Terms of use

The band scores here are estimates, not results

This is the most important thing on this page, so it is first.

Every number BandUp shows you — from the placement test, a practice test, or the AI examiner — is an estimate produced by software. It is not an IELTS result, it is not issued or recognised by anyone, and it has no standing with any university, employer, or immigration authority.

Please do not use a number from this app to decide whether you are ready to book a test, to skip preparation, or to make any application. Real bands come from a real exam. We built this to help you prepare for that exam, and it can be wrong about you in either direction.

What BandUp is

An independent study tool for people preparing for an English exam. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to IELTS, the British Council, IDP: IELTS Australia, or Cambridge University Press & Assessment. “IELTS” is their registered trademark and is used here only to say what this app helps you prepare for.

All questions, passages, scripts and explanations are written from scratch for this app. None of it is taken from a real past paper.

Accounts

An account is optional — the placement test, your study plan, practice tests and drills all work without one. If you make one, please keep it to yourself and use an email address you control.

BandUp is intended for people aged 13 and over. If you are under 13, please do not create an account.

You can delete your account at any time from your account page. It is immediate and permanent. We may close an account that is being used to attack the service or to resell access, and we will say why if we do.

Fair use of the AI features

Writing feedback, the speaking examiner, word lookup and generated tests each cost money to run, so they carry a daily allowance. Practice tests, drills and your study plan do not count towards it and are never limited.

Please do not automate requests, share an account to multiply the allowance, or use the AI features for anything other than preparing for an English exam.

Subscriptions, and how the money works

BandUp is free to use. Standard is a paid subscription that lifts the weekly limits on practice sessions, opens the full mock exam and the tutor chat, and raises the daily AI allowance from 20 requests to 500.

It renews automatically. Standard is $6.50 a month, or $65 a year, and it will keep renewing at that price on the same date each period until you cancel it. We say this here and again beside the button, because a subscription that renews quietly is a subscription somebody did not agree to.

Payment is taken by Stripe, not by us. Your card details go to Stripe and never reach BandUp’s servers — we could not see them if we wanted to.

If we ever change the price, we will tell you by email before it takes effect, and the new price will only apply from your next renewal. You can cancel in the meantime and nothing further is charged.

Cancelling, and getting your money back

Cancel whenever you like, from the billing page in the app. It is one button and it takes effect immediately — no email, no form, and nobody trying to talk you out of it.

Cancelling stops the next charge. You keep Standard until the end of the period you have already paid for, and then the account drops back to Free — with everything you have done still in it. Nothing is deleted for cancelling.

Refunds: within 14 days of a charge, ask and you will get it back in full. No reason needed, and it applies whether or not you have used the app in the meantime. Email hello@bandup.study and we will refund the last payment.

If you are in the EU or the UK you have a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days. Some services ask you to waive that right in exchange for immediate access. We do not — the refund above is the same 14 days, given freely, and you keep the statutory right as well.

After 14 days we do not refund part-used periods as a rule, because you can cancel at any point and keep what you paid for until it runs out. If something has genuinely gone wrong — you were charged twice, or the app was broken for you — write to us anyway.

What we do not promise

BandUp is offered as it is. We do not promise it will always be available, that the AI feedback will be accurate, or that using it will improve your score. The AI examiner is a language model: it can be wrong, and it can be confidently wrong.

Your practice is stored in your own browser. Clearing your browser data, or losing the device, loses it — which is why syncing to an account exists. We cannot recover progress that was never synced.

Note for review: the limitation of liability that would normally sit here has deliberately been left for a solicitor to write rather than imitated. See the legal review for context.

Who runs BandUp

BandUp is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with IELTS, the British Council, IDP, or Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

Contact: hello@bandup.study

To complete before selling: the trading name, legal form and geographic address of whoever is taking the payment, plus a company or tax registration number if one exists. EU and UK consumer law require these to be given before a distance sale, Stripe asks for them at onboarding, and the app stores check for them. They are deliberately blank rather than filled with something plausible.

Changes and contact

If these terms change in a way that matters, the date at the top changes with them.

Questions about these terms, or about your data: hello@bandup.study. See also the privacy policy.