How to Find Your CEFR English Level (A1-C2)

By The Dobi Apps Team · Published 2026-09-16 · Originally published at dobiapps.com

EF SET’s own validation study found its free CEFR test correlates moderately strongly with TOEFL iBT scores. How to test or self-assess your English level.

In short: Finding your CEFR English level means either taking a free adaptive test, such as EF SET, which a 384-person validation study found correlates moderately strongly with TOEFL iBT reading and listening scores, or self-assessing against the Council of Europe’s can-do descriptors. Either method beats guessing, and it determines which A1-C2 book or audiobook actually fits.

A sample EF SET English Certificate showing a test score mapped to a CEFR level from A1 to C2

Certificate image: EF SET

What Is a CEFR Level, and Why Find Yours Before You Choose Reading or Listening Material?

A CEFR level is a score from A1 to C2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the six-band scale the Council of Europe designed to describe what a language learner can actually do in listening, reading, speaking, and writing, rather than how many years they studied. English exams including IELTS, TOEFL, and Cambridge English report results on this same scale, and EF SET states that its own results are “fully aligned with CEFR levels” from beginner (A1) to proficient (C2).

Finding a CEFR level before picking reading or listening material matters because the scale is also how graded readers, leveled audiobooks, and app libraries organize their catalogs. A book labeled B1 assumes a reader who can already handle “the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters,” in the CEFR’s own wording for that level, not a reader who is still working out basic phrases. Picking material without knowing that starting point means guessing at every purchase or download, and guessing produces two failure modes: text far above a level, which collapses into constant dictionary lookups, and text far below it, which teaches nothing new.

A CEFR level is also not a single number. A learner’s reading level and listening level frequently sit a band apart, since the two skills are built differently and fade at different rates when unused. The rest of this guide covers how to find each one, through a free test, a self-assessment checklist, or a practical reading-behavior check, and what to do with the answer once you have it.

What Are the Six CEFR Levels, From A1 to C2?

The CEFR defines six levels, grouped in three pairs the Council of Europe labels Basic User (A1-A2), Independent User (B1-B2), and Proficient User (C1-C2). Each level carries its own “can-do” descriptors for listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken production, and writing, published together in the Council of Europe’s self-assessment grid. The descriptors describe real tasks a learner can complete, not test scores or class hours, which is what makes the scale usable for self-assessment rather than only for exam grading.

The table below quotes the grid’s own listening and reading descriptors for every level. Match your own experience against each row, not against the level label alone. A learner who understands “phrases and the highest frequency vocabulary related to areas of most immediate personal relevance” (A2) but has never tested the paragraph at C1 has not placed themselves yet; they have only ruled out one end of the scale.

CEFR level Listening: “I can…” Reading: “I can…”
A1 understand familiar words and very basic phrases… when people speak slowly and clearly understand familiar names, words and very simple sentences, for example on notices and posters
A2 understand phrases and the highest frequency vocabulary related to areas of most immediate personal relevance… catch the main point in short, clear, simple messages read very short, simple texts and find specific, predictable information in everyday material such as advertisements and menus
B1 understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar matters… when the delivery is relatively slow and clear understand texts that consist mainly of high frequency everyday or job-related language
B2 understand extended speech and lectures and follow even complex lines of argument, provided the topic is reasonably familiar read articles and reports concerned with contemporary problems, and understand contemporary literary prose
C1 understand extended speech even when it is not clearly structured and when relationships are only implied and not signalled explicitly understand long and complex factual and literary texts, appreciating distinctions of style
C2 understand any kind of spoken language… even when delivered at fast native speed read with ease virtually all forms of the written language, including abstract, structurally or linguistically complex texts

Descriptors quoted from the Council of Europe and Europass self-assessment grid.

Which Free Tests Can Tell You Your CEFR Level?

A free adaptive test is the fastest way to get a CEFR result you did not calculate yourself. EF SET is one of the most widely used: it is free, timed at either 50 minutes for reading and listening or 90 minutes for all four skills, and EF states its “results [are] fully aligned with CEFR levels” from A1 through C2.

30M+ — English tests taken on EF SET since 2016, a free test whose scores are reported directly on the CEFR A1-C2 scale

Source: EF SET

The test is adaptive rather than fixed-length. EF SET’s own FAQ describes an engine where “the content of an individual’s test is responsive to the level of language proficiency the person demonstrates as the test unfolds,” routing a test-taker toward harder questions after correct answers and easier ones after incorrect ones. That design is what lets a single test session, rather than six separate ones, place both a true beginner and a near-native speaker on the same scale in comparable time.

EF SET is not the only free option. The British Council’s English Online test and Strømmen’s short placement test both report a CEFR result at no cost and without an account, and either works as a faster, rougher first pass before a longer test or a self-assessment checklist. None of the three replaces a proctored exam like IELTS or TOEFL for a visa or university application, a distinction covered next.

How Reliable Are Free CEFR Placement Tests?

Free placement tests vary a lot in how carefully they were built, and one of them has published a direct comparison against a paid, proctored exam. EF SET’s own validation study recruited 384 volunteer test-takers who had also taken the TOEFL iBT, then compared scores on both tests.

0.70 / 0.77 — disattenuated correlation between EF SET Reading and TOEFL iBT Reading scores, and between EF SET Listening and TOEFL iBT Listening scores, from a 384-examinee validation study

Source: EF SET PLUS-TOEFL iBT Correlation Study Report

The report’s own authors describe the result as “moderately strong, positive correlations between EF SET PLUS and TOEFL for both the reading and listening scales,” which it calls “fairly solid convergent validity evidence,” not proof the two tests are interchangeable. The same report gives EF SET’s marginal reliability, a measure of how consistent a score is across repeated administration, as 0.949 for reading and 0.944 for listening, based on a sample of more than 37,000 test-takers, which the authors attribute to the test’s adaptive design.

This is industry-reported evidence: EF, the company that sells EF SET, ran and published the study, not an independent journal. The report is candid about the limit that follows. With only 384 examinees, it states that “any statistical concordance would not be psychometrically appropriate,” meaning a score of 70 on EF SET should not be read as an exact stand-in for a specific TOEFL number. Treat a free test’s CEFR result as a strong starting estimate, not a certified score, and pair it with the self-assessment checklist below.

How Do You Self-Assess Your CEFR Level Without a Test?

Self-assessment against the same can-do grid works without any test at all, and costs nothing but a few minutes of honest reading. Start at the Reading row for A1 in the table above and read down, level by level, asking one question at each row: does this describe something you can already do, right now, in English, not something you are working toward? The last level where the answer is still an unqualified yes, rather than the first level where it becomes no, is the more reliable estimate, since learners consistently overestimate rather than underestimate their own ability on a single read-through.

Do the same exercise separately for listening. A learner who reads news articles comfortably at B2 but still needs a speaker to slow down and repeat, the A1 listening descriptor’s own condition, has a reading level a full three bands ahead of a listening level. That gap is common rather than unusual, because reading exposes a learner to far more total words than listening does in most self-study routines.

Self-assessment against can-do statements will not produce the numeric precision of an adaptive test’s score, and it is more vulnerable to a learner’s own optimism. Its advantage is that it costs nothing and can be redone in minutes every time a learner suspects their level has moved, which is the subject of the last section of this guide.

How Many Unknown Words Per Page Signal the Right Reading Level?

A page-level check catches what a can-do statement cannot: whether a specific book, not a hypothetical skill, actually fits. The Extensive Reading Foundation recommends opening a book in the middle, not at the first page, and reading a few minutes of it while asking three questions: can you read it without a dictionary, are you reading at a natural pace, and do you understand almost everything. A “no” to any of the three means the book sits above the level to try right now.

Classroom reading research has tried to attach exact numbers to the same idea for decades, most famously the reading specialist Emmett Betts’ 1946 criteria of 95 to 98 percent word-recognition accuracy for a text at a learner’s “instructional level,” figures still printed in reading guides today. Timothy Shanahan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Chicago and a past co-leader of the National Reading Panel, has been blunt about where those specific percentages came from:

“Unfortunately, there was no such study of learning. Betts just made up the numbers and teachers and professors have rapturously clung to them ever since.”

— Timothy Shanahan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago

That does not make the 95-to-98-percent range useless. It makes it a rule of thumb rather than a measured constant, worth treating the same way as the Extensive Reading Foundation’s three-question test: a fast, practical filter, not a certified score. In practice, more than one or two words per ordinary page that send you to a dictionary is a reasonable trigger to try a book one level down, whichever CEFR band your test or self-assessment placed you in.

How Should Reading and Listening Behavior Change at Each CEFR Level?

Reading and listening behavior at a given CEFR level are consistent with each other, which is a second way to sanity-check a result from a test or checklist. A B1 listener, per the CEFR’s own descriptor, needs delivery that is “relatively slow and clear,” which is why does audiobook playback speed affect English comprehension recommends starting B1 audio around 0.75x to 0.85x rather than a narrator’s default 1.0x. A C2 listener, by contrast, has “no difficulty… even when delivered at fast native speed,” so slowing audio down at that level trades away practice for comfort rather than adding comprehension.

Reading behavior follows the same logic through vocabulary coverage rather than playback speed. Comprehensible input and finding your right English reading level covers a controlled study that found comprehension dropped sharply once unfamiliar words passed a specific density threshold, the same mechanism behind the page test in the section above: too many unfamiliar words per page and the guess-from-context process that builds vocabulary stops working.

A learner whose CEFR test result and reading-behavior check disagree by more than one level should trust the behavior check first. A test result is a snapshot from one sitting; how much of an actual page or chapter you understand unassisted, this week, on the material you are about to spend time with, is the more immediate signal for what to read or listen to next.

What Should You Do Once You Know Your CEFR Level?

A CEFR level only pays off once it changes what you actually pick up to read or listen to. Dobi Apps’ Audiobook organizes its full catalog of audiobooks and ebooks across the CEFR range from A1 to C2, so a learner who has just placed themselves at B1 opens a shelf pre-filtered to that band instead of testing book after book against the page check above. Audiobook is available on the App Store and on Google Play.

Storybook, Dobi Apps’ other English-learning app, spreads more than 1,000,000 books, comics, audiobooks, and games across the same six-level scale, which matters most for the reading-versus-listening gap this guide covers: a learner whose reading sits at B2 but whose listening is still B1 can pick a B2 book and a B1 audiobook from the same library rather than being forced to choose one level for both skills. Storybook is available on the App Store and on Google Play.

A CEFR level is also not permanent. Reading consistently at the right level is itself what moves the number, covered in how to learn English effectively through stories, and a learner deciding between audio-first and text-first practice at a given level can compare formats directly in audiobook or ebook: which fits your English goal.

How Often Should You Re-Check Your CEFR Level?

A CEFR level is worth re-checking whenever the page test from earlier in this guide stops flagging anything. Once a book at your current level rarely produces a word you need to look up, across more than one title rather than one lucky chapter, that is the practical signal to try the page test again one level up, the same signal covered in comprehensible input and finding your right English reading level.

A fixed schedule works as a backup for a learner who would rather not rely on noticing the signal. Re-running a free test such as EF SET, or re-reading the can-do grid against your own reading and listening this week, every two to three months catches a level change neither too early, before real progress has accumulated, nor so late that a learner spends months on material that has become too easy. Whichever cadence you use, the outcome that matters is the one this guide started with: a level that determines which book or audiobook you actually pick up next, not a number filed away and forgotten.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a free online CEFR test as accurate as IELTS or TOEFL?

Not for official purposes, though the evidence is closer than you might expect. EF SET’s own validation study found its Reading and Listening scores correlated moderately strongly with TOEFL iBT scores from the same 384 test-takers, which the study’s authors call solid convergent validity evidence rather than proof the two are interchangeable. A free test is reliable enough to choose reading and listening material by; a university or visa application still requires a proctored exam such as IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English.

What if my reading level and listening level are different CEFR levels?

Treat them separately rather than picking one label for both. It is common, and the CEFR’s own self-assessment grid is built with separate rows for listening and reading for exactly this reason. Pick reading material at your reading-level result and audio at your listening-level result, even when the two numbers do not match, rather than downgrading the stronger skill to match the weaker one.

Sources

📖 Read the original article on the Dobi Apps blog: How to Find Your CEFR English Level (A1-C2)

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