Twenty questions, about five minutes, and an honest estimate of where your Dutch sits on the CEFR scale — from first phrases to near-native.
Hallo, ik ___ Ana. En jij?
No feedback until the end, on purpose: guessing from the corrections would skew your result. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
The test places you between two levels of the CEFR, the six-level scale used by universities, employers and official certificates across Europe. A range is the honest output of twenty questions: adaptive tests such as the Oxford Placement Test ask 40 to 45 items, and DIALANG around thirty per skill, precisely because pinning a single level takes far more evidence.
| Level | Name | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Beginner | Introduce yourself, order, ask prices, survive a short trip. |
| A2 | Elementary | Talk about your day, your past and your plans in simple sentences. |
| B1 | Intermediate | Hold a conversation on familiar topics and travel without falling back on English. |
| B2 | Upper intermediate | Argue a point, follow films and news, work in the language. |
| C1 | Advanced | Express yourself precisely on abstract topics and catch implied meaning. |
| C2 | Proficient | Irony, register, specialised texts: near-native command. |
Dutch is close enough to English to feel easy and different enough to trap you in exactly three places. Word order is the first: the verb takes second position in a main clause and runs to the end in a subordinate one, so a sentence you assemble in English order is understandable and immediately foreign. The second is de against het, which no rule fully predicts and which every adjective ending depends on. The third is the national habit of switching to English the moment you hesitate, which is why Dutch learners often read well above the level they can speak.
People search for all three, and they are not quite the same thing. A proficiency test measures what you can do against a public standard and usually ends in a certificate someone else will read — NT2 Staatsexamen is one. A placement test exists to put you in the right class, so it is short, unofficial and only has to be right to within one level. A level test is the everyday name for the same thing when nobody is enrolling you in anything.
This page is a placement test in the technical sense: it estimates your Dutch level on the CEFR scale in about five minutes, tells you which two levels you sit between, and hands you nothing you could show an employer. If you need that, sit one of the exams above. If you need to know which book to open tonight, this is the right tool — and it is free, with no account and no email.
Levels are not evenly spaced: A1 is a few weekends, C1 is a few years. The ranges below are guided-study hours counted cumulatively from zero — orders of magnitude, not promises. They are scaled from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute, which puts professional working proficiency for an English speaker at roughly 600 to 750 classroom hours in Dutch. Those are hours of intensive, supervised classes, with selected students: read them as a floor rather than a forecast.
| Level | Hours from zero | What it buys you |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | 60–100 h | Introduce yourself, order, ask prices, survive a short trip. |
| A2 | 150–200 h | Talk about your day, your past and your plans in simple sentences. |
| B1 | 300–400 h | Hold a conversation on familiar topics and travel without falling back on English. |
| B2 | 500–650 h | Argue a point, follow films and news, work in the language. |
| C1 | 800–950 h | Express yourself precisely on abstract topics and catch implied meaning. |
| C2 | 1,000 h+ | Irony, register, specialised texts: near-native command. |
Want the same maths for your own weekly schedule? Our time calculator turns hours into months, and applies a discount if you already speak a related language.
Learn every noun with its article from day one, because de and het decide adjective endings and relative pronouns later, and retrofitting them is miserable. Drill the perfect tense, which Dutch uses where English would often use a simple past, and practise saying sentences that start with something other than the subject, since that is where word order breaks first.
Your obstacle is not vocabulary but the end of the sentence. Subordinate clauses push the verb to the back, separable verbs leave their particle stranded there, and both happen while you are still talking. Write out the sentences you stumbled over this week, rebuild them with omdat or dat, and say them aloud until the word order stops needing a decision. And ask Dutch friends to keep replying in Dutch.
What remains is register and idiom: formal Dutch loves passive constructions with worden, conditional openings such as mocht u vragen hebben, and fixed pairs like tot stand komen or ter sprake brengen. Read NRC or de Volkskrant, listen to radio made for natives, and rebuild each new expression around your own life so it comes back when you need it.
A placement quiz and a certificate answer different questions. This one tells you what to study next, in five minutes, for free. The exams below tell an employer or a university what you can do, on paper, for a fee and a scheduled date. Use the first to prepare for the second.
| Exam | Awarded by | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| NT2 Staatsexamen | Dutch government (DUO) | The state exam, in two programmes: NT2-I at around B1, aimed at vocational work, and NT2-II at around B2, required for university study and many professional jobs. |
| CNaVT | KU Leuven and the Dutch Language Union | Certificates organised by purpose rather than by level alone — for study, work or everyday life — and recognised in both the Netherlands and Flanders. |
| Inburgeringsexamen | Dutch government | The civic integration exam attached to residence requirements, tested at A2 or B1 depending on the rules in force when you apply. |
Because the extra thirty would buy you less than you think. A fixed-form test gains precision slowly: what actually separates a serious placement test is adaptivity — picking each question based on how you answered the last one, so nobody wastes time on items far below or far above their level. Without that, doubling the length mostly doubles the boredom, and an abandoned test measures nothing at all.
So this one is deliberately short and deliberately modest: it brackets you between two levels, tells you which skill is dragging, and sends you back to studying. If you need a single certified level on paper, sit a NT2 Staatsexamen exam. If you need to know whether to open a B1 or a B2 book tonight, five minutes here is enough.
How accurate is this Dutch level test?
It gives you a range, not a certificate. Twenty fixed questions cannot place you as precisely as the NT2 state exam, which also tests speaking and writing. What this does reliably is bracket you between two CEFR levels, enough to choose a course or a book.
Does it cover Flemish as well?
Yes. Every question uses standard Dutch as written in both the Netherlands and Flanders, and no answer depends on vocabulary that differs between them. Belgian and Dutch spelling are identical, so the passages read the same on both sides of the border.
What is the CEFR scale?
The Common European Framework of Reference splits ability into six levels: A1 and A2 for the basic user, B1 and B2 for the independent user, C1 and C2 for the proficient user. Dutch integration and study requirements are written directly in those letters, usually A2, B1 or B2.
How is my level calculated?
Each question is worth the rank of its level, from 1 point for A1 to 6 for C2. A wrong answer gives back a third of that weight, exactly what random guessing earns on a four-option question, so guessing is worth nothing on average and skipping costs nothing extra.
Why does word order come up so often?
Word order is one useful indicator of grammatical control: Dutch main and subordinate clauses require different patterns. Using those patterns accurately under time pressure contributes to B2 performance, but B2 also requires sufficient vocabulary, comprehension and broader communicative abilities.
Is the test free? Do I need an account?
Completely free, no signup, no email. Your answers stay in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
I got B1. What should I do next?
B1 is where Dutch learners get stuck, partly because everyone around them speaks English. The way up is volume of real sentences with native audio and spaced repetition, built around what you personally need to say — which is exactly how Hyperpolyglot works.
Can I retake the test?
As often as you like, but the questions never change, so an immediate retake measures memory rather than Dutch. Leave a few weeks between attempts if you want a meaningful comparison.
Check how long Dutch will take you, see how close it is to languages you already speak, or take the which language should I learn quiz.
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