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 and every drill work without one, and so do one reading and one listening paper a week. Signing in opens the whole library, free. If you make an account, 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, the tutor, word lookup and generated tests each cost money to run, so each one carries its own allowance, counted over two rolling windows at once — seven days and thirty. Running out of one leaves the others untouched, and you can see what is left of each on your billing page.

There is also a limit on how many AI requests come from a single internet address each week. It is there so that one address cannot spend the whole budget by making accounts, and it is worth knowing about because a whole school or office behind one connection shares it — you can reach it before you reach your own allowance.

Drills and your study plan cost nothing to serve, do not count towards any allowance, and are never limited. Practice papers do not count towards an AI allowance either. Signed out you get one reading and one listening paper a week, and writing and speaking are closed; signed in, on any plan, every paper in all four skills is open with no limit. On Free and Tracking a writing or speaking paper ends by showing you your essay or transcript — the AI marking is what the AI plan adds.

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.

Organisations and shared learning records

An organisation workspace can include owners, managers, teachers and students. Any signed-in person can create one and becomes its owner at once; there is nothing to apply for and nobody approves it. Teachers see assigned students only; managers manage their own organisation; BandUp administrators can suspend or remove an organisation across the service. An invitation must be accepted by the account it was addressed to.

A student asks to leave and an organisation manager approves or rejects the request. Work completed after joining is shared during membership. Sharing earlier history is a separate choice; changing access while membership is active also uses an approval request. These controls exist so neither a learner nor a teacher can silently change an organisation’s records.

Not everything needs your request, and it is fairer to say so than to leave you to find out. A manager can change your role, suspend you or remove you from their organisation without asking you first. Joining as a student needs a paid plan or a seat that organisation provides. And while you are a student member you cannot clear your practice history, because the organisation’s record of it is not yours alone to delete.

Teachers may archive the organisation’s view of an assigned student’s attempt. Managers may permanently remove an attempt from that organisation with a recorded reason. Neither action deletes the learner’s original BandUp record. Attempts to evade these permissions, view unassigned students, or use invitations for another person are prohibited.

Paid access, and how the money works

BandUp is free to use, and most of it stays free whatever you do: the placement test, your study plan, every grammar and vocabulary drill, and — once you sign in — every practice paper in all four skills, unlimited. Tracking buys memory: your sittings, band trend and saved words kept on your account and synced between devices. AI adds the parts that cost money to run each time you press the button — the examiner that marks your writing and speaking, the tutor and word lookup. Neither Free nor Tracking has AI: reading and listening papers are marked from the answer key, which is exactly as accurate, and writing and speaking hand you back what you wrote or said.

Tracking

— HK$4.90 a month, or HK$39.00 a year. Everything in Free, remembered — your band history, saved and synced.

AI

— HK$8.90 a month, or HK$89.00 a year. Everything in Tracking, plus an examiner and a tutor.

The prices above are in Hong Kong dollars. The plans page shows them in your own currency where we have a price in it, and that is the amount a card charges. An Alipay or WeChat Pay pass is always charged in Hong Kong dollars, whatever currency was shown for it.

Card subscriptions renew automatically, at the same price, on the same date each period, until you cancel. That is what the button on the plans page starts, and it says so on itself. Alipay and WeChat Pay passes do not renew: one payment gives the monthly or yearly access shown at checkout, then the account returns to Free unless you buy another pass. There is nothing to cancel on a pass, and the date it ends is shown on your billing page from the moment the payment reaches us. We repeat the applicable terms beside each payment control before you choose it.

The AI allowances are counted per feature — so many essays marked, so many tutor questions, so many word lookups — against two rolling windows at once: a weekly one, which is the allowance refilling as you go, and a monthly one, which is the total. Both roll continuously rather than resetting on a date, so nothing is lost by joining mid-month. The exact numbers are on the plans page and on your own billing page, where you can see what is left. They do not reset when you cancel and subscribe again; each request simply expires thirty days after you made it.

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

If we ever change a price, we will tell you by email before it takes effect. For a card subscription the new price applies only from your next renewal, and you can cancel in the meantime so nothing further is charged. A pass is charged once, at the price shown when you buy it, so a later change cannot affect a pass you already hold.

Cancelling, and getting your money back

Cancel a card subscription whenever you like. On the web it is one button on your billing page. From the iPhone app, open your billing page on bandup.life, because the app does not carry one. Either way there is no email, no form, and nobody trying to talk you out of it. A prepaid Alipay or WeChat Pay pass has no future payment to cancel; if we refund one, the access it bought ends at the same time.

Cancelling stops the next charge. You keep the plan you are on 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.

If the law where you live gives you a right to cancel, that right applies and nothing below takes it away. In the European Union and the United Kingdom that is fourteen days from the day you subscribed, and you do not have to give a reason. Email hello@bandup.life and we will refund you. Because your access begins straight away, at your request, we may keep a proportionate amount for the days you had it — on a monthly plan that is usually a matter of pence.

Everywhere else, refunds are by request within two days of a charge. Write to the same address, tell us what went wrong, and we will answer within three working days. We are a small operation and we read every one of these ourselves; where the reason is a fair one you get your money back.

Most of the time cancelling serves you better than a refund. It is one button, it takes effect immediately, and you keep everything you have paid for until the period runs out.

If something has genuinely gone wrong — you were charged twice, or the app was broken for you — write to us whenever it happened. Those are not refunds under a policy, they are mistakes, and we fix mistakes.

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.

On the Free plan, and without an account, your practice is stored on the device you are using and is cleared when you close the browser — nothing about it reaches us, so there is nothing for us to restore. On the Tracking or AI plan it is synced and comes back on any device you sign in to. We cannot recover progress that was never synced.

Where the law allows it, our liability to you is limited to what you have paid us in the twelve months before whatever went wrong. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury, fraud, or anything else that cannot lawfully be limited — and if you are a consumer, your statutory rights come first and this paragraph does not touch them.

Who runs BandUp

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

BandUp is run by Adam Yiu, as an individual rather than through a company. There is no company registration number to give, because there is no company — the person you are contracting with is the person named here.

Contact: hello@bandup.life. Every message is read by that person.

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.life. See also the privacy policy.