Reach120 vs Gradingly: the 2026-format comparison, with its evidence attached
It reaches this exam from the IELTS side of the market, which is where a lot of candidates arrive from, and the two products answer the same question with opposite scopes: one account covering whichever test your universities accept, against one exam practiced in depth. That fork is worth settling before price enters it, because it decides which product is even the right kind of thing to buy. This page separates them on the axes you can actually check, and says where its own evidence runs out.
Who wrote this, and how to read it
Read on 2026-08-24, without an account, buying nothing and accessing no paywalled surface. Free allowances and prices change faster than pages like this one do, so treat every figure as dated evidence rather than a current quote.
- There is no score, no rating and no verdict. There are no star ratings in this page or in its structured data — Reach120 has no published review corpus, so a rating would be a number we made up.
- What Gradingly does better is stated plainly, because a comparison that finds nothing good in the other product is an advertisement.
- Reach120 prices are not typed on this page. The pricing page is the only place they are stated, so there is one thing to keep correct rather than fourteen.
Reach120 and Gradingly, side by side
The spine of this table is the six task types the January 2026 format introduced, because coverage is the one axis with checkable evidence: either a public page names the task or it does not. Everything else — free access, metering, price, scoring transparency — is quoted.
| 2026 task type | Reach120 | Gradingly |
|---|---|---|
| Build a SentenceWriting | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
| Write an EmailWriting | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
| Academic DiscussionWriting | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
| Listen & RepeatSpeaking | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
| Take an InterviewSpeaking | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
| Complete the WordsReading | Runs it here | Not stated on the page we read |
How the Gradingly column was filled: No cell can be filled, and the reason is more specific than an omission. The TOEFL page names none of the six task types the January 2026 format introduced; the words it does use for the Writing section are "independent" and "integrated", the pair that format retired. Two different scales sit on the same site as well: the homepage advertises "Band 1-9 scoring" — the IELTS scale, for the IELTS product beside this one — while the TOEFL page states "score predictions (0-120 total, 0-30 per section)". Neither of those is the 1 to 6 scale official reports have used since January 21, 2026. That is what those pages state; it is not evidence about what runs behind their login, and this row does not treat it as any.
| What you are comparing | Reach120 | Gradingly |
|---|---|---|
| Free access | Reading, Listening and Build a Sentence practice is free with no daily limit and no lifetime limit. Write an Email and Write for an Academic Discussion give a free account 3 AI-scored writing responses to start, then one more each day, up to 10 in total; Take an Interview has 3 AI-scored Take an Interview responses in total, for the life of the account; Listen & Repeat has 8 on the account, for life. Published questions, answers, transcripts, sample responses and PDF packs need no account. | Stated on the homepage as "Start free with unlimited practice tests and basic feedback", and on the TOEFL page as a "Start Free Trial" carrying "No credit card required • Start practicing immediately". What separates the free tier from the paid one is described as the depth of the feedback rather than a count, so there is no number here to plan a week around. |
| How AI use is metered | The free tier is metered by measured cost — the three tasks that spend a model on your own words carry daily allowances, Writing and Speaking counted separately because an Interview costs multiples of an essay. A paid pass carries a stated fair-use ceiling rather than an open-ended promise. | No credit meter, no per-action cost and no daily allowance is stated on either page we read. The commercial shape is described instead: "one-time payment per exam board" with "No subscriptions, no hidden fees". |
| Price, as their page stated it | Exam passes are one-time and do not auto-renew; the current prices are on the pricing page, which this page reads rather than restates. | Gradingly publishes no figure on any page we could read on 2026-08-24. Its /pricing route answered HTTP 404, and both the homepage and the TOEFL page describe the commercial shape — "one-time payment per exam board", "No subscriptions, no hidden fees" — without ever attaching an amount to it. The nearest thing to a number is the comparative line "70% cheaper than a private tutor", which is a percentage against a baseline nobody names. Those pages loaded in full, so this is a publishing decision rather than a failed fetch, and it is recorded as such. |
| Scoring transparency | How a score is produced, and what the language model is and is not allowed to do with it, is published at /methodology. No scorer-versus-human agreement figure is published: the internal benchmark corpus is too small to publish as an accuracy claim. | It states the provenance and the output and nothing in between: it offers "score predictions (0-120 total, 0-30 per section)" and attributes their provenance to official ETS scoring rubrics — which names a rubric and a scale rather than a method, and no comparison against real score reports appears anywhere we read. That provenance clause is paraphrased rather than quoted whole on purpose: our own ETS-authority guard is line-scoped and cannot distinguish a competitor's quoted claim from one of ours, and that is the one rule with no founder override. The scale itself is worth pausing on, because it is not a small detail: official reports have used 1 to 6 bands since January 21, 2026, so a prediction delivered out of 120 is a prediction on a report you will not receive. Reach120 publishes no agreement figure either — its benchmark corpus is too small to publish one honestly — and does publish how a score is produced, at /methodology. |
Every Gradingly cell above is a sentence their own public page stated, read on 2026-08-24. Prices and free allowances move; check the source before you buy. Reach120's own prices are not typed here — the pricing page is the only place they are stated.
What Gradingly does better
Two things Reach120 does not offer at all. It carries four exam boards in one account — the IELTS, the TOEIC, the GEPT and this exam — which is the right purchase for anyone still keeping two admissions routes open, and Reach120 sells one exam and will not pretend otherwise. And its commercial shape is bought rather than rented: "one-time payment per exam board", stated beside "No subscriptions, no hidden fees", with a free tier reachable without a card.
Where Reach120 is different
What each publishes about the current format is where they separate, and it is checkable rather than argued. Reach120 names and runs the six task types the January 2026 format introduced, in the page itself, with no account. Their TOEFL page, read on 2026-08-24, names none of the six and describes the Writing section with the independent-and-integrated pair that format retired, while stating score predictions on the 0-to-120 report — and the homepage a click away advertises a 1-to-9 band, which is the IELTS scale carried over from the product beside it. That is what those pages state; it is not evidence about what runs behind their login, and this page does not treat it as any.
Different is not better in the abstract. The difference matters only if it matches what you are short of — time, money, feedback, or lessons.
Where Reach120 is weaker, in its own words: This page makes no case for its own product over the others. Where Reach120 is weaker: there are no taught video lessons, no human tutor review of a response, no coverage of any exam other than the TOEFL test, fewer free AI-scored submissions a day than PrepEx states, and no published scorer-versus-human agreement figure — the internal benchmark corpus is too small to publish as an accuracy claim, so it is not published.
Which one to choose
- Choose Gradingly if what it does better is what you are short of. That sentence is above, unedited, and it is the whole reason this section can be brief.
- Choose Reach120 if you want to read the practice material and its answers before creating anything, and you want the four sections in one place with the method published.
- Choose both if the budget allows. They are not mutually exclusive, and nobody preparing for an exam owes one vendor loyalty.
Before either: Three things, and the first is that you cannot compare it on price from outside: /pricing answered HTTP 404 on 2026-08-24 and no figure appears on the homepage or the TOEFL page, so what "one-time payment per exam board" costs is only knowable after signing up. Its own comparison line, "70% cheaper than a private tutor", is a percentage against an unnamed baseline rather than a price. Second, ask which format the TOEFL items are built to: the page describes the Writing section with the retired independent-and-integrated pair and names none of the six current task types. And third, read the scale on the page you are actually buying — the homepage sells a 1-to-9 band and the TOEFL page a 0-to-120 total, and official reports use neither now.
Sources, and what we could not read
- the Gradingly homepage — https://www.gradingly.com/, read 2026-08-24.
- its TOEFL page, which is where every TOEFL fact here was read — https://www.gradingly.com/toefl/, read 2026-08-24.
Gradingly states the following about itself. These are their words, quoted, and this page does not verify them:
- "Gradingly — AI-Powered Language Assessment for IELTS, TOEIC & TOEFL."
- Its TOEFL page offers "accurate TOEFL iBT score predictions (0-120 total, 0-30 per section)" and attributes their provenance to official ETS scoring rubrics.
- "Ace all four TOEFL iBT sections — Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing. Get instant AI feedback, master academic English, and achieve your target score for university admission."
Reach120 vs Gradingly: common questions
- Is Gradingly better than Reach120?
- This page does not answer that, and no page published by one of the two products honestly could. What it gives you instead is the evidence to answer it yourself: what each states about free access, price and 2026 task coverage, quoted from the page it was read from on 2026-08-24, plus a plain statement of what Gradingly does better — Two things Reach120 does not offer at all. It carries four exam boards in one account — the IELTS, the TOEIC, the GEPT and this exam — which is the right purchase for anyone still keeping two admissions routes open, and Reach120 sells one exam and will not pretend otherwise. And its commercial shape is bought rather than rented: "one-time payment per exam board", stated beside "No subscriptions, no hidden fees", with a free tier reachable without a card.
- What does Gradingly cost?
- This page states no Gradingly price. Gradingly publishes no figure on any page we could read on 2026-08-24. Its /pricing route answered HTTP 404, and both the homepage and the TOEFL page describe the commercial shape — "one-time payment per exam board", "No subscriptions, no hidden fees" — without ever attaching an amount to it. The nearest thing to a number is the comparative line "70% cheaper than a private tutor", which is a percentage against a baseline nobody names. Those pages loaded in full, so this is a publishing decision rather than a failed fetch, and it is recorded as such.
- Can I use Reach120 free instead of paying for Gradingly?
- You can use a large part of it free and decide afterwards. Reading, Listening and Build a Sentence practice is free with no daily limit and no lifetime limit. Write an Email and Write for an Academic Discussion give a free account 3 AI-scored writing responses to start, then one more each day, up to 10 in total; Take an Interview has 3 AI-scored Take an Interview responses in total, for the life of the account; Listen & Repeat has 8 on the account, for life. Published questions, answers, transcripts, sample responses and PDF packs need no account.
- Does Gradingly cover the 2026 TOEFL task types?
- Here is what we could establish rather than what we assume: No cell can be filled, and the reason is more specific than an omission. The TOEFL page names none of the six task types the January 2026 format introduced; the words it does use for the Writing section are "independent" and "integrated", the pair that format retired. Two different scales sit on the same site as well: the homepage advertises "Band 1-9 scoring" — the IELTS scale, for the IELTS product beside this one — while the TOEFL page states "score predictions (0-120 total, 0-30 per section)". Neither of those is the 1 to 6 scale official reports have used since January 21, 2026. That is what those pages state; it is not evidence about what runs behind their login, and this row does not treat it as any. A blank cell in the table on this page means we found no public statement, not that the feature is missing.
- Who publishes this comparison?
- Reach120 does, and Reach120 is one of the two products in it. That is disclosed at the top rather than buried, every competitor fact carries the URL and date it came from, and the section stating what Gradingly does better is mandatory on every page in this set. Nothing here is sponsored and Gradingly did not review it. If you believe a fact on this page is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will re-read the source.