Paying 2,000 students to make videos: how Kazakhstan's AI IELTS mock exam GoPrep reached $2M annual revenue
What it is An AI IELTS full-length mock exam website and app: timed mock tests across four sections, AI grades writing to official criteria and scores speaking like an examiner, sold as a monthly subscription.
Why it took off The team built its own platform and pays thousands of Central Asian students per view for "this is the only thing I use to study" short videos. It's cheap and looks like word of mouth. After the Android launch in October, the same playbook expanded into Indonesia, Turkey and the Arabic-speaking market.
BHow you can follow it Don't build another IELTS app. Copy the distribution: pick an "exam × language" combination that English-speaking products don't reach (e.g. TOPIK, JLPT, local study-abroad exams), build a creator recruitment page modeled on theirs, pay ordinary students to make videos, and feed them into a subscription funnel priced by country.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-10-01 · 11-07 installs 139,180
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
GoPrep has only been on Google Play for a little over a month, with 139k installs. It isn't really new: eight months ago it was called IELTS.gg, a small Kazakh company's IELTS prep website. By paying students to make short videos, it built subscriptions in Russian-speaking markets and Central Asia to a founder-reported annual revenue of over $2M. The product is something anyone could build; what it's really good at is a paid UGC short-video machine. Below: how it runs, where the money comes from, who it's competing with, and which part you can follow.
A 5M-view video
In March 2026, 29,19-year-old Veronika Tsoi posted a TikTok video. She is a Kazakh student studying in Daegu, South Korea. The caption was just one line: "what do YOU use to study? we only use ielts.gg!" By early November, the video had 5.01M views (TikTok, 11-06).
This video was paid for. The company behind ielts.gg, Aleem Labs, built its own creator-recruiting site, creata.gg, whose homepage says "Become a UGC creator at an international startup. No experience. No investment." Below that is a row of "they started this way too": Veronika Tsoi, 19, "two posts a day," earned $2,970; Arlanbek, 15, a student in Astana, $6,000; Ailana, 12, from Pavlodar, $1,200. The page also lists per-video earnings: a video with 2M views paid out, and one with $9B views paid $450.
So GoPrep's story is first a distribution story, not an app story.
What it is
An AI full-length IELTS mock exam platform. The four sections are timed like the real test; writing is graded sentence by sentence against the official four-criteria rubric; speaking is run by an AI examiner named Preppy that asks questions, follows up, interrupts, and scores fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. It also has a daily study plan, progress stats and speaking mini-games. The store description's first line reads "IELTS practice that scores you the way the exam does."
The developer, Aleem Labs, is based in Shymkent and Astana, Kazakhstan. The website launched as IELTS.gg in 2026 February, the iOS app was listed in 27 July, it was forced to rename to GoPrep in August, and the Android app was listed in 1 October.
They made a video about the renaming themselves. The official TikTok posted in 30 September: "Нас заставили сменить имя" ("We were forced to change our name"). No investors, dozens of rejections, the team nearly broke up, thirty thousand students used it to study, and then "a big player in the IELTS market" sent a lawyer's letter: "domain, brand, $100k of investment, all of it had to be handed over." That post got 150k views. A product name containing an exam trademark was always going to run into this.
How fast it grew
Google Play global cumulative installs:
| Date | Installs |
|---|---|
| 10-29 | 30,806 |
| 10-31 | 63,671 |
| 11-02 | 113,378 |
| 11-06 | 139,180 |
Up 108k in a week. 11-06 It ranks #7 in Malaysia's Google Play Education Top Free chart and #14 in Indonesia's Education Top Grossing chart (it has been stuck between #13 and #18 for weeks). It also charts in the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland's Education Top Free, but lower. On iOS it ranks #4 in Uzbekistan's Education Top Grossing and #2 in Indonesia's Education Top Free.
One thing doesn't add up: its ranks in the countries we can see are not high, yet its install numbers are large. The most likely explanation is that its home market is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, or Kyrgyzstan, where the charts aren't fully visible from outside (inference). Play doesn't show ratings or reviews yet.
Earlier numbers come from founder Assylzhan Altay's public LinkedIn updates:
| Timeline | Cumulative revenue / annualized | Other |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-14 | $133k cumulative | 74.4M UGC views, $40k paid to creators, 8,232 sales, team of 6 |
| 2026-06-09 | $200k cumulative | 120M views, $50k paid out, $900/day on Meta ads, 11.7k orders |
| 2026-09-17 | $2M annualized | "6 months" |
| 2026-10-03 | $2M+ annualized | 15 people, 31k learners, 2,000 creators, 300M+ views, $150k paid out |
In October it won Kazakhstan's "EdTech of the Year" award, presented by the prime minister. The founder's personal profile headline now reads "$3M ARR in 8 months." All of these are self-reported, with no third-party verification.
Where users come from
The main engine is amateur video paid per view. Creators are paid per video plus per view. Local media reported 2–50k tenge per video, with extra bonuses for viral hits, and one 15-year-old earned 1.14M tenge in his first month (digitalbusiness.kz, 06-23). creata.gg's own listed rate is about $0.4 per thousand views. Using founder June's numbers: $50k paid for 120M views, which brought 728k website visits and 11.7k sales.
The videos look alike: a student to camera saying "this website is the only thing I use to prep for IELTS," some acting out "my IELTS prep be like," others using "only studying with ChatGPT" as the bad example. Searchable TikTok examples: anastassiaa.pir (16, Tamir set), one from June 12 with 2.02M views, captioned "don't miss the chance to prep for IELTS properly 👉 ielts.gg"; sanz.eben, one from August 26 with 1.45M views; knnazymm, one from June with 500k views. For the first half-year, almost all faces were Russian-speaking or Central Asian.
In late October it started switching languages. creata.gg now has six versions: Russian, English, Uzbek, Turkish, Indonesian, and Arabic. In early November, Indonesian-language creators appeared on TikTok (learnwith_aji: "Bisa dicoba nih buat kalian yg lagi belajar IELTS," meaning "you can try this if you're studying for IELTS"), along with Turkish (#ieltsturkiye) and Saudi creators (noura.study, #ielts_ksa, 10-3.09M views). The timing lines up with its push up the Indonesian Top Grossing and Malaysian Top Free charts. In other words, this Android wave of volume is the same machine opened to new countries.
Other channels are supporting. There are Meta ads, about $900 a day in June, not much volume. On Play, installs jump by 30,000–50,000 every couple of days. Whether they buy installs through Google can't be seen from outside (unverified). It has built up local trust: its homepage shows the logo of IDP Kazakhstan, an official registration partner, so users can book exams through it. The prime minister presented its award, and mainstream local media covered it. The site also has many multilingual prep guides, a free score calculator, and a speaking spin-the-wheel mini-game, which capture search traffic.
There's one thing a follower can't copy: the team already knows how to drive traffic. The CEO's previous project was an English tutoring school, GetEnglish, which grew to 600k followers in two years. Paying students to make videos is a playbook they had already perfected on that project.
Where the money comes from
Subscription model, priced by country, with the price only shown after the quiz. The paywall has crossed-out original prices, a "50% off" spin-the-wheel, and a countdown timer. A similar product, IELTS 9, was tested: in late September it was $12.99 for 1 months, $17.99 for 3 months, and $49.99 for 12 months; in mid-October it switched to Turkey, and the same three tiers became $77.99 / $107.99 / $299.99. The in-app purchase range listed on Google Play is $79.99–$299.99. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan can use local payment methods.
It also offers a "score improvement guarantee: 1.0 or your subscription fee back". The conditions are strict, so refunds are probably rare in practice (inference). TikTok's official answer to "why charge?": "Three months of prep costs about as much as four or five café visits, and in return you get to study abroad and land the job you want."
Why users pay: IELTS is a hard gate for studying and immigrating abroad. In Kazakhstan, one sitting costs about $220, and a one-on-one tutor about $300 a month (according to user reviews on the GoPrep homepage). Compared with those numbers, a subscription of a few dozen dollars is not expensive.
One thing to watch: October claims 31k learners, while Play already shows 139k installs, and most Android users haven't paid. The Android conversion rate isn't visible yet.
Who it's competing with
| Competitors | What it is | Compared with GoPrep |
|---|---|---|
| IDP / British Council / Cambridge official | Official apps and free prep materials | Free and authoritative, but no AI full mock tests or sentence-level scoring. GoPrep is actually IDP's registration partner in Kazakhstan. |
| IELTS 9(ielts9.io) | Founded by a Turk, web plus iOS | Transparent pricing, 7-day no-questions refund, focused on writing and speaking. Runs on SEO, with articles written specifically to capture GoPrep's traffic. |
| IELTS Studio, IELTSBiz, IELTS Practice | Small web teams that popped up over 2026 years | Have a free tier and $9.99/month plans; all have built "GoPrep alternative" comparison pages. |
| IELTSMate | Android speaking practice | Launched in August, 42k installs, speaking only |
| ELSA, Praktika, and other AI speaking apps | General English speaking | Tens of millions of installs, and it sits next to GoPrep on Indonesia's Top Grossing chart, but it doesn't target the four IELTS sections. |
| ChatGPT | Free self-grading | No exam structure or study plan. It is the villain in GoPrep's videos. |
As a product, it has the most features in its category, but every feature is something someone else also builds, so there's no real moat. Copycats have already arrived, and they're copying the distribution: Nepal's Band9Prep has a creator recruitment page that nearly copies the line "No experience. No investment." and pays 50–60 Nepali rupees per thousand views. IELTS Practice offers creators a 20% commission. An English tutoring school in Astana is also recruiting amateur students to film "real person to camera" videos.
Why it could take off
- Fresh demand, high ticket price: one sitting costs $220, and users will pay for "passing the first time."
- Cheap distribution that scales: thousands of students filming "I'm using this" looks like word of mouth, not an ad, at about $0.4 per thousand views.
- Smart market choice: many people take IELTS in Russian-speaking regions and Central Asia, and English-market AI prep products basically haven't entered. The team's native languages are Russian and Kazakh, and they have local payments and official registration eligibility.
- A ruthless funnel: quizzes, personalized plans, country-priced paywalls, spin-the-wheels and countdown timers, and a score guarantee turn short-video traffic into subscriptions.
- New channels reuse old playbooks: in October they moved to Android and expanded the creator network to Indonesia, Turkey, and the Arabic-speaking world.
Almost no one in the English or Chinese-speaking world talks about it. Searching X turns up almost nothing. But inside its small niche it's well known: revenue is shared publicly, local media have covered it, and competitors write articles specifically to capture its traffic.
If it were you
In one line: Don't build another IELTS app copying it. Copy its distribution. Take the "pay amateur students to make short videos + a conversion-heavy subscription funnel" model and apply it to an "exam × language" combo nobody has tried this way yet.
Who it's for: 1–3 people, at least one of whom speaks the target market's language natively and has a student network there; someone who can build a web subscription funnel and knows their customer acquisition cost per order; someone willing to spend a lot of time recruiting creators, reviewing videos, and paying hundreds of creators.
Who it's not for: anyone who wants to compete head-on with it on IELTS. It is taking the same machine into Indonesia, Turkey, and the Arabic-speaking world; it's already established in Russian-speaking regions and Central Asia, and it has official registration eligibility and government backing. Also not for those who only know product building and hope for SEO or organic store traffic: comparison pages and alternative pages in this space are already saturated.
How to do it: First pick a combo where the exam is a hard gate and a single sitting costs hundreds of dollars: Korean TOPIK, Japanese JLPT, TOEFL, the Duolingo English Test, and national university entrance and study-abroad exams in various countries. Choose a language where English-market products don't reach but test-takers are plentiful. Build a web product first: a free quiz that gives a score, then a personalized plan, then a country-priced subscription. AI scoring deserves the most care, because users pay for accurate scores. Don't put exam trademarks in the product name.
How to get users: Build a creator recruitment page like creata.gg's, state clearly how much you pay per view, and feature real creator earnings. For the first batch, recruit students from middle schools, universities, and prep groups, paying per video plus per view. Start by pushing cost per thousand views below $1 (inference; creata.gg reached about $0.4). The content formats are "I only use this to study," "my prep be like," and "stop only using ChatGPT." A small Meta ad budget works to amplify videos that already go viral.
When it's too late: the sooner the better, since the window isn't one or two years. GoPrep is expanding on its own: from late October to early November it entered Indonesia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and in Nepal someone is already copying its recruitment page. Pick a language it's unlikely to touch in the next three to six months, and get the creator network running before Q1 of 2027.
Signs you've misread it: ① your market doesn't pay above $2 per thousand views, which means amateur video won't have enough reach; ② within three months, creator videos drive visits but the conversion rate is under 1% (its June numbers were 728k visits and 11.7k sales, about 1.6%); ③ refunds and bad reviews cluster around "the AI scores aren't accurate," which means the product can't hold up the funnel; ④ GoPrep's creator site launches in your language.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one IELTS by IDP (official) iOS 2022 iOS 215 ratings, top 50 in Education Top Free across several South Asian and Middle Eastern stores Official registration and free materials, no AI full mock test scoring. GoPrep is actually IDP Kazakhstan's registration partner. British Council / Cambridge official prep (IELTS Ready, Write & Improve) Big-company features Early on Official Free and authoritative, but no sentence-level AI scoring, AI speaking examiner, or daily plan IELTS 9(ielts9.io) Web About 2025 on iOS; PH launch 2026-08 Claims 1,500+ learners Transparent pricing, 7-day refund, focused on writing and speaking. Runs on SEO to capture GoPrep's traffic, with no UGC machine. IELTS Studio Web Mid-2026 Unknown Free tier available. $9.99/month, one-time payment. Small SE Asian team, SEO comparison pages. IELTS Prep by Leap iOS 2024-08 460 ratings, #58 in India's Education free chart India's study-abroad agency ecosystem, funneling users to study-abroad services IELTSMate(Boiskhon) Android 2026-08 42k installs, #80 in Vietnam's Education free chart Speaking only, about one-third the scale of GoPrep ELSA / Stimuler / Praktika Android 2016–2022 Tens of millions of installs, top 20 in Indonesia's Education Top Grossing chart General AI English speaking practice, not tied to the IELTS four-skill exam ChatGPT self-service grading Big-company features 2022 Huge Free and general-purpose, with no exam structure or study plan. GoPrep's UGC uses "only ChatGPT for prep" as the negative example. - Where users come from
- Confirmed Paid UGC short videos (TikTok / Reels / Shorts, via their own creata.gg): creata.gg recruits creators in multiple languages and pays per view. The founder publicly stated $50k paid for 120M views (2026-06), 2,000 creators by October, 300M+ views, and $150k paid out. On TikTok, single ielts.gg / goprep videos reached up to 5.01M views. Indonesian and Turkish creators appeared from October on.
- Confirmed Meta paid ads: the founder's LinkedIn post 2026-06-09: "Meta Ads: reached $900/day". Not in the metaads library.
- Confirmed Legacy brand and user migration (IELTS.gg website → app): the website launched 2026-02, was forced to rename to GoPrep 2026-08, and ielts.gg redirects. Launched on iOS 2026-07-27 and Android 2026-10-01. The official TikTok 10-16 announced the Android version (73k views).
- Confirmed Official partnerships and media / government endorsement: IDP IELTS Kazakhstan is a registration partner. The PM presented an annual EdTech award (2026-10). Covered by raem.kz, kazpravda, and digitalbusiness.kz.
- Confirmed SEO and free tools, mini-games: goprep.gg has multilingual guides, a score calculator, IELTS Runner, and more. Contribution unknown.
- Inferred Paid installs via Google App Campaigns or similar: Play installs jump 3–50k every two days, yet its rank in our tracked stores is not high. Not confirmed, since googleads doesn't index it.
Why GoPrep (gg.goprep.app) took off
Research date 2026-11-06. Data comes from our googleplay / appstore libraries ("play library", "appstore library") and public websites. Sources are attached to each item.
Bottom line
GoPrep isn't a new Android app. It's the renamed version of IELTS.gg, an AI IELTS prep website built by Kazakhstan's Aleem Labs (launched in February of year 2026). It reached Google Play in 2026-10-01, but eight months earlier it had already built up to what the founder claims as $2M+ ARR in CIS / Central Asia through an army of pay-per-view UGC short-video creators (via their own creator platform, creata.gg). The 139k Android installs come from moving the proven website plus subscription funnel to a new channel, using the same UGC machine (now with Indonesian and Turkish creators) to push installs. The product itself is four full-length mock exams, AI scoring against the official four criteria, a daily plan, and a score-improvement refund guarantee. It has the most features in its category but isn't unique. It took off mainly through distribution: cheap, scalable paid UGC, plus a Central Asian market nobody was seriously working.
1. What it is
- Full-length IELTS mock exams (Academic / General Training): timed listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Writing is graded sentence by sentence against the four official criteria. Speaking is handled by the AI examiner Preppy, which asks follow-ups, interrupts, and scores. Also includes a daily study plan, progress tracking, mini-games, and vocabulary practice (Play listing; goprep.gg/en).
- Pricing: set by country. The price only appears after the quiz, with a paywall featuring a spin-the-wheel "50% off" and a countdown. A competitor, IELTS 9, was tested in late September: $12.99 in January, $17.99 in March, $49.99 in December. 10-15 saw $77.99 / $107.99 / $299.99 in Turkey (ielts9.io/blog/goprep-review-price-is-it-free). The Play IAP range shows $79.99–$299.99 (play library). Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan support local payments (Payme). There's a 14-day refund window, plus a "raise your score by 1.0 or get your subscription fee back" guarantee with strict conditions (goprep.gg/en/guides/exam/what-is-goprep).
- Developer: Aleem Labs (ALEEM LABS LLP, Kyzylorda / Astana, Kazakhstan). The homepage displays the logo of IDP IELTS Kazakhstan as an official registration partner (goprep.gg/en; ielts.gg/terms).
2. Data: how fast it's growing, and where
Google Play (play library, global cumulative installs)
| Date | Installs | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| 10-29 | 30,806 | 10k+ |
| 10-31 | 63,671 | 50k+ |
| 11-02 | 113,378 | 100k+ |
| 11-03 | 127,108 | |
| 11-06 | 139,180 |
- Launched 2026-10-01. The official TikTok 10-16 posted an "Android version is live" announcement (73k views). 7 days added 108k installs. No rating data yet (Play doesn't show a rating so far).
- Charts (play library): in Malaysia's Education free chart it climbed from #43 to #7 (11-06). In Indonesia's Education Top Grossing chart it held #13–18 and has stayed on the chart. In the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland's Education free charts it sits around #50–190. In the US Education free chart it once reached #167. 11-05 entered Hong Kong's and Nigeria's Education Top Grossing charts (ranks in the 190s).
- Chart rank doesn't match install volume: across the 30 stores we track, its ranks are not high, yet it has 139k installs. The likely reason is that its core markets, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, aren't among the 30 stores in the play library. This is an inference, not verified.
iOS (appstore library, id6787395636, launched 2026-07-27)
- Uzbekistan Education Top Grossing #4, overall Top Grossing #87. Indonesia Education free #2. Brunei #3. Malaysia #10. Russia #24. Very few ratings (47 in Kazakhstan, 4.3 stars), which suggests iOS isn't its main channel. The web subscription is.
Company-reported (LinkedIn / media)
- 2026-05-05: cumulative revenue $120K (Assylzhan Altay's LinkedIn, #buildinpublic).
- 2026-05-14: cumulative $133K; UGC views 74.4M; website visits 609k; 8,232 conversions; paid to UGC $40,227; team of 6; 600 UGC creators working with them via creata.gg (LinkedIn).
- 2026-06-09: cumulative $200K; UGC views 120M; UGC paid $50k; Meta ad daily spend $900; website visits 728k; 11,667 conversions (LinkedIn).
- 2026-09-17: "$2M ARR in 6 months" (LinkedIn).
- 2026-10-03: won Kazakhstan's "Annual EdTech" award, presented by the PM. Team of 15, 31k learners, 2,000 content creators, $2M+ ARR, 300M+ cumulative views, $150k paid to creators (LinkedIn). The founder's profile headline now reads "$3M ARR in 8 months".
- 2026-10-21 Kazpravda (Kazakhstan) coverage: users from 139 countries, over 35k people (kazpravda.kz/n/48-chasov-na-zapusk/).
3. Where users came from (growth tactics)
3.1 The pay-per-view UGC army: the main engine, confirmed
- Their own creator platform creata.gg, multilingual: Russian, English, Uzbek, Turkish, Indonesian, Arabic. The pitch is "become an international startup's UGC creator with no experience and no money to invest." The page says "creators have earned $60,000" and shows per-video earnings, such as $900 for 2M views and $450 for 1M views (creata.gg/en). The GoPrep homepage footer has a "Become a UGC creator" link.
- Pay structure: paid per view plus per post, 2–50k tenge per video, with bonuses for viral hits. One 15-year-old creator earned 1.14M tenge in their first month (digitalbusiness.kz, 2026-06-23).
- Plenty of TikTok evidence (TikHub search): veronikatsoy_'s "what do YOU use to study? we only use ielts.gg!" (2026-03-29) with 5.01M views; two sanz.eben videos at 1.45M and 520k; ielts_help 500k; aibysshhaa 500k; fadsap_ 410k (2026-10-23, tagged #goprep). The homepage also lists several Instagram and YouTube videos with 1M–2.7M views.
- Early creative was almost entirely Russian-speaking and Central Asian faces. From late October, Indonesian creators appeared (learnwith_aji, ferandielts, rnb_living, growwithdini, all from early November), along with Turkish creators (asly.ielts #ieltsturkiye). The timing lines up with Indonesia's Play Education Top Grossing rank of #13–14 and Malaysia's Education free chart climbing to #7.
- The founder publicly disclosed this playbook's cost structure: by June, 120M views had cost only $50k, roughly a CPM of $0.4. That corresponded to 728k website visits and 11.7k conversions (LinkedIn).
3.2 Meta paid ads: confirmed, small scale
- The founder 2026-06-09 wrote "Meta Ads: reached $900/day today". Our metaads and googleads libraries don't track it (it's off our list; not finding it there doesn't mean it isn't running ads).
3.3 Google Play install sources: unverified
- Installs jump 3–50k every two days, yet its rank in our tracked stores is not high. Google App Campaigns may be running, or most installs may come from untracked Central Asian stores. googleads doesn't index it, so this can't be confirmed.
3.4 Local resources and endorsements: confirmed
- IDP IELTS Kazakhstan official registration partner: logo on the homepage, so users can register for the test directly through them (goprep.gg/en; ielts9.io also mentions this).
- Government and media endorsements: Kazakhstan's PM presented the "Annual EdTech" award (2026-10). Won the AI & Digital Bridge Awards 2026 "EdTech Project of the Year" (goprep.gg rename explainer page). Covered by raem.kz, astanahub, kazpravda, and digitalbusiness.kz.
- The team already had traffic: CEO Assylzhan Altay previously ran the English course business GetEnglish, which grew to 600k followers and 3,000+ learners in two years (LinkedIn). Alidar Kuchukov, co-founder of sister company Aleem / Oki, claims 1.5M followers and 2.5B views (LinkedIn). Aleem was in the US accelerator AlchemistX (raem.kz). So the UGC playbook was something this team had already perfected on its last project.
3.5 SEO and free tools: active, contribution unknown
- goprep.gg has many multilingual guides (with RSS), a free score calculator, a topic generator, and mini-games like IELTS Runner and Speak or Die, all capturing search traffic.
3.6 The forced rename became content
- The official TikTok 2026-09-30 posted "Нас заставили сменить имя" ("We were forced to change our name"): a major IELTS player sent a legal letter, so they gave up the ielts.gg domain and brand, and "the $100k we'd put in is gone." This post got 150k views. The official account says the rename happened in August of 2026 (goprep.gg/en/guides/exam/ielts-gg-is-now-goprep).
4. Competitors
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from GoPrep |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IELTS by IDP (official) | iOS / Android | 2022 | iOS 215 ratings, top 50 in education free charts in several South Asian and Middle Eastern stores (appstore library) | Free official registration and prep materials, no AI full-length mock scoring; GoPrep is IDP's registration partner in Kazakhstan |
| British Council / Cambridge official prep (IELTS Ready, Write & Improve, etc.) | Web / App | Early on | Official | Free and authoritative, but no sentence-level AI scoring, AI speaking examiner, or daily plan |
| IELTS 9(ielts9.io) | Web + iOS | on iOS, about 2025,2026-08, charted on PH and WhatLaunchedToday | Claims 1,500+ learners | Turkish founder; transparent pricing, 7-day no-questions refund, writing and speaking focus; grows through SEO, with several "GoPrep / IELTS.gg alternative" articles siphoning traffic |
| IELTS Studio(ieltsstudio.com) | Web + Chrome extension | Mid-2026 | Unknown | Small Southeast Asian team; permanent free tier, $9.99/month or one-time purchase; also running GoPrep comparison pages to siphon traffic |
| IELTSBiz, IELTS Practice (ieltspractice.app) | Web | 2026 | Unknown | Creator programs offering free credits across four skills and a 20% commission; all riding GoPrep's name for SEO |
| IELTS Prep by Leap(Leap Scholar) | iOS / Android | 2024 | 460 ratings on iOS, #58 on India's Education free chart | Part of India's study-abroad agency ecosystem, funneling users to study services rather than earning from subscriptions |
| IELTS Prep: English Band 9(Inviral Tech) | iOS | 2023 | 382 ratings, top free Education chart in a dozen storefronts | Traditional question bank, has AI but no complete mock-exam system |
| IELTSMate(Boiskhon) | Android | 2026-08 | 42k installs, #80 on Vietnam's Education free chart (Play library) | Speaking only, about one-third the scale of GoPrep |
| ELSA, Stimuler, Praktika and other AI speaking apps | iOS / Android | 2016–2022 | Tens of millions of installs, top 20 on Indonesia's Education Top Grossing chart (Play library) | General English speaking, not built around the IELTS four-skill exam; GoPrep sits right beside them on Indonesia's Top Grossing chart |
| ChatGPT self-service grading | Big-company features | — | Huge | Free and generic, with no exam structure or plan; GoPrep's UGC content specifically mocks "just using ChatGPT to prep" (veronikatsoy_, 500k views) |
5. Why it took off
- Fresh demand, high ticket size: IELTS is a hard gate for study abroad and immigration. One sitting costs about 110k tenge (about $220), a one-on-one tutor runs $300 a month (per user reviews on GoPrep's homepage), and users will pay for "pass the first time." A $13–$300 subscription is cheap next to the exam and tutoring.
- Distribution is the core: a pay-per-view UGC network. By October it had 2,000 creators and 300M+ views, at a CPM of about $0.4. The content looks like word of mouth from students saying "I use this site," so it rarely reads as an ad and gets swiped past.
- Right market pick: Central Asia and the CIS (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia) have many IELTS candidates but almost no localized AI prep product. The team's native languages are Russian and Kazakh, and they won local registration partnership with IDP.
- Heavy conversion funnel: quizzes, a personalized plan, a paywall (anchor pricing, a spin wheel, countdown timers), plus country-based pricing and local payments, efficiently turning short-video traffic into subscriptions.
- Old playbook on new channels: launched on Android in October and expanded creata.gg into Indonesian and Turkish. Within two weeks it climbed to #7 on Malaysia's Education free chart and held the top 15 on Indonesia's Education Top Grossing chart.
6. Differentiation
- On product: full-subject full-length mock exams, scoring on the four official criteria, an AI speaking examiner, daily plans, and a score-improvement guarantee. It has the most features in its category, but every one of them is being built by someone else (IELTS 9, IELTS Studio, etc.), so there's no real moat.
- The real edge is in distribution and localization: (a) a self-built UGC creator platform that turned "paying thousands of students to shoot videos" into an assembly line; (b) claiming the Russian-speaking world and Central Asia, which nobody was serving, before expanding into Indonesia, Turkey and the Middle East; (c) local trust signals like the IDP registration partnership and an award from the prime minister.
- Bottom line: it took off mainly on distribution. A product that is "good enough and complete" is a prerequisite, but not the reason.
7. Visibility
- Revenue is public and being discussed: the founder keeps building in public on LinkedIn (cumulative revenue $120K → $200K → $2M ARR → $3M ARR) and has disclosed UGC views, payouts and daily Meta spend. Major Kazakh media have covered it. At least 3 competitor sites (ielts9.io, ieltsstudio.com, ieltsbiz.com) have published comparison and "alternative" pages to siphon its traffic.
- No discussion turned up on X (the x-radar corpus has "goprep" and "ielts.gg" at 0; the founder's X handle is @ace_altay). English and Chinese-speaking circles mostly don't know it yet, but it's well known inside its small niche.
8. Copycats
- Band9Prep (Nepal): nearly copies creata's pitch, "No experience. No investment." It pays UGC creators NPR 50–60 per thousand views (band9prep.com/creators).
- IELTS Practice (ieltspractice.app): a 20% creator commission program.
- Ace Academy (Astana): recruits UGC creators to shoot "real person facing the camera" videos for its online English school (dreamjob.ru, 2026-09).
- IELTS 9, IELTS Studio and IELTSBiz directly benchmark it on product format (AI scoring + mock exams + guarantee) and on SEO.
9. What others can borrow
- Turn UGC into a platform: build your own creator site (multilingual, pay per view, public earnings case studies) and recruit ordinary students to post "I use this." CPM can be pushed below $0.5. Fits exam and learning products with heavy decisions and high ticket sizes.
- Hit underserved language markets first: Russian-speaking regions and Central Asia are places English-first SaaS doesn't reach. Competition is thin and acquisition is cheap. Once you're established, replicate into Indonesia, Turkey and the Arabic-speaking world.
- Funnel design: "quiz → personalized plan → country-priced paywall," plus a "score-improvement refund" guarantee to lower the decision barrier (the conditions are strict, so the actual refund rate should be low).
- Borrow trust from official channels: become a local registration partner for the exam body, earning both registration commissions and credibility.
- Mind trademark risk: putting an exam trademark (IELTS) in the product name gets you asked to rename, and it cost them a domain and about $100k in investment.
10. Still unclear
- Of the 139k Play installs, there's no way to break down how many came from Central Asia, organic search, or Google paid (App Campaign): the Play library has no Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan data, and the googleads library doesn't index it.
- The $2M–$3M ARR is self-reported by the founder and not verified by third parties like TrustMRR. Country-based pricing and a 6x price gap make the ARR figure very unstable.
- "31k students" (October) versus 139k Play installs shows most installs don't pay. Android payment conversion is unknown.
- Who the "big IELTS player" that made it rename is has not been disclosed.
- Whether its Indonesia chart ranking holds: the new market was pushed up by UGC, and retention and refund rates are unknown.
Sources
- Play library: app / app_snap / chart_rank, gg.goprep.app, 2026-10-29 to 11-06
- App Store library: app_profile, 6787395636; search for similar IELTS apps
- goprep.gg/en ;goprep.gg/en/guides/exam/what-is-goprep ;goprep.gg/en/guides/exam/ielts-gg-is-now-goprep
- creata.gg/en
- ielts9.io/blog/goprep-review-price-is-it-free ;ielts9.io/blog/what-happened-to-ielts-gg
- www.ieltsstudio.com/compare/ielts-studio-vs-goprep ;ieltsbiz.com/ielts-gg-alternative
- Assylzhan Altay's LinkedIn posts (2026-05-05, 05-14, 06-09, 09-17, 10-03) and personal profile (scraped via Exa)
- raem.kz/en/aleem-kazakhstani-ai-language-app-duolingo-app-st… (2026-09-10)
- digitalbusiness.kz/2026-06-23/kazahstanets-v-15-let-zarabota…
- kazpravda.kz/n/48-chasov-na-zapusk/ (2026-10-21)
- TikTok (TikHub search for "goprep" and "ielts gg", plus @goprep_gg's videos)
- www.band9prep.com/creators ;ieltspractice.app/partners/creators