Can You Cheat on the Duolingo English Test? (Here's What Actually Happens)

You can try to cheat on the Duolingo English Test, but DET's AI proctoring catches the vast majority of attempts — and even approved scores can be revoked days or weeks later.

Many students search "can you cheat on the Duolingo English Test," "does DET detect cheating," or "is the Duolingo test secure." Open TikTok and you'll find the answer people are selling: glasses with hidden cameras, earpieces connected to someone outside the room. The comments fill up fast — students asking where to buy, how much it costs, whether it actually works.

Some of them go through with it. Here's what happens next.

How People Try to Cheat the DET

The most common methods are earpieces and camera glasses. Someone outside the room sees the questions through a hidden lens and feeds answers through a small device in the ear. Others have a more fluent friend sitting just off camera. Some use phone translation tools during the test.

Duolingo's proctoring catches most of this. The room scan at the start checks your environment. Eye movement tracking flags when you look away from the screen. AI monitoring analyzes response patterns — answers that come too fast, too uniformly, or don't match your speaking and writing samples. Students who cheat on the adaptive section often get flagged because their scores don't align across tasks.

And it doesn't stop when you finish. Duolingo reviews recordings after submission. Scores can be revoked days later. If you're not sure what the proctoring system is actually checking, read our DET setup checklist — it covers exactly what the room scan, ear scan, and secondary camera are looking for.

But some get through. They get their score. They get their visa. They get on the plane. And then they meet Paula.

What Happened to Paula

Paula came from Spain. She did everything right — studied for the test, prepared her application, passed her English exam honestly. Her visa was approved. Her host family was ready. She had worked toward this for months.

Six weeks after arriving in the US, she was on a plane back to Spain.

Not because she was caught cheating. Paula had prepared honestly. But the DET measures whether you know English — whether you can recognize words, complete sentences, read passages. It doesn't measure whether you can think in English under academic pressure.

In the classroom, Paula translated everything. Spanish → English → write. English → Spanish → understand. Every assignment that took her American classmates 45 minutes took her three hours. She fell behind. Then further behind. Then so far behind that catching up became impossible.

The program sent her home.

What Cheating on the DET Actually Costs

Think about what went into getting there. Months of preparation. The visa application fee. The flight. The host family arrangement. The expectation of a year abroad — the experience, the credential, the confidence that comes from actually doing it.

Gone in six weeks.

Students who cheat skip the test and walk straight into the classroom with even less preparation than Paula had. At least Paula knew some English. A student who gamed their way to a 120 with an earpiece arrives with a score that says they can function at that level — and a brain that can't.

The classroom doesn't care about your score. It cares whether you can read an assignment, understand it, think through a response, and produce something coherent under time pressure. In English. Without help. That's not what the earpiece trained.

What the DET Actually Measures — and What It Doesn't

The DET is a well-designed test. It's adaptive, hard to template, and measures real English ability better than most alternatives. But it has a ceiling.

It measures recognition — whether you know words, whether you can complete sentences, whether you understand passages. These are real skills. But academic survival requires retrieval — pulling language out fast, under pressure, while simultaneously thinking through a complex problem. That's a different skill. And it's the one the test can't fully capture.

Cheating doesn't just skip the test. It skips the only preparation you were doing. Every hour spent practicing with camera glasses was an hour not spent building the actual skill. Students who cheat arrive less prepared than someone who failed honestly and kept studying.

What Actually Prepares You

Paula's story isn't an argument against studying abroad. It's an argument for preparing for what actually happens when you get there.

DET Advantage trains the exact skills that determine whether you survive the classroom — not just whether you pass the test. 120 units from A2 to C1, building retrieval speed, academic thinking, and the ability to process English under pressure. Live group sessions. AI feedback on speaking and writing so you know your real level before you book the flight.

The difference between Paula and a student who succeeds isn't the DET score. It's whether they can think in English when the timer starts and the classroom is real.

If you want to know whether you're actually ready — not just test-ready — our free 25-minute diagnostic tells you exactly where the gap is. And before you sit the test, make sure your setup is right with our DET setup checklist. You leave with a plan. No earpiece required.