Find your Australian visa pathway

Start with your situation, not the subclass number

Most people arrive here having already read a subclass number somewhere and wondering whether it applies to them. That is the wrong end of the problem. The number is the last thing you work out, not the first.

The useful question is which of these describes you today:

• You have skills and qualifications, and no Australian employer or partner. Start with skilled migration — it runs on points and an invitation.
• You are the partner, fiancé or family member of an Australian. Start with partner and family visas.
• An Australian business wants to hire you, or already has. Start with employer sponsored visas.
• You want to study, or you are already studying here. Start with student visas — and read the pathway section, because the course you pick shapes everything after it.
• You want to visit, or work while travelling. Start with visitor and working holiday visas.
• You have been refused, or your visa is about to expire. That is urgent and time-limited. Go to refusals and appeals and do not wait.

Permanent, provisional or temporary

This distinction matters more than most people realise when they start, and it is rarely explained plainly.

1. Permanent — you can live and work in Australia indefinitely, access Medicare, and eventually apply for citizenship. The 189, 190, 186 and the second stage of a partner visa all land here.
2. Provisional — a real visa with real work rights, but time-limited and conditional, designed as a pathway to permanent residence. The 491 and 494 sit here. You have to meet further requirements before the permanent stage opens.
3. Temporary — a defined period for a defined purpose: study, work for one sponsor, travel. Some lead onward, some do not.

A provisional visa is not a lesser version of permanent residence. It is a different arrangement with its own obligations, and treating it as a formality on the way to a passport is how people end up stuck.

What every application has in common

Whatever category you land in, the same four things get assessed:

• Health — examinations for you and usually everyone included in the application.
• Character — police certificates from every country you have lived in for a meaningful period.
• Identity and evidence — documents that agree with each other, translated where required.
• Time — age, relationship length, visa expiry dates and how long results stay valid. Time is a criterion, not a backdrop, and it is the one nobody can extend for you.

What to budget, roughly

Application charges vary enormously by category. As a rough guide for 2026–27, the Department’s base charge for a single applicant runs from AUD 250 for a visitor visa, through AUD 2,500 for a student visa and around AUD 6,140 for most skilled and employer sponsored visas, up to AUD 11,710 for a partner visa.

Those are lodgement charges for one person. Adding family, and paying for health checks, police certificates, skills assessments and English tests, can move the real total well beyond the headline.

If none of this fits

Plenty of situations do not slot neatly into a category — a relationship that has just ended mid-application, a refusal from years ago, a bridging visa nobody explained, a business that wants to sponsor but has never done it before. Those are the conversations worth having with a person rather than a website.