Twenty questions, about five minutes, and an honest estimate of where your French sits on the CEFR scale — from first phrases to near-native.
Bonjour, je ___ Ana. Et toi ?
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. |
French flatters English speakers at first: a third of English vocabulary came from French, so you can read a menu long before you can order from it. The gap opens at the spoken level, where liaison and silent endings mean nous parlons and nous parlions sound closer than they look. Two more walls decide the B levels: the subjunctive, which polite conversation reaches for constantly, and past participle agreement, which even native writers get wrong.
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 — DELF and DALF 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 French 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 French. 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.
Your limit is material, not talent: too few phrases to assemble anything real. Learn the fifty sentences you would actually say about your own week rather than textbook lines about a pen on a table, and get the passé composé working with both auxiliaries. Listening matters more in French than in most languages at this stage, because the gap between spelling and sound is where beginners drown.
This is the classic French plateau: you understand the news and still hesitate to order a coffee. The unlock is the subjunctive, which is not decoration — il faut que, bien que, je voudrais que run through ordinary conversation — plus the pronouns y and en that natives drop into every second sentence. Write the sentences you failed to say this week, fix them once, then drill them until they arrive without translation.
Grammar has stopped being your bottleneck; register is. French draws a sharper line than English between written and spoken forms, and using one where the other belongs is what marks a foreigner more than an accent does. Read journalism and listen to podcasts made for natives, harvest the expressions that surprise you — mettre en cause, faire l'objet de, voir le jour — and rebuild each one into a sentence about your own life.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| DELF and DALF | France Éducation international, for the French Ministry of Education | One diploma per CEFR level, A1 to C2, valid for life and recognised by French universities. DELF covers A1 to B2, DALF covers C1 and C2. |
| TCF | France Éducation international | A test rather than a diploma: you sit one exam and receive a level on a scale, valid two years. The usual route for immigration and university applications when you do not yet know your level. |
| TEF | Paris Île-de-France Chamber of Commerce | The other scaled French test, widely used for Canadian immigration files, also valid two years. |
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 DELF and DALF 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 French level test?
It gives you a range, not a certificate. Twenty fixed questions cannot place you as precisely as a comprehensive assessment such as the TCF, whose multiple-choice questions are arranged in progressively increasing difficulty. This quiz offers an approximate CEFR range to help you choose a book, class or podcast.
What is the CEFR scale?
The Common European Framework of Reference splits language 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. It is the scale behind DELF and DALF, and the one French universities and employers quote.
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, which is exactly what random guessing earns on a four-option question, so guessing is worth nothing on average and skipping costs nothing extra. The total becomes a percentage, then a range.
Does the test cover France or Quebec?
Both, and neither is required. Every question is built on standard written French shared by France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec and West Africa. Nothing in the answers depends on knowing Hexagonal slang or Quebec usage.
Is spoken French tested?
Not directly — this is a reading-based quiz, so it measures grammar, vocabulary and comprehension rather than listening or pronunciation. French speakers routinely score higher on paper than in conversation, so if your result feels generous, that gap is exactly why. The fix is output volume, not more grammar.
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 most learners of French stall for years: you follow films and freeze mid-sentence. The fix is volume of real sentences with native audio, spaced repetition, and deliberate work on the subjunctive — which is exactly what Hyperpolyglot is built for, since you learn the phrases you actually need rather than a fixed word list.
Can I retake the test?
As often as you like, but the questions never change, so a second attempt straight after the first measures your memory rather than your French. Leave a few weeks between attempts if you want the comparison to mean anything.
Check how long French 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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