How to Register for TOEFL iBT Without an Expensive Mistake
To register for the TOEFL iBT: create a free ETS account, pick a test center or Home Edition and a date at least four months out, pay the fee for your country, and lock in your four free score recipients well ahead of the cutoff. Each step has its own way to lose money if you rush it.
What has to match your passport before you register for the TOEFL?
Three things: your given name, your family name, and your date of birth, spelled and formatted exactly as they appear on the ID you plan to bring on test day. ETS is explicit about this on its own registration guidance: "the name and date of birth you use when you register for the TOEFL iBT must exactly match the name and date of birth on the ID document you provide on test day. If this information doesn't match, you won't be able to take the test, and your test fee won't be refunded." (ETS, How to Register for the TOEFL iBT Test, checked September 2026.)
The bulletin spells out the edge cases that trip people up. If your ID has a multiple-part family name or given name (ETS's own examples are "Smith-Davis" or "Miller Thomas"), enter it exactly as printed, including the space or hyphen, excluding accents and apostrophes. If your ID shows only one name field, the bulletin tells you to enter it in the "Last/Family Name(s)" field and check the box next to it rather than inventing a first name. None of this is optional: a mismatch is not a paperwork inconvenience you fix at check-in, it is a turned-away test taker with a forfeited fee.
Where people lose money: name mismatch
Test-center staff and Home Edition proctors check your ID against what you typed at registration, not against what you meant to type. A dropped middle name, a swapped given/family order, or a transliteration that does not match your passport spelling means you are turned away at your own appointment, and the fee you paid, whatever your country's base price, is gone. Fix the spelling in your ETS account before you pay, not after.
How do you create an ETS account for the TOEFL?
Go to ets.org/toefl and start an ETS account. This account is the hub for everything that follows: booking, paying, rescheduling, downloading your score report, and ordering extra score reports later. It is not transferable to another person, and neither is a completed registration, so do not create an account "for now" using a friend's name to hold a seat.
ETS's own list of what you can change afterward through your account covers your email address and mailing address. Your legal name and date of birth are not on that list of self-service edits, which is exactly why getting them right the first time matters more than any other field on the form. If you notice a spelling error after you have already registered, contact ETS support directly rather than assuming you can quietly correct it yourself later.
- Given (first) name, exactly as on your ID, excluding accents
- Family (last) name, exactly as on your ID
- Date of birth
- Email address and a password
- Country or location of citizenship
- Phone number
Test center or TOEFL iBT Home Edition: which do you choose?
ETS now offers the TOEFL iBT exactly two ways: at an authorized test center, or as TOEFL iBT Home Edition on your own computer with a live remote proctor. As of September 2026, neither the current TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin nor ETS's registration pages mention a separate paper-based option, so if you are relying on an older guide that describes a "TOEFL iBT Paper Edition," treat that as retired unless ETS's own site tells you otherwise for your specific country.
ETS's fee page lists one registration price per country and does not split that price by delivery method, and its own Testing Options page describes Home Edition as "the same TOEFL iBT test you would take at a test center." In practice, that means picking the more convenient format is not a pricing decision in most markets. The real trade-offs are logistical, and the decision fork after Step 4 below walks through them once you know your deadline.
- Test format: "Test Center" or "Home Edition"
- If Home Edition: confirmation you have reviewed the equipment and room requirements
- Your country or region, to load the correct fee and center list
How do you pick a TOEFL test date and location?
Test centers run the TOEFL iBT more than 170 times a year worldwide, and Home Edition appointments are open 24 hours a day, four days a week, with a minimum of 24 hours' notice before your slot. ETS's own scheduling advice is to register about four months before your desired test date and to pick that date at least two to three months before your earliest application deadline, leaving room for a retake if your first score is not what you needed.
That buffer matters most in cities where every applicant from the same high schools and language centers is booking the same handful of test centers in the same six-week window before January and September intake deadlines. If you wait until the four-month mark to even look, the seats at your nearest center on your preferred weekend may already be gone, and your realistic choices narrow to a center further away or a date that eats into your buffer. Check the calendar early even if you are not ready to pay yet: seeing what is actually available shapes how much runway you really have.
- City, postal code, or "Home Edition" to generate a list of open dates
- A specific test center and appointment time, or a Home Edition time slot
- Confirmation of the date before you proceed to payment
What are the TOEFL registration deadlines and late fees?
Regular online and phone registration for the TOEFL iBT closes 7 full days before your test date, according to the 2026–27 TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin. Miss that and you move into what ETS calls express registration, not "late" registration, though it functions the same way: an automatic surcharge on top of your normal test fee. Online express registration stays open until 2 days before your test date; by phone it stays open until 5 p.m., local test-center time, the day before your appointment.
ETS's published U.S. service-fee table lists the express registration charge at US$49, added on top of whatever base fee applies in your country. Worked example: if your country's base fee is US$220 and you register 5 days out instead of 8, your total becomes roughly US$269 rather than US$220, for the same test, same seat category, no extra service.
- Your chosen date, with a countdown showing days until test day
- A fee summary line that appears only inside the 7-day window: "Express registration fee applies"
- Updated total before you confirm payment
Test center or Home Edition: how do you actually decide?
Now that you know your deadline, decide on format with the practical trade-offs in mind rather than a feature checklist. Both draw on the identical item bank and both cost the same in most countries, per ETS's own fee and testing-options pages, so this is really a question of which constraints you can live with.
Test center
- You need one of thousands of authorized centers within reasonable travel distance, and in smaller cities that might mean a multi-hour trip or an overnight stay.
- You are not responsible for your own internet connection or webcam failing mid-test; the center's equipment is the center's problem.
- No one at home can interrupt you, but you also cannot control who else is testing in the room or how loud the check-in line gets.
- Government ID checks happen in person; there is no separate identity-verification app step beforehand.
TOEFL iBT Home Edition
- Available 24 hours a day, four days a week, which matters if the nearest center is fully booked for weeks but a home slot tomorrow morning is not.
- You must meet ETS's equipment and room requirements yourself: a specific computer setup, a clear desk, and a room with a door you can close, checked before you register, not after.
- Some test takers must verify their identity through a mobile app at least 48 hours before their test time; miss that verification window and you risk your appointment.
- A human proctor monitors you remotely for the full session; a family member walking into frame or a phone buzzing on the desk can trigger a flag.
How do you pay for the TOEFL and confirm your seat?
ETS accepts credit or debit cards on the major networks (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, China UnionPay, Diners Club, RuPay), plus PayPal, Alipay, and a U.S.-dollar electronic check drawn on a bank in the United States, its territories, or Canada. Some card-issuing banks will ask you to complete a 3D-Secure verification step during checkout; if that screen stalls, the fix is on your bank's side, not ETS's.
Check which side of the tax line your country falls on before you are surprised at checkout. Per the 2026–27 bulletin, test and service fees already include applicable sales or value-added tax in most countries, but in the United States, Canada, Australia, and more than twenty European Union member states (including Germany, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands), the listed fee excludes tax, which is calculated and added at the payment screen. A US$220 base fee in one of those countries can land closer to US$240–250 once local tax is added, depending on the rate where you are billed.
Your confirmation email is your paper trail if anything about the appointment looks wrong later. Open it immediately and check the test date and start time, the test center name and address (or the Home Edition system-check link), your name exactly as you registered it, and your appointment confirmation number. Catching an error here, while you can still reschedule inside the normal window, is far cheaper than catching it on test day.
- Payment method: card, e-check, PayPal, or Alipay
- Billing country, which determines whether tax is added
- Card or account details, plus any 3D-Secure step your bank requires
- A final review screen with date, time, and location before you click pay
How do you choose your four free TOEFL score recipients?
Your test fee already includes sending your official score to up to four institutions or agencies, and here ETS's own materials do not agree with each other on the exact cutoff. Its scores page states you can add, delete, or change recipients through your ETS account "until 10 p.m. on the day of your test," while the 2026–27 TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin, the document that forms the actual contract between you and ETS, puts the identical entitlement at "10pm, local test center time, on the day before your test." Both pages were live and current as of September 2026, with no note that either one is outdated.
If you genuinely do not know your final school list yet, list your four best guesses anyway. You can swap any of them for free right up until the cutoff, so there is no cost to naming a placeholder recipient today and changing your mind next week. Because the two official pages disagree, treat the Bulletin's earlier deadline, 10 p.m. local test-center time the night before your test, as the real one, and confirm the exact cutoff your own ETS account shows rather than assuming you have until test day itself.
Ordering a report after that point means paying per institution. ETS's scores explainer currently lists that price at US$25 per institution or agency, while ETS's own separate service-fee table lists the same line item at US$29. The two official pages do not agree with each other as of September 2026, so treat both as approximate and confirm the live figure your ETS account shows before you order.
- Institution or agency name, searched by TOEFL recipient code
- Up to four free recipients, or fewer if you prefer
- An option to skip and add recipients later, for a fee
Where people lose money: the score-recipient cutoff
Test takers who plan to add schools "on test day" and go by the scores page alone can find, per the official Bulletin, that the window already closed the night before. Once whichever 10 p.m. cutoff applies has passed, every additional report costs money, per institution, with no bulk discount. Four schools decided a week late costs roughly US$100–116 that an on-time decision would have avoided entirely.
How do you reschedule, cancel, or handle a TOEFL no-show?
The bulletin sets one deadline for both actions: you must reschedule or cancel at least 4 full days before your test date. Both are handled through your ETS account or by phone; you cannot reschedule or cancel by mail, by email, or at the test center itself.
Reschedule inside that window and ETS's fee table currently charges US$69 for the service, on top of any fee difference if your new date falls in a different pricing period. Cancel inside that window instead and you get an automatic 50% refund of your original test fee, credited back to the original payment method; cash refunds are not offered. Miss the 4-day cutoff entirely, whether you meant to reschedule or cancel, and the bulletin is direct about the outcome: your test fee will not be refunded. The bulletin does not carve out a separate "no-show" rule; simply not appearing for your appointment without cancelling through the proper channel is treated the same way as missing the deadline; there is no refund trigger for it.
Test takers in Korea follow a different, more forgiving schedule written directly into the bulletin: a full refund if you cancel within 7 days of registering, 50% back if you cancel between day 8 after registering and 4 days before your test, and no refund inside the final 3 days or after your test date.
- "Reschedule" or "Cancel" inside your ETS account dashboard
- A new date, if rescheduling, plus the US$69 service fee
- A refund confirmation showing the amount and the original payment method
Where people lose money: the reschedule cutoff
A test taker who gets sick or has a scheduling conflict 3 days out, one day inside the deadline, cannot get any refund at all under the standard policy, and cannot reschedule under the standard fee either. The entire test fee, plus whatever express fee was already paid to book it, is gone, and a fresh registration at full price is the only way back onto a test date.
What does the TOEFL cost, including every add-on fee?
ETS publishes a single base registration fee per country on its own fee page, linked in Sources below. CampusBreeze's own TOEFL fees by country page mirrors that table if you would rather check it without leaving this site. The add-on service fees below are the U.S.-dollar figures ETS lists on its service-fee page as of September 2026; expect your local currency figure to differ and to already include or exclude tax as described in Step 5 above.
| Fee | Amount (USD) | When it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Base registration fee | Varies by country | Check ETS's fee page for your location |
| Express (late) registration | US$49 | Registering within 7 days of your test date |
| Rescheduling | US$69 | Moving your date, at least 4 full days ahead |
| Additional score report | US$25–29 each | Per institution, after the 10 p.m. test-day cutoff (ETS's own pages disagree on the exact figure) |
| Reinstatement of canceled scores | US$20 | Changing your mind within 60 days of cancelling your own scores |
| Speaking or Writing score review | US$80 | One section, requested within 30 days of your test |
| Speaking and Writing score review | US$160 | Both sections, requested within 30 days of your test |
| Express scoring | US$129 | Faster score turnaround, where offered |
| Returned payment | US$30 | Card or e-check declined after submission |
Figures above: ETS, TOEFL iBT Test Fees service-fee table, and the 2026–27 TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin (both checked September 2026). For your country's base fee and to confirm any figure before paying, use ETS's own fee page in Sources below.
What should you double-check before you register for the TOEFL?
Print this page (or use your browser's print-to-PDF) and everything below will print on its own, without the stepper, tables, or navigation getting in the way.
- Passport or primary ID is valid and will not expire before your test date
- Given name spelling matches your ID exactly, including any accents you plan to drop per ETS rules
- Family name spelling and order matches your ID exactly, including multi-part names
- Date of birth entered matches your ID exactly
- Target test date chosen at least 2–3 months before your earliest application deadline
- Registration submitted before the 7-day regular deadline, to avoid the US$49 express fee
- Test format decided: test center or Home Edition, with equipment check done first if testing at home
- If testing at home: room, internet, and computer checked against ETS's requirements at least a few days ahead
- If testing at home and identity verification is required: completed at least 48 hours before your appointment
- List of 1–4 score recipients ready, even as placeholders, before test day
- Reminder set to confirm score recipients by 10 p.m. local test-center time the night before your test, since ETS's own pages disagree on whether the cutoff is that night or test day itself
- Reschedule/cancel deadline noted: 4 full days before your test date, with no refund after that point
Where does TOEFL registration fit in the rest of your timeline?
Registration is only useful once you know what score you are aiming for and what it is worth on your application. If you have not confirmed your target band, check what TOEFL score you actually need before you lock in a test date, and if you have not settled on TOEFL over the alternative, TOEFL vs. IELTS, which to take covers that decision. Once you have registered, the current TOEFL iBT format and timing explains exactly what the four sections look like since the January 2026 redesign, and the TOEFL score calculator helps you sanity-check a practice-test result.
The registration deadline you set here should slot into a bigger schedule, not stand alone. If you are applying to graduate programs, cross-check your test date against a graduate school application timeline so scores post before your deadline, not after it. If you will need an F-1 visa afterward, your TOEFL score report is one of several documents on an F-1 visa document checklist, worth reviewing early. And if you are tracking more than one school's deadline at once, a college application deadline tracker keeps your test date from quietly slipping past an admissions cutoff.
Common Questions About Registering for the TOEFL
How long before the test do I need to register for the TOEFL?
Regular registration closes 7 full days before your test date. After that, ETS charges an express registration fee of US$49 on top of your normal test fee, and online express registration stays open until 2 days before your test date. ETS's own scheduling advice is to register about four months ahead of your desired date so you have your pick of test centers and appointment times.
What happens if my name doesn't match my ID exactly?
You will not be allowed to take the test, and your test fee will not be refunded. ETS states this directly on its registration guidance: the name and date of birth you register with must exactly match the ID you present on test day. Fix any spelling mismatch in your ETS account before you pay, and if you cannot self-correct it, contact ETS support rather than assuming it will be sorted out at check-in.
How much does it cost to reschedule the TOEFL?
ETS's published fee table lists the rescheduling fee at US$69. You must submit the request at least 4 full days before your test date; miss that window and you cannot reschedule under the standard policy, and you also will not receive a refund if you cancel instead.
When is the deadline to choose my free TOEFL score recipients?
ETS's own pages disagree. Its scores page says you can add, delete, or change your up-to-four free score recipients through your ETS account until 10 p.m., local test-center time, on the day of your test, but the official TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin puts the same cutoff at 10 p.m. the day before your test. Treat the earlier deadline as the real one. After whichever cutoff applies, ETS charges a per-institution fee for any additional score report, which ETS's own pages currently list at either US$25 or US$29 depending on which official page you check.
Does TOEFL Home Edition cost the same as testing at a center?
In most countries, yes. ETS's fee page lists one registration price per country without splitting it by delivery format, and ETS describes Home Edition as the same TOEFL iBT test taken at a test center, just delivered at home with live remote proctoring. Confirm your own country's fee page directly if you want to be certain before you choose a format.
Can I get a refund if I cancel my TOEFL registration?
Yes, but only if you cancel at least 4 full days before your test date, in which case you automatically receive 50% of your original test fee back to your original payment method. Cancel later than that, or simply do not show up, and no refund is issued. Test takers in Korea follow a separate, tiered refund schedule written into the TOEFL iBT Information Bulletin.