IB TOK essay graderIs your TOK essay actually answering the prescribed title?
Paste your TOK essay and get it read against the holistic TOK instrument, which has no sub-criteria, in a minute or two. See whether your arguments are developed enough for the upper bands.
Ask your teacher first: the IB academic integrity policy asks students to abstain from receiving non-permitted assistance in the completion or editing of work, such as from friends, relatives, other students, private tutors, essay writing or copy-editing services, pre-written essay banks or file sharing websites, so check that your teacher and your school allow outside feedback on this work.
How it works
Paste your text
Copy and paste the text of your work. No file upload, and it works on any device.
Marked in a minute or two
An AI model applies the published assessment instrument to what you pasted.
See what to fix
The marks you are losing, and the changes most likely to recover them, in order.
How the TOK essay is marked (10 marks)
The TOK essay responds to one of the six prescribed titles for your session in up to 1,600 words, and examiners stop reading after that. IB examiners mark it as a whole against one assessment instrument with no separate criteria. Behind every mark is one question: does the student provide a clear, coherent and critical exploration of the essay title?
The essay is placed in one of five bands.
- Excellent, 9-10. A sustained focus on the title, linked effectively to areas of knowledge. Arguments are clear, coherent and effectively supported by specific examples, their implications are considered, and there is clear awareness and evaluation of different points of view.
- Good, 7-8. Focused on the title and linked effectively to areas of knowledge. Arguments are clear, coherent and supported by examples, with awareness and some evaluation of different points of view.
- Satisfactory, 5-6. Focused on the title and developed with some links to areas of knowledge. Arguments are offered and supported by examples, with some awareness of different points of view.
- Basic, 3-4. Connected to the title, with superficial or limited links to areas of knowledge. Largely descriptive, with limited arguments that are unclear and not supported by effective examples.
- Rudimentary, 1-2. Weakly connected to the title. Any relevant points are descriptive or unsupported assertions.
An essay that does not reach these levels, or does not respond to a prescribed title for the correct session, scores 0.
One paragraph, written two ways
Both versions below answer a made-up title in the style of the prescribed titles: "Does agreement among experts make knowledge more reliable?" They use the same example from the natural sciences. What changes is the work the example does.
Experts are not always right. For example, in 1912 Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents move, but most geologists rejected his idea for decades. In the 1960s, evidence from the ocean floor showed that the continents do move. This shows that agreement among experts does not make knowledge reliable.
Every fact here is correct, and that is not the problem. The example is narrated rather than used: the paragraph never asks why the geologists rejected the idea or what changed their minds, and it jumps from one case to a general conclusion. No other view is considered. This is what the lower descriptors mean by descriptive writing with limited arguments.
Continental drift shows why agreement among experts can be both a strength and a weakness of the natural sciences. When Alfred Wegener proposed in 1912 that the continents move, most geologists rejected the idea, largely because he could not explain what force would move them. That consensus was not stubbornness: it rested on a demand for a mechanism, a standard that usually protects science from attractive but unsupported ideas. Yet the same standard delayed acceptance until ocean-floor evidence in the 1960s pointed to one. So expert agreement makes knowledge more reliable when it reflects shared standards of evidence, but it can also slow the correction of an error. A defender of consensus could reply that the delay is the price of that reliability, since most ideas the experts reject are rejected because they are wrong.
The facts are the same, but now they build a claim about how knowledge is produced in the natural sciences. The paragraph explains why the experts held their view, draws out an implication (the standard that protects knowledge can also delay it), and weighs an opposing view instead of only naming it. These are the moves the Good and Excellent descriptors describe: arguments supported by specific examples, implications considered, and evaluation of different points of view.
One paragraph is never marked on its own: the whole essay gets one mark. The comparison shows the difference the descriptors describe. The report names the passages in your own essay that hold the mark back and what they would need to do.
Mistakes the TOK essay bands penalise
- Writing about the topic, not the title. An essay about knowledge in general that never works with the exact wording of the prescribed title. Focus on the title is the first thing every band describes.
- Examples that do no work. Examples dropped in as illustrations without being used to build or test an argument. The descriptors from Satisfactory upward describe arguments supported by examples, and the Excellent descriptor describes specific examples.
- Other views mentioned, not evaluated. A paragraph of counterclaims followed by the original position, unchanged. Evaluation of different points of view appears in the Good and Excellent descriptors; Satisfactory describes some awareness of them.
- Areas of knowledge in name only. Mentioning the natural sciences or history without showing how knowledge works differently there. The Good and Excellent descriptors describe discussion linked effectively to areas of knowledge.
- Running past 1,600 words. Examiners stop reading at 1,600 words, so a conclusion after that point is never seen. References, the bibliography and any tables or diagrams are not counted.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is there no criterion breakdown?
- Because the TOK essay has no criteria. The report gives one mark out of 10, places it in a band, explains the placement against the band descriptors, and lists what is holding the essay back.
- Is the exhibition marked the same way?
- It also has one holistic instrument out of 10, but the question behind it and the task are different, and your teacher marks it. Choose TOK exhibition in the grader for it.
- How accurate is the estimated mark?
- It is an estimate, not a mark. A language model applies the published criteria to what you paste, and it can be wrong. IB examiners mark this component, so their mark is the one that counts. Use the report to find what to fix before you submit.
- Is it free?
- The first preview is free and needs no account: the band your work falls in, the opening of the explanation for it, and the top risks in the draft. The full report, with the complete explanation and a ranked list of fixes, is $9.99, or $24.99 for five and $44.99 for ten.
- Is my work stored?
- IBLens never saves the text you paste. Our server sends it to Anthropic, the AI provider, to produce the report, and Anthropic deletes it within 30 days unless it is flagged under its usage policy or the law requires otherwise. Reports made without an account are deleted after 90 days unless you buy the full report, and reports in a signed-in account stay until you delete them.
What the TOK essay report covers
- One holistic mark out of 10, placed in a band and explained, because that is how this task is marked
- The risks costing you the most marks, ranked, with what in the text causes them
- Next steps ranked by the marks they are likely to recover
- Your words counted against the 1,600-word limit, with what the official count leaves out
- Two free re-checks of a revised version of the same work, within 14 days of the full report opening
IBLens at a glance
- Marks against the published IB criteria for each task. Where the syllabus changes in May 2027 (the Extended Essay, the Psychology IA and the Computer Science IA), it holds both sets and uses the one for your session. The Visual Arts comparative study is not set from May 2027, so it is marked only for 2026 sessions.
- $9.99 for a full report, which includes two re-checks of the same work within 14 days. No subscription.
- The first preview is free and needs no account: the band your work falls in, the start of the explanation, and the top risks in the draft.
- Covers coursework in 14 subjects, the Extended Essay, the TOK essay and the TOK exhibition.
- Our server sends the text you paste to Anthropic to produce the report. IBLens never stores the text itself; the report is kept as the Privacy Policy describes.
See where your TOK essay stands before you submit it.
Paste your TOK essay and get a free preview in a minute or two. The full report is $9.99.
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