A good TOEIC score has always cost money — the test fee, official books, and often private tutoring — and the evidence says that cost helps decide who scores well. We think practice shouldn't be the thing standing between someone and a job. So during our launch, the whole platform is free.
This is a limited-time launch offer, not a "free forever" gimmick — we'll be honest about that throughout. Here's the reasoning, the data, and what happens next.
A good TOEIC score has always cost money
Before you answer a single question, the TOEIC costs money — and real preparation costs a lot more. Sitting the official Listening & Reading test runs about ¥7,810 in Japan and roughly ₩50,000 in South Korea. That's just the exam. Prepare properly and the bill grows fast: official workbooks at ¥3,000–3,300 each, several practice-test volumes, and — for many people — private tutoring at ¥3,000–6,000 an hour.
Zoom out and the scale of private study spending is staggering. In South Korea, households spent ₩29.2 trillion (about US$20 billion) on private education in 2024 — up more than 60% in a decade, according to Statistics Korea. Not all of that is TOEIC, of course; it's dominated by school tutoring. But it captures the norm that test preparation is something families are expected to buy, and buy heavily.
Why that quietly decides who passes
When practice costs money, the people who can pay for more of it tend to score higher — and the TOEIC data shows exactly that pattern. A 2024 study of TOEIC's role in Japanese corporations found a striking gap: an annual-income difference of about ¥2.01 million separated people scoring below 499 from those in the 900 range. The paper warns that leaning so heavily on one test "can lead to discriminatory practices and exclusionary dynamics."
That's the uncomfortable part of a test used this widely. The TOEIC program runs in 160 countries through around 14,000 organisations; in Japan alone it's used by roughly 3,200 companies, schools and institutions. For a student trying to graduate, or a job seeker trying to clear a résumé screen, the score is a gate — and if the practice that opens that gate sits behind a paywall, the gate quietly favours whoever could afford to prepare. The people who most need a fair shot at the TOEIC are often the ones least able to spend ¥20,000 on getting ready for it.
Access to practice shouldn't be the hidden variable that decides an English score. The test is supposed to measure your English — not your budget.
What we built instead
We built the thing we wished existed: full-length, format-accurate TOEIC tests that are genuinely free to take. Not a five-question sample, not a locked PDF — complete mocks across all four TOEIC tests, in the current official 2026 format, auto-scored on the real scales, in your browser on any device.
And critically, it includes the part that used to require a human: feedback. Every reading and listening answer is scored instantly, and every Speaking and Writing response is rated against the official criteria by AI, with specific notes on what to fix. That's the coaching that a tutor at ¥5,000 an hour would give you — built into a free tool.
Full-length mocks for Listening & Reading, Speaking & Writing, TOEIC Link and TOEIC Bridge · instant 10–990 and 0–200 scoring · AI feedback on every answer · a personalised study plan · progress tracking across devices. No credit card.
Why AI makes "free" possible
The reason we can give away one-to-one-style coaching is that AI has changed the economics of tutoring. The gold standard has long been Benjamin Bloom's 1984 finding that individual tutoring lifts the average learner by about two standard deviations over classroom teaching — wonderful, but impossibly expensive to give everyone. AI is the first tool that gets close to that at scale.
The evidence is now concrete. A 2025 World Bank randomised controlled trial in Nigeria gave students a six-week after-school programme with an AI tutor for English. The result: overall learning gains of about 0.3 standard deviations (and around 0.23 on the English-specific assessment) — which the researchers estimated was equivalent to roughly 1.5 to 2 years of ordinary schooling — and they ranked it among the most cost-effective education interventions ever rigorously measured. When quality coaching drops to near-zero marginal cost per student, giving it away stops being charity and starts being possible.
So why give it away — and what happens next
We're launching, and we'd rather earn trust than extract early revenue. The fastest way to build a genuinely great TOEIC platform is to get it into the hands of thousands of real test takers, watch where they struggle, and fix it. Free-for-launch is how we do that — and how we make sure the people who most need affordable prep get it from day one.
We're also going to be straight with you about the future, because trust is the whole point:
| During launch (now) | After launch | |
|---|---|---|
| Full-length mocks | Everything free | Free tier keeps core mocks |
| AI scoring & coaching | Free | Affordable Pro plan |
| Cost to you | ¥0 · no card | A fair price, clearly shown |
Notice what we're not saying. We will never tell you the platform is "free forever" — that wouldn't be honest about how a real product survives. What we can promise is a permanent free tier, transparent pricing when the time comes, and no dark patterns to get there.
Use it while it's all free
Every full-length mock, all four tests, every AI feature — free during our launch. Take your first one now; no credit card, no catch.
Start practising free →Frequently asked questions
Is TOEIC Prep really free right now?
Why is normal TOEIC prep so expensive?
Will you start charging later?
How can you afford to give this away?
Is the free version limited or watered down?
Sources
- IIBC, TOEIC Listening & Reading — Test Fee & How to Apply (2025). Japan fee ¥7,810 (with certificate).
- K. Kawabata, "Linguistic Inequality in Japanese Corporations: The Impact of TOEIC Scores on Hiring and Promotion", IntechOpen (2024). ¥2.01M income gap by score band; exclusionary-dynamics finding.
- Statistics Korea, reported by The Korea Herald (2026). ₩29.2 trillion private-education spending in 2024.
- De Simone et al., "From Chalkboards to Chatbots", World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 11125 (2025). AI-tutoring effect size (~0.3 SD) and cost-effectiveness.
- IIBC, TOEIC Program DATA & ANALYSIS 2025. Program scale (160 countries, ~14,000 organisations).