Sri Lanka English Proficiency Exam Fee Comparator — IELTS, TOEFL, PTE, Duolingo, Cambridge

Six providers run English proficiency tests sat in Sri Lanka — the British Council and IDP for IELTS, ETS for TOEFL iBT, Pearson for PTE Academic, Duolingo for the DET, and Cambridge English (delivered through authorised centres including the British Council and ICBT). Each one prices in its own currency, accepts a different mix of jurisdictions, and runs a different test format. The comparator collapses all of that into one ranked LKR table so you can pick quickly without hopping between five booking sites.

1. Static fee table. Every variant is captured once in EXAM_FEE_TABLE with provider, native currency, native amount, format, modules, test duration, result turnaround, score validity, retake gap, Sri Lanka centres, accepted-by jurisdictions, and a per-row lastVerified date.
2. USD → LKR conversion. For TOEFL, PTE, and DET (priced in USD), the LKR equivalent is round(native_usd × 305), using the CBSL indicative middle rate snapshotted on 2026-05-17. No live API call — the page stays fast, offline-correct, and Lighthouse-stable.
3. City filter.Pick a physical centre and the comparator keeps every test offered in that city plus every online-delivered test (TOEFL Home, DET, DET bundle), since those can be sat from anywhere with a stable connection. Picking "Online" restricts the list to online-delivered tests only.
4. Purpose filter.Each row carries acceptance flags for university admission, UK SELT, Canada IRCC, Australia DHA, and US universities. Selecting a purpose drops rows that aren't accepted for that jurisdiction.
5. Sort and recommend. The remaining rows are sorted by your chosen key (fee, duration, or result turnaround). The recommendation tile always picks the cheapest accepted row, independent of sort, and shows the rupee gap to the next-distinct cheapest option — that gap is the real saving from picking correctly.

Why purpose matters more than price alone

Picking the absolute cheapest test only saves money if your destination accepts it. The Duolingo English Test is the cheapest option in this list at about Rs 19,825, but it is not on the UK SELT list — booking it for a UK Skilled Worker visa would waste the fee outright and force a second sitting of an IELTS UKVI Academic at Rs 75,000. The purpose filter exists to stop exactly this kind of error: switch to "UK visa" and the DET drops out, leaving only the tests UKVI will actually accept. The same applies in reverse for university admission — IELTS UKVI Academic is accepted (it's the academic variant with extra paperwork), but IELTS Life Skills is not (it tests speaking and listening only, which universities don't consider sufficient evidence of academic English).

USD-priced fees and the CBSL rate

TOEFL, PTE, and the DET are billed in USD by their global parents (ETS, Pearson, and Duolingo respectively). Sri Lanka does not get a separate LKR rate card; whatever USD the provider charges is what your card is debited and the bank converts at its own rate at the point of payment. The LKR figure shown here is the CBSL indicative middle rate × native USD — a useful planning number, but the actual rupee you pay can vary by 1–3% depending on your card's conversion margin. The rate snapshot is refreshed quarterly; the calculator surfaces the snapshot date next to every converted figure so a returning visitor knows immediately if the rate is stale.

Independent cross-check on the LKR conversions

Every USD-priced row exposes both its native amount and its derived LKR equivalent. The data module ships a verifyLkrConversions() helper that re-derives the LKR equivalent independently — round(native × CBSL_RATE) — and returns any rows that don't match. If a manual edit to the snapshot table ever drifted away from the conversion rule, the check would surface the mismatch by row ID. This is the comparator's analogue of cross-checking a tax calculator with both the bracket-walk and the monthly-formula methods: two paths, same answer, drift impossible to hide.

What this comparator deliberately does not do

Live exam-date scraping is out of scope — booking and seat availability require provider partner APIs we don't have, so each row links straight to the provider's booking page instead. Refund and cancellation modelling is also out: each provider has its own rules (sliding-scale refunds with progressively higher cancellation fees as the test date approaches) and duplicating those here would rot quickly. Country-specific university policies are excluded for the same reason; we surface jurisdiction-level acceptance (IRCC, UK SELT, DHA) but not whether a particular MIT or Imperial programme prefers IELTS or TOEFL — that decision belongs to the programme. OET, IELTS Indicator, and Linguaskill Business are not yet in the table; they will be added once their Sri Lanka availability stabilises.

Three end-to-end scenarios you can reproduce in the comparator above. The recommendation tile and the chart bars should match the rupee numbers below exactly — that's the point of having a deterministic, source-cited calculation rather than a marketing page.

• British Council Sri Lanka — IELTS dates, fees and locations
• IDP IELTS Sri Lanka — book / test fees and locations
• ETS — TOEFL iBT fees (Sri Lanka centre and Home Edition)
• Pearson — PTE Academic and PTE Academic UKVI fees
• Duolingo English Test — applicants (fee, format, accepted-by list)
• Cambridge English — exams and tests (B2 First, C1 Advanced, C2 Proficiency)
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — indicative exchange rates (used for USD → LKR conversion)
• UK Visas and Immigration — Secure English Language Tests (SELT) approved list
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada — language requirements for Express Entry
• Australian Department of Home Affairs — accepted English language tests

Per-provider fees were last cross-checked on 2026-05-17. The CBSL indicative middle rate snapshot is LKR 305/USD as of 2026-05-17. Re-verified quarterly; patched within 48 hours of any reported provider tariff change.