PTE 79 sits right on the IELTS 8.0 boundary — but the chart changed in July 2025, and the per-skill picture is messier than most sites admit. Here's the full story, verified against Pearson's current concordance.
The one-line answer, then the fine print that actually matters.
The current overall mapping around 79 looks like this:
| IELTS overall band | PTE Academic overall (July 2025 concordance) |
|---|---|
| 9.0 | 90 |
| 8.5 | 86–89 |
| 8.0 | 79–85 |
| 7.5 | 71–78 |
| 7.0 | 63–70 |
| 6.5 | 55–62 |
Want a different score converted? Use our free PTE to IELTS converter (or the reverse IELTS to PTE converter), both built on the same July 2025 Pearson data.
If you've seen a site claim PTE 79 = IELTS 8.5, it's quoting a retired table.
Pearson has published three concordance studies over the years — the original 2011 linking study, a 2020 update, and the current July 2025 study, which was re-run for the shorter 22-task test introduced in August 2025. The bands shifted each time:
| Chart | IELTS 8.0 = | IELTS 8.5 = | Where PTE 79 lands |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 concordance (retired) | PTE 79–82 | PTE 83–85 | Bottom of 8.0 |
| July 2025 concordance (current) | PTE 79–85 | PTE 86–89 | Bottom of 8.0 |
Two honest observations. First, PTE 79 has sat at the 8.0 floor on both recent official charts — the "79 = 8.5" claim you sometimes see comes from unofficial blog tables, not Pearson. Second, the 2025 update made the top harder to reach in comparison terms: PTE 83–85, which used to read as IELTS 8.5, now reads as 8.0. If a website's chart shows 8.5 = 83, it's out of date.
One more caveat that Pearson itself states: a concordance is an approximate statistical mapping, not an official equivalence. The university or government body you're applying to decides which table (if any) it uses — always check their published requirement. More context in our full PTE vs IELTS comparison.
July 2025 was the first Pearson concordance to publish per-skill values — and they're lopsided.
For an IELTS 8.0 in each individual skill, the PTE equivalents are:
| Skill | PTE score ≈ IELTS 8.0 | vs the 79–85 overall band |
|---|---|---|
| Listening | 69–74 | Lower |
| Reading | 70–74 | Lower |
| Speaking | 88–89 | Much higher |
| Writing | 85–89 | Much higher |
In plain terms: PTE test takers tend to score higher on PTE Speaking and Writing than their IELTS band would suggest, and lower on Listening and Reading. So "79 in each PTE skill" is not the same thing as "8.0 in each IELTS skill" — a PTE Speaking 79 concords to below IELTS 8.0, while a PTE Listening 79 concords to above it. If a requirement is set per-skill, check each skill against the right row, not the overall band. Our full PTE score chart breaks down every band.
This is where most old advice will cost you points.
For years, "79 in each section" was the shorthand for Superior English (worth 20 skilled-migration points). Since 7 August 2025 that's wrong. The thresholds are now set per section, in one test, with the lowest section governing:
So a clean 79-79-79-79 no longer earns Superior — Writing 85 and Speaking 88 are the real walls, while Listening and Reading need far less than 79. Full details in our guide to the 65/79-each rule change, and you can check your own scores against every visa threshold with the PTE points calculator. Note that Australia accepts PTE results up to 3 years old for skilled migration, and at-home PTE is not accepted for visas.
Even after the rule change, 79 remains a meaningful line.
PTE 79 maps to IELTS 8.0 and sits inside CEFR C1 (76–84), which clears the published English requirement at most top universities worldwide and comfortably exceeds typical professional-registration thresholds. It's a genuinely high score — and the gap between 65 and 79 is mostly technique, not vocabulary.
If 79 (or the tougher 85/88 Superior walls) is your target: start with our step-by-step how to get 79 in PTE guide, then benchmark yourself with a free scored mock test — unlimited attempts, instant estimates, no signup needed to try a question right now.
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