TOEFL 2026 materials: what is official, what is free, and what costs money
Preparing for the format that took effect on January 21, 2026 means sorting three different things: what ETS itself publishes, what is free, and what is worth paying for. This page keeps them apart. Every off-site link says when we last confirmed it opens, and every difference we claim about our own material names the evidence behind it.
Read this first
The materials below are grouped by who published them. The ones ETS publishes are linked by name so you can read them at the source — that is the only relationship between us and those pages. We do not resell, bundle, mirror or discount anything ETS publishes, and nothing Reach120 produces is an ETS statement or an official score.
Reach120 is an independent practice tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by ETS, and it does not provide official TOEFL® test scores.
TOEFL® is a registered trademark of ETS. This product is not endorsed or approved by ETS.
Published by ETS
Start here. These are the source documents for what the test now contains and how it is reported — the same ones we read before writing anything about the format.
- Published by ETSFree
TOEFL iBT test content and structure
ETS's own description of the four sections and every task name in the format that took effect on January 21, 2026.
Open on ets.orgLink confirmed 2026-08-05 - Published by ETSFree
TOEFL iBT 2026 test specifications (PDF)
The published blueprint: how many items each section lists, the maximum raw points, and the estimated section times. ETS states the blueprint is subject to minor revision until launch.
Open on ets.orgLink confirmed 2026-08-05 - Published by ETSFree
TOEFL iBT test overview (PDF)
A walkthrough of the test that includes the wording of the Write an Email and Write for an Academic Discussion instructions as a candidate sees them.
Open on ets.orgLink confirmed 2026-08-05 - Published by ETSFree
Understanding your TOEFL iBT scores
How ETS reports a score. For tests taken on or after January 21, 2026 the official report uses a 1-6 scale in half-band increments, with a comparable estimate on the previous scale during the transition through January 2028.
Open on ets.orgLink confirmed 2026-08-05 - Published by ETSPriced by ETS
ETS's own preparation materials
On its preparation page ETS names Official TOEFL iBT Prep and the TOEFL iBT Sample Test. Access terms and prices are stated there, and that is the only place we will point you for them — we do not resell, bundle or discount anything ETS publishes.
Open on ets.orgLink confirmed 2026-08-05
From Reach120 — free
Most of the product is free, and it is listed before the paid part for that reason. The sections checked against a stored answer key cost nothing to run, so nothing caps them.
Everything in this library is free to read, print, and share. A free account also gets Build a Sentence unlimited, plus one AI-scored essay every day (shared with Academic Discussion and Take an Interview) with the full report; beyond that, scored practice with feedback is a paid Reach120 feature.
- Reach120Free
Reading and Listening practice
The 2026 Reading and Listening task types, answered and checked against a stored answer key. Free on any account, with no daily limit and no lifetime limit.
The difference: The bank is counted rather than described. Every figure on this page is recomputed from the database when the page loads, so it is a number you can ask us to re-run.
OpenEvidence: F-005, F-020, F-021 - Reach120Free
Build a Sentence practice
Word-arrangement items in the 2026 Writing format, checked against a stored answer key. Free with no cap, because grading it costs nothing to run.
The difference: It was behind the paywall until August 2026 and should not have been: nothing about it calls a model, so charging for it bought no margin and only slowed people down.
OpenEvidence: F-019, P-022 - Reach120Free
Wrong-answer explanations
Every Reading, Listening and Build a Sentence item explains why the right answer is right, and why each wrong answer is wrong.
The difference: Coverage is counted, not claimed: the count is re-runnable as a database query, and an item without an explanation cannot be switched on. It is a claim about coverage, not about quality.
OpenEvidence: F-025 - Reach120Free
AI-scored Writing and Speaking practice
Write an Email, Academic Discussion and Take an Interview are scored against the 0-5 rubric bands, on a shared daily allowance. Listen & Repeat has its own daily allowance.
The difference: The result is labelled a practice estimate every time it is shown. It is not an ETS score, and no part of it is presented as one.
OpenEvidence: F-006, F-007, P-022 - Reach120Free
The printable resource library
The teacher kit, one practice pack per Writing task with answer keys, the resource accuracy audit, and a full worked example of a scored report.
The difference: Free to read, print and share with attribution — no account, no email address, and no page of it behind a form.
OpenEvidence: P-022 - Reach120Free
Vocabulary flashcard decks
Curated decks with spaced review, each word shown in example sentences taken from our own passages rather than written for the deck.
The difference: The published decks are smaller than the lexicon behind them on purpose: a word nobody can study is not vocabulary depth, so the number we print is the number you can actually revise.
OpenEvidence: F-024 - Reach120Free — email required
The TOEFL 2026 Practice Pack (PDF)
A printable pack whose every question is a real item from the practice bank learners use. None of them is a real TOEFL test question, and it states which sections and task types it does not cover.
The difference: The row ids used to build it are published alongside it, so the provenance is checkable against the live bank rather than asserted.
OpenEvidence: E-022
From Reach120 — on a plan
A plan is $29 every month or $59 every three months, cancel any time. Running out of free practice is not what it is for — these two are.
- Reach120On a plan
The four-section mock, run in the 2026 order
All four sections in one sitting, in the order and under the timing the 2026 specification lists.
The difference: The times come from the published blueprint and carry its own caveat — ETS states the blueprint is subject to minor revision until launch, and we repeat that rather than dropping it.
OpenEvidence: F-016 - Reach120On a plan
The full breakdown, and the rewrite one band up
The detailed analysis of a response you just wrote, and a rewrite of it one band higher with every change highlighted. A plan also changes which model reads your writing.
The difference: We name the model that scored you either way, store it on the response, and publish where our own estimate is known to be wrong instead of leaving you to find it.
OpenEvidence: F-013, F-015, P-013
Full detail, including what a plan does not include, is on the pricing page.
Everything else
Most TOEFL writing material online — free and paid alike — was written for the essay tasks the test retired in January 2026, and much of it still ranks. We do not keep a list of other companies' products, because a description we stopped re-reading would go stale and mislead you about someone else's work. What is more useful is the test itself: price tells you nothing about whether a resource is current, and a few minutes with the checklist does.
Run the resource accuracy audit on anything you are about to study from, ours included.
Teaching or writing about TOEFL in 2026?
We work with teachers, counselors, editors, and content creators: printable classroom kits, task-accurate source material, and a sample scored report you can reference or link to.