker, CEFR levels, Overall Score, Individual subscores, and Integrated Subscores.

Note: Individual section score was introduced by Duolingo only in July 2024 so that universities could use it to compare it against IELTS and TOEFL scores.
 

Students who have given the exam earlier than July 2024 can also download the new certificate which would have this section incorporated for them.

You can also watch this official video to understand the DET scorecard better.

The Duolingo English test scores align with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference), which is an important International English Language Proficiency standard.

The CEFR framework categorises language proficiency into following six buckets:

• A1 - Beginner
• A2 - Elementary
• B1 - Intermediate
• B2 - Upper Intermediate
• C1 - Advanced
• C2 - Proficient/ Fluent

Below is a detailed interpretation of Duolingo English Test Score with respect to CEFR:

Example: If a university requires the CEFR B2 level for admissions, then you must have a Duolingo English Test score above 100.

When you send your scorecard to a university - they can view the following details:

• Overall score and subscores
• Test date - Date on which the test was taken. Universities are aware that the result is valid for only 2 years
• Video interview (speaking sample) and a writing sample recorded during the test
• Score sharing log - shows if test scores have been shared with other institutions
   

Read more: How to send Duolingo English Test score to universities?

The table below shows how Duolingo English Test scores compare to TOEFL iBT scores. It will help you understand where you stand based on your score in either of the tests.

The table below shows how Duolingo English Test scores compare to TOEFL iBT scores. It will help you understand where you stand based on your score in either of the tests.

Read more: Duolingo vs IELTS comparison Guide 2025

Below is a comparison of Duolingo individual subscore with IELTS individual skills:

Certified Duolingo English Test Score is valid for 2 years from the date of test result. You can send scores to universities free of cost during this time frame for admissions.