The short answer
There is no universal “good” score. The Duolingo English Test is reported from 10 to 160 in five-point steps, and what counts as good is whatever your institution has published. As a rough orientation, many undergraduate programmes sit around 105–120 and many postgraduate ones around 115–130 — but these vary enormously by country, university and subject, and the published requirement is the only one that counts.
This is the most common question about the test and the one most often answered badly, usually with a single number presented as a pass mark. The test has no pass mark. It produces a score, and separate organisations decide independently what they will accept.
How to read the 10–160 scale
The score moves in increments of five, so 115 and 118 are not different results — 118 is not a score the test reports. Scores map onto the Common European Framework of Reference, which is the vocabulary most institutions actually think in when they set a requirement.
| DET score | CEFR level | Roughly what it means |
|---|---|---|
| 155–160 | C2 | Can handle academic English with ease in every skill. |
| 130–150 | C1 | Comfortable in demanding academic settings. Most competitive postgraduate requirements sit at or above this. |
| 100–125 | B2 | Can follow lectures and write assignments with effort. The band most undergraduate requirements fall in. |
| 60–95 | B1 | Everyday competence, but short of what degree-level study demands. |
| 35–55 | A2 | Basic exchanges only. |
| 10–30 | A1 | Beginner. |
These bands are how LingoCrest maps the scale when it estimates your level from practice. Duolingo publishes its own CEFR correspondence, and an institution may interpret a borderline score differently again. Treat the table as orientation, not as a promise.
Not sure where you are starting from? Four questions, about two minutes, no sign-up — and you get an estimated score out of 160 to measure the rest of this against.
Find your actual target before you prepare
The single most useful hour you can spend is the one before you start studying. Write down every programme you are applying to and find, on each institution’s own admissions page, two things: the overall score they require, and whether they also require a minimum on any subscore.
That second requirement catches people out. An institution may ask for 120 overall and 110 in Production, and a candidate who averaged their way to 120 on the strength of reading and listening will miss it. Knowing this at the start changes what you practise; discovering it after the test costs you the fee and several weeks.
- Take the highest requirement on your list and prepare for that. One test result is usually sent to several institutions.
- Add a margin of five to ten points. Test-day performance is not your practice average, and the gap is almost always downwards.
- Check how recent the requirement is. Institutions revise accepted tests and minimum scores between intakes.
So what is a good score?
A good score is your target plus a small margin, achieved on a day when the connection held and the microphone worked. Chasing a number far above what you need is a poor use of preparation time that would do more for your application elsewhere — and a score comfortably above the requirement does not usually improve your chances, because most institutions treat the English requirement as a threshold rather than as a ranking.
The exception is competitive programmes that use English proficiency as one signal among many, and scholarship decisions that do the same. If you are in that position, aim higher deliberately rather than by accident.