Canada accepts exactly three English tests as proof of English for its economic immigration programs, the routes for people who move to work rather than to join family. They are IELTS General Training, CELPIP-General and PTE Core. Not every version of those tests counts, and nothing outside the list counts at all, however well known it is. Here is the whole list, taken from IRCC's own language testing page.

Who this is for

You are planning a move to Canada as a skilled worker and you need to prove your English, or you already hold a test result and want to know whether it counts. This post tells you which tests are on the list and what makes a result valid. It does not tell you which of the three to book: our guide to choosing between IELTS, CELPIP and PTE Core does that.

The words you will meet

• IRCC is Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the government department that decides immigration applications.
• PR, or permanent residence, is the status that lets you live and work anywhere in Canada indefinitely. Most of the routes on this page lead to it.
• CLB stands for Canadian Language Benchmarks, a scale from 1 to 12 that Canada uses to describe language ability. Every accepted test result is converted onto that scale.
• The four abilities are listening, reading, writing and speaking. Every accepted test scores each one separately.

Which versions count, and which do not

IRCC states each requirement positively: you must take the CELPIP-General test, you must take the IELTS General Training option, you must take the PTE Core option. That positive wording is what excludes everything else, so it is worth reading slowly.

IELTS Academic does not count. It is a genuinely different test from IELTS General Training, built for university admission rather than for immigration, and a great many people book it by mistake because it is the version their university asked for.

TOEFL does not count for these programs. Neither does PTE Academic, which shares a name with PTE Core but is a separate test with its own booking. If your employer or your university asked you for one of those, that result will not do this job.

IELTS One Skill Retake does not count either. One Skill Retake lets you re-sit a single part of the test rather than all four. IRCC's page says plainly that it does not accept it for Express Entry, so for Canada a retake means sitting the whole test again.

The shorter CELPIP version does not count. CELPIP publishes a general test covering all four abilities and a shorter one covering listening and speaking only. IRCC asks for CELPIP-General, the full one.

If you already hold a result from a test that is not on the list, it is not wasted: it tells you roughly where your English stands, and it may well be accepted by a university or an employer. It just cannot be the evidence in your immigration application.

How old can my test result be?

Less than two years old, and IRCC applies that at two separate moments: when you complete your Express Entry profile, and again when you submit your permanent residence application. Its language testing page warns that if your results expire before you apply, the application is refused.

That matters more than it sounds, because months can pass between those two moments. If you test early in your planning, count forward two years from the test date and check that your application will still land inside the window.

How does my score become a CLB level?

You never apply with a raw test score. IRCC publishes a conversion chart for each accepted test, and your listening, reading, writing and speaking scores each become a separate CLB level. The immigration rules are then written in CLB levels, never in IELTS bands or PTE points.

We do not repeat the charts here, because one post owns them: see how your score converts to CLB and NCLC for the tables themselves, and what CLB and NCLC actually are for why Canada works this way at all.

The level you need is not a single number, and this is the part most readers get wrong. It changes with the program: Express Entry sets one bar for its skilled-worker stream and a different one for its trades stream, and a provincial nomination can set its own. That is why this post gives you no minimum score. The required level belongs to the route, and the route's own guide is where to find it.

Can I combine my best scores from two tests?

No. All four ability scores must come from one sitting of one accepted test. You cannot take your speaking score from an IELTS result and your writing score from a CELPIP result because each was your better one.

This surprises people who have sat more than one test. If your best listening score and your best writing score are on two different certificates, you have two partial results and no complete one, and the honest answer is usually to book the test you expect to do best on overall and sit it again.

What if I want to apply in French?

Canada is officially bilingual, and French counts. IRCC accepts two French tests, TEF Canada and TCF Canada, listed on the same language testing page. French results convert onto the NCLC scale, which is the French-language twin of CLB.

French is worth understanding even if English is your stronger language, because Canada runs routes and draws that reward French specifically. Our guide to French-language routes to Canada covers who they suit. You can also claim both languages in one application, with a result from an accepted English test and a result from an accepted French test.

What this means for your report

Our questionnaire asks which test you sat, your score in each of the four abilities, and the date of the result. It does the CLB conversion itself using IRCC's own charts, so you never have to work out a benchmark level, and picking a different accepted test never changes your assessment.

The test date does real work. Every open Canadian route we assess that has a language requirement carries the requirement "Language test results current", and where your result is stale, or will be by the time you apply, the report hands you the checklist step "Make sure your language test result is less than 2 years old". Where you gave us no test date at all, the report says so on the requirement instead of showing you a plain green tick for something we never checked.

What it does not do: it does not book your test, it does not predict your score, and it never tells you that an application will succeed. It tells you which routes your entered scores reach and what each one still wants from you.

Next step

The hardest part of the language requirement is not the test itself. It is that a single set of scores means one thing under Express Entry, another under a provincial nomination, and another again under a category-based draw, so a score that falls short on one route can be comfortably enough on another. Answering one set of questions once and seeing every route measured against the same answers is exactly the work our report does in one place.

Our Canada page lists the routes we assess. The questionnaire is free, and so is the eligibility summary at the end of it; payment unlocks the full report with the checklist and the requirement detail. Start with the free questionnaire.