The one-parameter Bell family of distributions, introduced by Castellares et al. (Appl Math Model 56:172–185, 2018), is useful for modeling count data. This paper proposes and studies a goodness-of-fit test for this distribution, which is consistent against fixed alternatives. The finite sample performance of the proposed test is investigated by means of several Monte Carlo simulation experiments, and it is also compared with other related ones. Real data applications are considered for illustrative purposes.