TOEFL Fee by Country: What the Test Actually Costs Where You Live

Pick your testing location below. The receipt on the right starts with the listed registration fee and adds the service fees you tick, so the number at the bottom is a modeled US-dollar subtotal before local tax or card fees. The registration figures come from the fee table ETS publishes on its own registration site, read on 8 September 2026.

Registration, tax and service charges are separate parts of the bill.

The registration fee is the per-location list price. ETS publishes it under a column literally headed "Test Fee (USD)". It buys one test appointment, your scores in your ETS account, a downloadable PDF score report, your MyBest scores, and up to four score reports sent to institutions you name before you test.

Tax is separate in 38 named jurisdictions. The 2026–2027 TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin describes fees there as "exclusive of any sales, use, value-added or similar taxes", added when the order is placed. For the other locations, the Bulletin says test and test-related fees are inclusive of applicable taxes.

Service fees are listed in US dollars on the global ETS fee page: $49 to register inside the 7-day window, $69 to reschedule, $29 for each score report past the fourth. Country-specific pages may show local-currency amounts. Those are the charges that can quietly double a budget.

The spread across locations is wide and has nothing to do with how hard the test is. Switzerland at $475 is 2.8 times Nigeria and Ukraine at $170 for an identical exam. If you hold two passports or study abroad, the country you sit the test in is a real financial variable.

The TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin for 2026–2027 names 38 jurisdictions where the published fee excludes sales tax, use tax or VAT, and the tax is added when the order is placed. For the other locations, the Bulletin says test and test-related fees are inclusive of applicable taxes.

A worked example: the listed price versus the charged price

Take the United States. ETS lists $270. The United States is on the tax list, so any applicable sales tax is added at checkout. If no tax applies, the $270 order remains $270. ETS publishes no rate table for this, so the following is arithmetic rather than a quoted price: at a local rate of 8 percent that same $270 order settles at $291.60, and at 20 percent VAT it settles at $324. A single "$270 plus tax" total is not reliable without the applicable rate. Check the order summary for the amount before you press pay.

The one contradiction worth knowing about: the ETS fee page carries a footnote saying prices exclude tax "except for EU countries", while the Bulletin lists 27 EU member states among the jurisdictions where tax is added at checkout. Those two statements point in opposite directions. Treat the checkout screen as the authority and read the order summary line by line before confirming.

Unlike the registration fee table, the global ETS fee page lists these service fees once, in US dollars. Country-specific ETS pages may show local-currency amounts instead.

Your fee entitles you to up to four score reports sent to recipients you name before you sit the test. Applying to more than four programmes means paying $29 per extra recipient. This is a common budgeting mistake, because the four free slots have a hard deadline: 10pm local test centre time on the day before your test. Miss it and every report costs $29, including ones you would have got free an hour earlier.

Example: a student applying to ten US graduate programmes

This is an illustration, not a real person. Anjali is testing in India, where the global ETS table lists the fee at $173. She uses the global USD fee table for this model, books inside the 7-day window because a deadline moved, reschedules once when a family event lands on her test date, and only finalises her programme list after she has already tested, so all ten score reports have to be ordered afterwards.

The headline number was $173. The modeled fee total was $465, which is 2.7 times the figure she budgeted for. Not one dollar of the difference bought a better score. Had she named all ten recipients before the deadline, four would have been free and six would still have cost $174, so the reports were unavoidable; the $118 of express and reschedule fees were not.

If you are stacking this against the rest of an application season, the graduate school application cost calculator puts test fees next to application fees and transcript charges, and the college cost comparison calculator does the same for undergraduate offers.

There is no cap on attempts, but you cannot test more than once in any 3-day period. Each attempt is a fresh full registration fee. The ETS fee schedule does not list a returning-candidate discount.

The arithmetic in three common locations, one attempt against two, with no extras at all:

Two things change that calculus. First, MyBest scores combine your highest section scores across all valid tests from the last two years, so a second sitting aimed at one weak section can lift the profile a university sees without repeating your strong sections' results. Check whether your target programmes accept MyBest before you count on it; many do not. Second, a second attempt costs the fee again and a second round of score reports if your first four went out on the first test. That is why the receipt above lets you set attempts and reports independently.

Before you pay for a retake, work out whether you actually need the higher number. Our page on what TOEFL score you need lists the ranges programmes ask for, and the TOEFL iBT format and timing guide shows where the sections are worth practising instead of re-buying.

Pricing is presented differently across the four tests, so any straight comparison needs a fresh check. Here is how each one is actually set, checked on 8 September 2026.

We are not printing dollar figures for IELTS, PTE or the Duolingo English Test here. Use the three official links in the sources list to check the current amount for your own country or purchase flow, because those figures can change independently.

One TOEFL comparison we can make with confidence: TOEFL Essentials at $199 is cheaper than the TOEFL iBT in 196 of the 212 locations ETS lists, dearer in 13, and an exact tie at $199 in Bolivia, Indonesia and Malaysia. The 13 places where the iBT is the cheaper ETS product are Nigeria and Ukraine ($170), India ($173), Egypt and Kazakhstan ($175), Vietnam ($182), Ethiopia and Turkey ($185), and Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan ($195). Check acceptance first: each institution or programme sets its own accepted-test policy.

If price is one input among several, our comparisons of TOEFL versus IELTS and which English test to take weigh format and acceptance alongside cost, and the Duolingo English Test score chart shows how its scale maps onto TOEFL numbers.

The ETS fee page lists a narrow fee-reduction programme. The TOEFL Fee Reduction Service covers 50 percent of the regular test fee and is designed for high school seniors in the United States with financial need who are applying to colleges where TOEFL scores are recommended or required. ETS publishes the guidelines and a voucher request form as PDFs on the fee page. On the US fee of $270 that voucher is worth $135.

The Bulletin also notes that promotional terms may exclude some products and services, so check the current terms before relying on an offer.

Where the money actually is

1. Not needing a second attempt. Worth a full registration fee, $170 to $475 depending on where you test. On a $270 test, that exceeds the $135 value of the 50 percent fee-reduction voucher.
2. Filling all four free score report slots before the 10pm deadline. Worth $116 against ordering the same four afterwards.
3. Booking more than 7 full days ahead. Worth $49.
4. Getting the date right the first time. Worth $69.
5. Skipping Express Scoring. Worth $129, unless a deadline genuinely falls inside the normal 3-day posting window.

Add those up for a student who plans well: $363 of avoidable service fees before you even count the second registration fee. That is more than the list price of the test in most of the world.

Published fees change mid-year, and the Bulletin states that its policies are subject to change without notice. The list on this page is a snapshot taken on 8 September 2026. Confirm yours at source before you budget:

1. Open the ETS TOEFL iBT test fees page, linked in the sources below.
2. Find the box headed "TOEFL iBT Test Registration Fee".
3. Choose your testing location in the dropdown. Choose the country where you will physically sit the test, not the country you hold a passport for or the country you are applying to.
4. Read the figure in the "Test Fee (USD)" column. That is the list price.
5. Check whether your country appears in the tax list further up this page. If it does, expect the checkout total to be higher than the list price.
6. Take the registration flow as far as the order summary without paying. Review any tax and the amount ETS will charge before paying; your card issuer may handle currency conversion separately.

One caution about currency. The global ETS table is headed "Test Fee (USD)", but ETS country pages may show local-currency amounts. At the 8 September 2026 check, the India iBT fee page listed INR 15,254 while the global table listed $173. For TOEFL Essentials, the ETS registration page separately lists INR 17,200 for India. What leaves your bank depends on your card's exchange rate and any foreign transaction fee. The same global table lists China at $283.17, so confirm the official source for the location you plan to use.

If you have not booked yet, our TOEFL registration walkthrough covers the account setup, deadlines and fee traps in order, so you hit this fee page with the rest of the process already mapped out.