There are two traditional routes to applying for an Australian visa, and both ask you to give something up. Do it yourself and you pay only the government fee, but you carry the guessing and the risk. Hire a migration agent or immigration lawyer and someone qualified takes it on, for roughly $1,000 to $10,000 or more on top. Tern is a hybrid middle ground at a fixed fee.
Doing it yourself is the most time consuming and stressful, but cheapest route. You still pay the government's Visa Application Charge, and it is not refunded if your application is refused
What a migration agent or immigration lawyer charges, checked mid-2026: $1,000 to $2,500 for a visitor visa, $1,000 to $2,000 for a student visa, $1,000 to $5,000 or more for a skilled visa, and $4,000 to $10,000 for a partner visa
Most agents publish no prices at all, so a published price list is not a reliable guide to what you will be quoted. The firms that publish tend to be the cheaper, more transparent end of the market
Tern's service fee is fixed and published: AUD $95 for the eVisitor (651), AUD $160 for an offshore tourist visa (600), AUD $140 for a Working Holiday visa (417), and AUD $1,800-AUD $2,800 for a partner visa
Tern does the work and checks it before it is submitted. You are not left guessing, and you do not spend your evenings on it
How sharp this decision feels depends on the visa. Only a few percent of visitor visa applications go through an agent. About half of partner applications do
A case does not have to be straightforward for Tern to take it. A recent relationship, a sponsor with a conviction, a visitor visa from a high-risk country, a previous refusal that was a paperwork problem: that is ordinary work here, and an immigration lawyer reviews every partner application before we submit it
Tern is not the right answer for everyone. We handle visitor, eVisitor, transit, working holiday and partner visas only, and a case that needs a bespoke legal strategy belongs with a lawyer
A refused visa stays on your immigration record permanently, and you have to declare it on every future application anywhere in the world
Almost everyone applying for an Australian visa hits the same fork, and for most either is a compromise.
On the one hand of the scale, you can apply yourself and save yourself expensive service fees but instead spend hours researching and still feeling anxious.
On the other side, you can go with a migration agent or immigration lawyer who takes some work off your hands, but you pay four to five figures for that. Being quoted $5,000+ is not unusual, and a lot of the time consuming work collecting and organising all evidence is still on you.
Ask on Reddit or in a Facebook group whether you can do this yourself and most of the answers will be "yes, of course you can". They are right. There is no Australian visa you are not allowed to apply for yourself.
Being able to is not the same as it being the right call for you. Doing it yourself takes a lot of effort and a lot of reading. If you are an anxious person, it is not worth doing if you will lose sleep over it. If you are not detail oriented, there is a fair chance you make a mistake, and a refusal costs far more than the service fee you saved.
The bigger variable is how complex your case is. On a partner visa, a long relationship with a marriage and children is straightforward. A recent relationship with thin evidence is not. That does not decide your route on its own. It decides how much evidence you need, and how badly you need someone to check it.
The usual answer to all this is "it depends", and that is broadly right. It is just not much use on its own. This post has the published numbers, what each route involves, and the situations where Tern is the wrong answer.
What are your options for applying for an Australian visa?
Traditionally there are two. Apply yourself through the government's online portal (ImmiAccount), or hire a Registered Migration Agent or immigration lawyer. No Australian law requires you to use a professional for any visa, and millions of people apply directly every year.
They differ on four things: what you pay, who does the work, whether anyone trained checks the application before it is submitted, and what you can get back if it is refused.
A refusal is yours whichever route you take. No agent, lawyer or platform can take it off your record or refund the government fee.
Doing it yourself: cheapest, and the most work
Applying yourself costs nothing beyond the government's Visa Application Charge. There is no service fee and no visa subclass you are locked out of. The forms are public and the requirements are published, and for a short visa with a clean history the process is built to be done directly.
Everything else is on you. You read the government site, then forum threads that contradict it. You work out which stream you are in, chase down documents, and guess at what counts as enough evidence. It takes hours, and at the end of it you still do not know whether you got it right.
There is also the risk. Home Affairs will not advise you on your own application, so nothing warns you when something is thin or inconsistent, and you find out when the decision arrives.
An agent or lawyer: expertise, and still a lot of your own work
A migration agent or immigration lawyer is licensed to give immigration advice, regulated by a body you can complain to, and takes responsibility for the strategy. On a hard case there is no substitute for that.
People are often surprised by how much of the work stays with them. The agent does not gather your evidence, sit your health exam or order your police certificates. You do that part, usually over email, often one document at a time.
The other surprise is the price, and how hard it is to find out in advance. Fees run from about $1,000 for a visitor visa to $10,000 for a partner visa. Most practices publish nothing and will not quote until you have had a consultation, so comparing two firms means two calls before you see a number.
Why do visa platforms only cover simple visas?
Software did arrive, but only at the cheap end. The platforms you find handle tourist and short-stay visas, where the form is short, the decision is quick and the whole thing can be automated. That is where the volume is, so that is where the category stopped. None of it goes near a partner visa, because a partner visa needs a qualified person to read the file.
So the gap stayed open on the visas that need it most. On a partner application, where about half of all applicants pay a professional and the government charge alone is AUD $11,710, the choice was still a free form or a quote between $4,000 and $10,000.
Where does Tern fit?
Tern prepares and submits your application for a fixed fee, published on the site before you create an account. It is the middle option between doing all of it yourself and paying a practice by the hour.
An immigration lawyer wrote the questions you are asked, the evidence we ask for and the guidance you see as you go. The platform applies those rules to your answers, so what you are asked for depends on your circumstances rather than being one fixed form for everyone.
Documents are checked as they arrive rather than at the end. If a bank statement covers the wrong period, a name does not match your passport, or a document falls short of the standard the lawyer set for it, you are told at that point and not after submission.
We complete the government forms from your answers, so you answer plain English questions about your own life instead of government ones. We submit the application to the Department, and you never touch the government portal.
What the professional layer covers differs by visa. An immigration lawyer reviews every partner visa application before we submit it. Visitor, eVisitor, transit and working holiday applications are reviewed before submission but not necessarily by a lawyer, and complex ones are escalated to the lawyer.
On partner visas the eligibility check is free and unlocks a free 15-minute call with the immigration lawyer before you pay anything. Paid consultations are available on any visa we handle. If the visa is refused we refund our service fee under the conditions in our terms. The government fee is not refunded on any route.
Our fee is lower than a practice doing the same work because the collecting, checking and form filling is done by software rather than billed by the hour. That leaves the lawyer's time for the part that needs a lawyer. The longer version, including how to check we are who we say we are, is in why we built Tern.
"Fantastic experience with tern! We planned to DIY our 820 visa but having the extra reassurance an immigration lawyer was looking over our documents made us feel so much better and at a fraction of the cost! ... They definitely spotted a few mistakes we missed which saves us having to amend anything with the DOI."
Tern holds a 4.7 rating from 62 reviews on Trustpilot.
DIY vs migration agent vs Tern, side by side
The table includes the rows where Tern comes off worse, because for some people those are the rows that decide it.
Do it yourselfBest for simple visas and clean histories | Migration agent or lawyerBest for complex cases and legal strategy | TernBest for most cases, tricky ones included |
|---|---|---|
Government fee only, no service fee on top | Service fee of roughly $1,000 to $10,000 or more on top of the government fee | Fixed service fee, published before you start, from AUD $95 |
You set up the government portal and complete every form yourself | The agent or lawyer completes the forms and manages the file | We complete the government forms from the answers you give |
You submit, and any error is yours to find and fix | They submit on your behalf | We submit on your behalf |
No feedback on whether your evidence is strong enough | They tell you what evidence to gather, usually over email | Every document is checked as you upload it, with feedback on the spot |
Nobody with training reviews the file before it goes in | A registered agent or admitted lawyer reviews the whole file | Partner applications are reviewed by an immigration lawyer before submission. Visitor and working holiday applications are reviewed before submission, and complex cases are escalated to the lawyer |
Available for every Australian visa subclass | Available for every Australian visa subclass | Visitor, eVisitor, transit, working holiday and partner visas only. No student, skilled, employer-sponsored or 485 yet |
Risky if you have a refusal, a criminal record or a health issue | Built for hard cases: refusals, character issues, waivers, appeals | We handle straightforward and moderately complex cases. For a genuinely complex one we can refer you to a partner law firm, and we do not represent you at the Tribunal |
Home Affairs will not advise you on your own application | A named person you can call or email directly | Lawyer consultations available at any point, and included in the higher partner plans |
No professional to meet, in person or otherwise | You can usually meet face to face | No in-person meetings. Everything happens online or by video call |
If refused, the government fee is gone and there is nothing to refund | If refused, you lose the government fee and usually the professional fee too | If refused, the government fee is still gone, but Tern refunds its service fee (terms apply) |
How much does each route cost?
Doing it yourself costs nothing beyond the government fee. A migration agent or immigration lawyer adds roughly $1,000 to $10,000 or more on top, depending on the visa. Our fee is fixed per visa and published before you start.
Here is what we charge today, next to the government charge you pay whichever route you take:
The 600 has several streams and they are not priced alike. Applying from inside Australia costs more than applying from outside it, in both the government fee and ours. Every stream is listed on the visitor visa page.
Agent fees are harder to pin down, because most firms do not publish them. What we see: $1,000 to $2,500 for a visitor visa, $1,000 to $2,000 for a student visa, $1,000 to $5,000 or more for skilled work, $1,000 to $2,000 for an employer-sponsored visa on its own against $5,000 to $8,000 or more for the full sponsorship package, and $4,000 to $10,000 for a partner visa.
Read the published price lists with that in mind. They cluster lower on partner work, around $2,500 to $7,700, because the practices willing to publish a number are the cheaper and more transparent end of the market. What people report being quoted after a consultation sits higher.
Our breakdown of migration agent costs by visa type goes through what those fees usually include and what almost always sits outside them, and migration agent vs immigration lawyer covers which of the two you want.
Whichever route you take, the government fee is the same and the Department does not refund it. That is the number at risk when an application goes wrong, not the service fee. For the full picture including health exams, police certificates and translations, see our guide to what an Australian visa really costs.
When should you just do it yourself?
Do it yourself when the visa is short, your history is clean, and nobody has to be persuaded of anything. That is a large share of eVisitor, ETA and Working Holiday applicants, and plenty of visitor visa applicants too.
Here is the test I would use. Can you say, without looking it up, which stream you are applying in, what evidence that stream needs, and whether anything in your history has to be declared? If you can answer all three, you do not need us and you should keep the money.
The numbers back that up on the easy visas. The Working Holiday visa (417) is granted for most eligible nationalities at rates above 95%, and the form is short. Paying four figures to prepare a visa approved that often makes little sense.
There is a plain financial version of this too. If the visa is simple and our fee matters to your budget right now, do it yourself.
What you give up is the checking. Nobody looks at whether your bank statements cover the right period, or whether the dates you type into the form match the ones on your documents.
If you go this way, go in prepared. Our step-by-step guide to applying through ImmiAccount walks through the account setup, the form order and the mistakes that cause the most avoidable requests for more information.
"Easy to use for both myself and my husband. Worth the money. Having spent hours on the official Australian website getting nowhere, no consideration of our ages and our lack of technical ability."
When should you hire a migration agent or immigration lawyer?
Hire a professional when your case needs an argument built around your specific facts. Accurate paperwork is not the problem in those cases. You want someone who does this for a living and carries the responsibility for getting it right.
The situations where I would send you straight to one:
A refusal that turned on false or misleading information. That is PIC 4020 territory, and a breach bans you from most visas for 3 years, or 10 for identity fraud. A refusal on its own is a different matter, and more often a paperwork problem than a legal one
A criminal record of your own, particularly anything that ended in a prison sentence. See our guide to the character test for what gets weighed
A health condition that may need a waiver, which is a written argument about cost to the community, not a form field
A section 48 bar or a Schedule 3 problem, meaning you were refused a visa while in Australia, or you are in Australia without a substantive visa (any visa other than a bridging visa)
An appeal already on foot at the Administrative Review Tribunal
A visa that turns on assessments outside the application itself. Skilled visas involve points tests, skills assessments and state nomination. Employer-sponsored visas put obligations on the business as well as on you. Get one component wrong and the rest of the work is wasted
There is a softer reason as well. Some people want a named person who is accountable to a regulator, who picks up the phone, and who will sit across a desk from them. If that is what you want, it is worth paying for, and no platform replaces it.
If your case is on that list, an agent charging $4,000 is better value than any platform, ours included. We would rather tell you that before you pay us than after.
If you take this route, check the person is who they say they are. Every Registered Migration Agent has a registration number you can verify on the public OMARA register, and immigration lawyers are admitted and searchable through their state legal admission body. Ask for the written costs agreement before you sign anything, and ask what is excluded from it.
Which route fits your visa?
The harder the visa, the more people pay for help. On a visitor or working holiday visa, the comparison is against doing it yourself. On a partner visa, it is against agent fees.
Visitor, eVisitor and transit visas
Only a few percent of visitor visa applications go through an agent, which makes sense for a visa most people can handle. So the choice is doing it yourself or handing it to us, at AUD $95 for an eVisitor or AUD $160 for a tourist visa from outside Australia.
Where we earn the fee is on the harder visitor cases: parents visiting from a high-risk country, a partner coming to Australia while a partner visa is pending, an applicant with a thin travel history. Those refusals turn on the evidence. See Tern's visitor visa service for what is included.
Working holiday visas
The 417 and 462 are granted at high rates for most eligible nationalities, and hardly any agent publishes a fee for them. If you are within the age limit, from an eligible country, and have no health or character issues, doing it yourself is a reasonable choice.
The 462 is the fiddlier of the two: country-specific requirements like government support letters and functional English, plus country caps that add timing pressure the 417 does not have. If that is you, Tern handles both at AUD $140 for the 417 and AUD $170 for the 462.
Partner visas
Partner is where the money sits. The government fee is AUD $11,710, none of it comes back if you are refused, and the refusal stays on your record. About half of applicants pay a professional on top of that, typically $4,000 to $10,000. Published price lists sit lower, because the practices that publish are the cheaper end and most firms will not quote you until you have booked a call.
Since April 2026 the Department decides partner applications on what is in front of it, and an incomplete file goes to the back of a queue measured in years. So the file needs to be complete the first time. Tern's partner visa service runs from AUD $1,800 to AUD $2,800, and an immigration lawyer reviews every partner application before we submit it.
Who should not use Tern?
Four situations where I would tell you to go somewhere else. Better you read it here than work it out after you have paid.
You need a visa we do not handle yet. Tern covers visitor (600), eVisitor (651), transit (771), Working Holiday (417), Work and Holiday (462), and partner visas (820/801, 309/100 and 300). Student, skilled, employer-sponsored and Temporary Graduate (485) visas are in build and not available today. If that is your visa, an agent or lawyer is your option.
Your case needs a bespoke legal strategy. A serious criminal record of your own, a health waiver, a Schedule 3 argument, a section 48 bar, a refusal you need to reframe: these need a practitioner building an argument around your specific facts. A guided workflow is the wrong tool for that. Your sponsor's criminal record is a separate question that runs through a separate test, and it does not shut the door the same way. Serious ones go to the lawyer for that assessment.
You already have an appeal at the Tribunal. Tern does not represent applicants at the Administrative Review Tribunal. If a file gets there, we work with a partner law firm who can take the appeal on, with a clean handover of everything already prepared.
You want someone in a room with you. Everything at Tern happens online or by video call. If you want to sit across a desk from the person handling your application, that is a reasonable thing to want and we cannot give it to you.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a migration agent to apply for an Australian visa?
Is it cheaper to apply for an Australian visa yourself?
How much does a migration agent charge in Australia?
Is Tern a migration agent or a law firm?
Which Australian visas can Tern handle?
Does an immigration lawyer review my application?
Can Tern help if my visa has already been refused?
What happens if my visa is refused after applying through Tern?
Can I switch to Tern if I have already started an application myself?
Ready to decide?
The complexity of your case decides how hard the application is. How well it is prepared decides the outcome, and that holds whichever route you take.
If your visa is one we cover, and you do not want to find out after the decision that something was thin, that is what we built. See what Tern handles and what it costs, or book a consultation if you would rather talk it through with an immigration lawyer first. And if it turns out you need your own agent or lawyer, we will tell you.
