Do IELTS and TOEFL scores expire? Yes — but that is the wrong question

The short answer is that some do and some do not. The useful answer is that it barely matters, because the organisation reading your certificate sets its own rules and those are usually stricter than the exam board’s.

Which English test scores expire, and when?

ETS is unambiguous about TOEFL:

TOEFL iBT scores are valid for 2 years from the test date. Scores will not be reported or sent by ETS after 2 years.

Note what that second sentence does. It is not advice to institutions about what to accept. It is a statement that the machinery stops. Even a university willing to take a three-year-old TOEFL cannot receive it through official channels.

Pearson applies the same two-year window to PTE Academic, PTE Academic UKVI and PTE Core, with the same consequence: if you have not assigned your scores within two years, you cannot assign them at all.

Cambridge is the outlier:

Your Cambridge English exam result and certificate are valid indefinitely. They show that on a particular date you demonstrated language skills at a specified level.

That second sentence is the honest one, and it is doing more work than the first. The certificate is a permanent record of a past event. It is not a claim about your English today.

Why is “does it expire” the wrong question?

Because expiry and acceptance are two different clocks, and only one of them decides your application.

Cambridge — the board whose certificates never expire — says so itself:

Individual institutions (such as universities, employers, professional organisations and government bodies) can choose how long to accept results for. Some institutions will only accept certificates taken within the last 2 or 3 years, although many will take into account evidence that you have taken action to maintain or improve your level of English since taking your exam.

So a Cambridge C1 Advanced certificate from 2015 has not expired and never will. A university that requires evidence from the last two years will still refuse it. The certificate’s permanence is real and, for that application, irrelevant.

The reverse also happens. A TOEFL score at twenty-three months is technically live, but if the institution assesses your file in month twenty-five, it may have gone stale inside their process rather than inside ETS’s.

The rule to work from: the shorter of the two clocks always wins, and the institution’s clock is usually the shorter one.

What does a real institutional rule look like?

The UK’s Nursing and Midwifery Council is a useful worked example, because its guidance is explicit where most are vague. From the Guidance on registration language requirements, updated June 2023:

Whichever test you take, you must have achieved the required scores within the last two years at the point we consider your complete application.

Three things to extract from one sentence.

“Whichever test you take.” The regulator’s two-year window applies to every accepted test equally. The board’s own validity policy is overridden.

“Within the last two years.” Regardless of which exam, and regardless of whether that exam’s certificate expires.

“At the point we consider your complete application.” This is the expensive detail. The clock does not stop when you submit. If a document is missing and your file waits three months, your certificate ages three months. Candidates lose valid results this way — not by missing a deadline they were told about, but by having an incomplete file while the window closed.

The NMC also explains where the two-year convention comes from, in a footnote:

The British Council advises that test scores showing that a person has become proficient in English should not be relied upon more than two years after they are achieved.

That is the actual rationale, and it is about you rather than about paperwork: language proficiency moves. Someone who tested at C1 and then spent two years not using English is not reliably C1 any more. The certificate is accurate about the day it was earned and increasingly speculative about every day after.

Does your English really decline in two years?

Partly, and unevenly — which is the more useful way to think about it.

Receptive skills, reading and listening, are relatively durable. Productive skills, speaking and writing, decay faster and noticeably: fluency and range go first, and they are the hardest to rebuild under exam conditions. This is one reason writing tends to be the skill that sinks a retake, and why regulators frequently set a lower bar for it. We look at that pattern in IELTS for nurses.

If your certificate is approaching two years and you may need it again, the cheapest intervention is not an exam course. It is restarting regular contact with English before the gap becomes a rebuild — reading at a level slightly above comfort, consistently. That is the premise of the level-by-level pages on this site and of Leo.

What should you actually do?

Find the receiving institution’s recency rule first, before you look up your exam board’s policy. It is the binding one.

Read the wording for when the clock stops — submission, assessment, or course start. These differ, and the difference is months.

If you hold a Cambridge certificate, do not assume permanence protects you. Expect to be asked for something from the last two or three years, and expect that evidence of continued English use may be accepted in its place.

If you are within a few months of a two-year expiry and have any chance of needing the score, use it or retake it now. Once TOEFL or PTE passes two years, no appeal exists — the score simply cannot be transmitted.

Never assume the score you have is the score they read. Most institutions set minimums per skill, not on the overall band, which is a separate and much more common way for a valid certificate to fail. That is covered in what is a good IELTS score.

Where do these figures come from?

• TOEFL validity: ETS, Scores and Score Reports FAQ, checked 29 August 2026.
• Cambridge validity and the institutional caveat: Cambridge English Support, How long are my results/certificate valid for?, checked 29 August 2026.
• PTE validity: Pearson PTE Help Centre and PTE Academic Test Taker Score Guide, July 2025 edition, checked 29 August 2026.
• Duolingo English Test validity: Duolingo English Test official test-taker guide.
• The two-year institutional rule, the “complete application” wording and the British Council rationale: Nursing and Midwifery Council, Guidance on registration language requirements, updated June 2023.

Validity policies change, and immigration rules change faster than exam boards do. Every figure here carries the date it was checked. Confirm with the institution that will read your certificate before paying for a test — this page is not immigration advice.