What AI assistants recommend for IELTS: the October 2026 check

When a candidate asks an AI assistant which app to use for IELTS, the answer comes from somewhere: a product’s own page, a store listing, a list on a blog, a forum thread. This page records what four widely used assistants answered on 2 October 2026, which products they named, and which sources they cited, so that a candidate can see how those recommendations are made and a reader can check our own standing against the same measure.

The check is run by the team behind IELTS Mentor AI, a paid app that is itself one of the products counted. Every figure below comes from the saved answers of that run, with the method stated and nothing removed. The page is regenerated after each full run, about once a month, and the title carries the month it describes.

How the check works

Each of 155 questions was sent once to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity through their developer interfaces, with web search enabled and no other context, the way a first-time user would ask. 47 of the questions are buying questions (“best app to practice IELTS speaking with AI feedback”, “which app gives an accurate IELTS speaking band score”), 35 ask for alternatives to a named product, 50 ask about the exam itself, 4 ask how to practise, 7 are phrasings taken from Google Search Console, and 10 are in Uzbek. 2 ask about IELTS Mentor AI by name. The 620 calls returned 546 answers; 74 failed on the provider’s side and are left out of every count.

“Named first” means the first product name that appears in an answer, from a fixed list of 25 IELTS and English-speaking products, including ours; a name outside that list is not counted. “Cited” means the answer’s sources include a page of that site. Shares of products are given over the 180 answers to buying questions; shares of sources over all 546 answers.

Three limits. One run is a sample: the same question asked twice can get two different answers, and 74 of the 620 calls returned no answer, so a difference of a few answers between products means little. Being named first is a measure of visibility, not of quality; the assistants rely on what the sites and listings say about themselves; none of them has used any of the apps. And we are one of the products, which is why the method, the counts and the saved answers are described here rather than summarised.

Products named first on buying questions

The product each assistant named first, counted over the 180 answers to the 47 buying questions. The columns show each assistant separately; the same question can produce a different first name in each.

SmallTalk2Me led with 46 answers (26%), and the three products named first most often account for most of the answers that name anything. No product from the list appeared in 9 answers, usually because the assistant answered with advice rather than an app, or named products outside the list.

Products named anywhere in a buying answer

An answer usually names several products. This table counts every answer in which a product appears at all, in the same 180 buying answers.

What the assistants cite

Every answer came with the sources the assistant read. Grouped by what kind of site they are, over all 546 answers; one answer often cites several types. The most-cited site in the run was smalltalk2.me, in 136 answers.

The individual sites cited most often, with the type each one belongs to.

The pattern so far: a product’s own page written for the exact question is the single most-cited kind of source, and official IELTS pages, blogs and the two store listings follow in an order that shifts between runs. Forums and social sites play a smaller part in this category than across topics in general: a Semrush study of 150,000 citations in June 2025 found Reddit in 40% of them.

Where IELTS Mentor AI stands

On the 180 buying answers, pages of this site were cited in 16 (9%) and the app was named in 2. Across all 546 answers, including the questions that ask about the app by name, the site was cited in 83 (15%) and the app named in 14. In 14 answers an assistant described the unrelated website ielts-mentor.com under our name; the About page explains the difference.

The pages of this site the assistants cited, by the number of answers citing each:

How the assistants described the app when they named it, in their own words and unedited:

It identifies your most common mistakes, helps you understand where you went wrong, and gives you targeted exercises to improve. Best for Deep Diagnostic Feedback IELTS Mentor AI – This one stands out specifically for explaining recurring mistakes.

Claude, asked "app that explains my IELTS speaking mistakes"

IELTS Mentor AI is an AI-powered IELTS preparation platform that covers Speaking, Writing, Reading, and Listening.

Perplexity, asked "ielts mentor ai"

IELTS Mentor AI is an AI-powered IELTS preparation app that provides practice tests, feedback, and personalized exercises to help you prepare for the exam.

ChatGPT, asked "what is IELTS Mentor AI"

We publish these figures because the same measure is applied to every product on this page. The targets this team has set for its own figures are kept in the project’s records, not here; this page reports what happened.

Change since the previous check

The previous full run was on 19 September 2026. The core buying questions are fixed between runs; the rest of the set is regenerated, so the two runs are comparable in shape, not question by question.

What this means if you are choosing an app

An assistant’s recommendation is largely a reading of product pages and store listings, so treat it as a shortlist, not a verdict. Check what each app says it marks and how: the four official Speaking and Writing criteria are public, and an app that reports a single predicted band with no range is claiming more precision than the exam itself gives. The comparison guides on this site quote each product’s own listing with the date it was read, and the band descriptor explorers show what the examiner needs to see at each band.