What PTE Home is
PTE Home is Pearson's speaking-and-listening test for UK immigration. It comes in three levels. PTE Home A1 for a first partner or parent visa (and the International Sportsperson and Representative of an Overseas Business routes), PTE Home A2 for the family visa extension after two and a half years, and PTE Home B1 for settlement and British citizenship. All three are on the Home Office approved list for tests taken in the UK and abroad.
Do not confuse it with PTE Academic UKVI, Pearson's two-hour four-skills test for Skilled Worker, Health and Care Worker and Student visas. Settlement and citizenship need speaking and listening only, so PTE Home B1 is the right product. If a booking page shows you a two-hour test with reading and writing, you are on the wrong one.
The format: a computer, a headset and no examiner in the room
PTE Home B1 takes about 22 minutes at a Pearson test centre. You sit at a computer with a headset. Instructions and questions are played to you; you speak your answers into the microphone and they are recorded. Nobody interviews you. Pearson's software scores the recordings, and the result is Pass or Fail.
The tasks are everyday and personal: introduce yourself, describe a picture, listen to a short recording and answer, respond to spoken questions about your life, work, plans and opinions. Because the scoring is automated, the test is the same for every candidate on every day, and the result does not depend on who you happened to meet.
Price, booking and results
| PTE Home B1 | |
|---|---|
| Length | 22 minutes (A1 is 22, A2 is 25) |
| UK price, Oct 2026 | £170 on Pearson's price finder; abroad in local currency |
| Where | Pearson test centres on the Home Office approved list, in the UK and in most countries |
| Result | usually within 2 days |
| Reference number | SELT URN, sent with your result and shared with the Home Office automatically |
| Validity for a new application | two years from the test date |
Book on pearsonpte.com in the exact name on your passport. Bring the original passport (or another document on Pearson's ID policy) on the day. GOV.UK says you should be able to sit a SELT within 28 days of booking.
Who PTE Home suits
Choose it if you are calmer talking to a screen than to a person, if you want the result in two days, or if the nearest approved centre is a Pearson one. Candidates with exam nerves often prefer the fact that the computer never reacts, interrupts or looks bored.
Be careful if your pronunciation is strongly accented or your speech is quiet or hesitant. Software is less forgiving than a human examiner of long pauses, false starts and unclear words. Trinity, IELTS and LanguageCert all use people to mark speaking; Pearson is the only one of the four UK providers that does not. Candidates who have failed PTE Home and passed Trinity Grade 5 shortly after are common on the forums, and so, less often, is the reverse: people who freeze with an examiner and pass on the computer.
PTE Home B1 against Trinity GESE Grade 5
| PTE Home B1 | Trinity GESE Grade 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Who you talk to | a computer | a Trinity examiner, live |
| Prepared topic | no | yes, a Topic Form you write at home |
| Length | 22 min | 10 min |
| Marking | software, pass or fail | examiner, grade A to D per phase |
| Price | £170 | £160 |
| Result | usually within 2 days | provisional by 9am the next day |
| Abroad | yes | no (Trinity SELT is UK only) |
How to practise
Pearson publishes a PTE Home handbook and sample items. Beyond that, the B1 you need is the same B1 Trinity describes for Grade 5: two or three full sentences per answer, a reason with "because", the past simple for what happened, "going to" and "will" for plans, and the present perfect for experience. Practise speaking into your phone and playing it back; if you cannot understand yourself, the software will not either. The free AI examiner here asks Grade 5 questions on everyday subjects and grades your recording on Trinity's scale, which is a fair proxy for whether you are at B1 before you pay £170.
PTE at B2
For the B2 settlement requirement from 26 March 2027 Pearson currently offers only PTE Academic UKVI, which includes reading and writing. There is no PTE Home B2 as of October 2026. If one appears on the approved list it would be a direct alternative to Trinity's GESE Grade 7; check what you can book today.
