Reach120 vs TST Prep: the 2026-format comparison, with its evidence attached
Both products rebuilt their material around the January 2026 format rather than relabelling what they already had, so this comparison is not about who is current. It is about who reads your answer — a professional instructor within two days, or a model within seconds — and how many attempts you plan to make usually settles it. 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 TST Prep 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 TST Prep, 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 | TST Prep |
|---|---|---|
| Build a SentenceWriting | Runs it here | Named on their page |
| Write an EmailWriting | Runs it here | Named on their page |
| Academic DiscussionWriting | Runs it here | Named on their page |
| Listen & RepeatSpeaking | Runs it here | Named on their page |
| Take an InterviewSpeaking | Runs it here | Named on their page |
| Complete the WordsReading | Runs it here | Named on their page |
How the TST Prep column was filled: All six are named in its own complete-practice-test article for the current format, which opens by stating "On January 21st, 2026, the TOEFL iBT test completely changed." The same site marks its superseded material instead of leaving it to sell: older guides carry an explicit "[ARCHIVED — 2026 Format Changed]" label. That is the page naming them; no account was created to watch them run.
| What you are comparing | Reach120 | TST Prep |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | A free-resources page rather than a free account, and one thing about it is worth knowing before you rely on it: that page still carries pre-2026 wording, while the practice-test article beside it is explicitly built for the current format. The same site is current in one place and not in the other. |
| 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 and no allowance. Everything is a discrete purchase — a course carries one year of access that ends on its own, an evaluation is one response read by one person — and evaluation credits are stated to expire three months after purchase. |
| 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. | Courses are sold as one year of access and one is on sale as read: the Emergency Course lists "Original price was: $37.00. $29.60 Current price is: $29.60. for 1 year" at Basic and "$77.60" at Premium, with Score Builder at "$157.60 for 1 year", the Complete Test Pack at "$71.20 for 1 year" and Group Classes at "$247.00 for 1 year". Feedback is bought separately and per response: a Speaking Evaluation at "$29.00" and Writing Evaluations "starting at $27.00". Currency is shown as a dollar sign; the pages we read do not name it. |
| 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 is one of two products in this set that makes no AI claim at all — a rendered read of its homepage on 2026-08-24 matched neither "AI" nor "artificial" anywhere on it, which is why its evidence sits beside TOEFLMock’s rather than on the AI roundup. Scoring is stated as human: professional instructors against the rubric, feedback within 48 hours, and a score estimate published as a three-point range rather than a single number, although the page does not state which scale that range is on. Reach120 scores with a model, returns the report immediately, and publishes how at /methodology. |
Every TST Prep 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 TST Prep does better
It answers the format question in both directions, which is rarer than it should be: its own pages name all six current task types AND label the superseded guides as archived rather than leaving them on sale beside them. Its Writing and Speaking feedback is written by a named kind of person — professional instructors — against the rubric, with a stated turnaround, and it sells taught group classes and full courses. Reach120 has none of that, and a model does not substitute for a teacher reading your answer. It also publishes the precision of its own estimate, as a range rather than a point, which almost nothing in this market does.
Where Reach120 is different
The trade is turnaround and volume against a person’s judgement. Reach120 returns the whole report the moment you submit, leaves Reading and Listening practice uncapped, and publishes its questions, answers, transcripts and sample responses in the page itself with no account. TST Prep sells a fixed number of responses read by an instructor, on a licence that ends after a year, with the evaluation bought separately from the course. Neither shape is better in the abstract: one buys attempts, the other buys a reader.
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 TST Prep 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: Two things about what you are buying and one about the site. The access is a licence with an end date: a course expires one year after purchase and evaluation credits are stated to expire in three months, so this is a clock rather than an asset — buy it when you are ready to use it, not when it is discounted. The evaluations are priced per response, so count how many you actually need before comparing them against anyone’s monthly plan. And the free-resources page still advertises pre-2026 wording, so check the date on anything you take from it against the format you are sitting.
Sources, and what we could not read
- the TST Prep homepage — https://tstprep.com/, read 2026-08-24.
- TST Prep’s complete practice test for the current format — https://tstprep.com/articles/toefl/complete-practice-test-for-the-toefl-test/, read 2026-08-24.
- the TST Prep TOEFL store — https://tstprep.com/store/toefl/, read 2026-08-24.
TST Prep states the following about itself. These are their words, quoted, and this page does not verify them:
- "On January 21st, 2026, the TOEFL iBT test completely changed."
- Evaluations are stated to be read by "professional English language instructors with extensive TOEFL® experience", with "Feedback within 48 hours".
- "All essays are given a score estimate within a 3-point range."
Reach120 vs TST Prep: common questions
- Is TST Prep 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 TST Prep does better — It answers the format question in both directions, which is rarer than it should be: its own pages name all six current task types AND label the superseded guides as archived rather than leaving them on sale beside them. Its Writing and Speaking feedback is written by a named kind of person — professional instructors — against the rubric, with a stated turnaround, and it sells taught group classes and full courses. Reach120 has none of that, and a model does not substitute for a teacher reading your answer. It also publishes the precision of its own estimate, as a range rather than a point, which almost nothing in this market does.
- What does TST Prep cost?
- On 2026-08-24, their own page stated: Courses are sold as one year of access and one is on sale as read: the Emergency Course lists "Original price was: $37.00. $29.60 Current price is: $29.60. for 1 year" at Basic and "$77.60" at Premium, with Score Builder at "$157.60 for 1 year", the Complete Test Pack at "$71.20 for 1 year" and Group Classes at "$247.00 for 1 year". Feedback is bought separately and per response: a Speaking Evaluation at "$29.00" and Writing Evaluations "starting at $27.00". Currency is shown as a dollar sign; the pages we read do not name it. Prices and sales move, so check the page itself before paying.
- Can I use Reach120 free instead of paying for TST Prep?
- 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 TST Prep cover the 2026 TOEFL task types?
- Here is what we could establish rather than what we assume: All six are named in its own complete-practice-test article for the current format, which opens by stating "On January 21st, 2026, the TOEFL iBT test completely changed." The same site marks its superseded material instead of leaving it to sell: older guides carry an explicit "[ARCHIVED — 2026 Format Changed]" label. That is the page naming them; no account was created to watch them run. 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 TST Prep does better is mandatory on every page in this set. Nothing here is sponsored and TST Prep 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.