How much does a migration agent cost in Australia? Real fees by visa type

Migration agent fees are one of the hardest costs to pin down in the Australian visa system. Most firms do not publish their prices. You have to book a consultation, sometimes a paid one, just to find out what you will be charged. Even then the quoted fee rarely tells the full story once government charges, health exams and translations land on top.

So we went and read the fee schedules of the practices that do publish. Every agent figure below comes from one of those published price lists, read in August 2026, and where nobody publishes a price we say that instead of guessing. Approval-rate figures come from the Department's own program reports. And because the fee is only half the decision, there is a straight comparison of the three routes: doing it yourself, hiring a professional, or using a platform.

What does a migration agent charge for each visa type?

Migration agent fees in Australia run from about $1,000 for a student visa to $8,000 or more for a full employer-sponsored package. The table below is the short version, built from the published fee schedules of four Australian migration practices. Government fees are read live from the Department's current pricing.

A caveat worth stating plainly: most migration agents publish nothing at all. These ranges come from the minority who do, so treat them as the transparent end of the market rather than the whole of it. Where nothing is published we have said so rather than guess.

That gap matters most on partner visas. The published figures cluster at $2,500 to $7,700 because the practices willing to print a price tend to be the cheaper, more transparent end of the market. Most agents publish nothing and quote only after a consultation, and applicants commonly report being quoted $5,000 to $9,000. So treat the published range as the floor rather than the middle, and budget $4,000 to $10,000 for a partner visa. If you have been quoted $8,000, that is not out of line with the market. It is simply above the part of the market that prints its prices.

Two things to take from this. First, on cheap visas the professional fee is usually larger than the government fee. An agent charging $1,000 for a AUD $250 tourist visa is adding several times the government cost in professional fees. Second, on expensive visas the reverse is true. The AUD $11,710 government charge for a partner visa dwarfs almost every agent quote we found, which changes the maths completely. The thing you are protecting is the government fee, not the agent fee.

For the full breakdown of government charges across every subclass, including the extras most people forget, see our Australian visa cost guide.

Should you do it yourself, hire a migration agent, or use a platform?

There is no single right answer, and the honest version depends on how complicated your case is. Doing it yourself costs nothing but leaves nobody checking your work. A migration agent or immigration lawyer gives you tailored strategy and can fight a refusal, at a price most will not tell you until you call. A platform sits in between: fixed published pricing and a professional check, but a narrower range of cases it can take on.

Agent ranges and Tern's fees checked mid-2026. Tern's fees run from AUD $95 for an eVisitor to AUD $2,800 for the top partner visa tier, and the government charge is separate in every column.

Read the last three rows of the Tern column carefully, because they are the reason to pick something else. If your case turns on a legal argument, if you need a student, skilled, employer-sponsored or Temporary Graduate (485) visa, or if you are appealing a refusal, a migration agent or immigration lawyer is the right call and we will say so before you pay.

Tern holds a 4.7 rating from 69 reviews on Trustpilot. This one is from a customer who had planned to do her own partner visa from inside Australia (subclass 820):

"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."

Lucy, Trustpilot, 31 July 2026

What is included in a migration agent's fee, and what is not?

A migration agent's fee covers their time and judgement on one application, and almost nothing else. Everything with a separate invoice attached, from the government charge to your medical, is usually yours to pay on top. Under the OMARA Code of Conduct, agents must give you a written costs agreement before doing chargeable work, so you are entitled to see exactly where the line falls.

What does a migration agent's fee usually include?

A standard fee typically covers:

What is not included in a migration agent's fee?

This is where a quoted fee gets misleading. Most agent fees do not cover:

Those extras are indicative market ranges rather than fixed prices, and every one is billed by a third party, not the agent. Check the current cost of the ones that apply to you before you budget.

When an agent quotes $3,000 for a skilled visa, the government charge, the skills assessment and the English test can comfortably double your real outlay. Ask for a written breakdown of the total expected cost, including every charge that falls to you, before you sign anything.

What are you actually paying a migration agent for?

You are paying for experience, judgement, and a lower chance of refusal. An agent charging $5,000 for a partner visa is doing considerably more than filling in a form.

Knowledge of what case officers look for. An experienced agent has seen hundreds of decisions. They know which evidence carries weight, which statements raise flags, and which gaps lead to a request for further information or a refusal.

The things no guidebook tells you. Policy shifts. Case officer expectations shift. What worked two years ago can quietly stop working. Someone handling enough cases develops a feel for what strengthens an application and what weakens it. That judgement is hard to price and is often the difference between a clean approval and a request for further information.

Help shaping your evidence. On complex visas, how you present evidence matters as much as what you have. A partner visa is a story about your relationship told across four kinds of evidence: financial, social, household and commitment. Photos and bank statements are raw material. Someone has to make the story hold together.

Consistency checking. One of the most common causes of visa trouble is inconsistency between documents. A date that does not match. An address that contradicts another form. A statement that conflicts with a previous application. A good agent finds these before a case officer does.

Protecting a non-refundable fee. For a AUD $250 tourist visa, a refusal is annoying. For a AUD $11,710 partner visa, it is a serious financial hit. Part of what you are buying is a lower chance of that worst case.

Dealing with the Department. After the application goes in, case officers may ask for more information or raise concerns. An experienced agent knows how to answer well and on time.

When is a migration agent worth the fee?

A migration agent earns their fee when the stakes are high or your case carries extra risk. In some situations, paying one comes close to essential.

High-risk nationalities. Based on our analysis of 4.5 million visa decisions, applicants from high-risk countries face refusal rates between 20% and 40% for some visa types. When the baseline odds already run against you, preparation is the one lever left. You cannot change your passport, but you can submit an application so thorough that even a sceptical case officer has no grounds to refuse it.

Previous visa refusals. A refused visa stays on your immigration record permanently, and you have to disclose it on every future application. How you address that refusal, what has changed since, and how you frame the circumstances can decide whether the next application succeeds. Someone who has handled post-refusal cases knows how to navigate it.

Cases that need a legal argument. Some applications involve real legal complexity: relationships that do not fit the standard pattern, ambiguous occupation classifications, or circumstances that need a persuasive written submission. This is where an agent, and particularly an immigration lawyer, adds something no do-it-yourself approach can match.

Expensive visas with heavy evidence. For partner (AUD $11,710), skilled (AUD $6,135) and employer-sponsored (AUD $4,015-AUD $6,140) applications, the non-refundable government fee alone means the cost of getting it wrong dwarfs any professional fee. These categories also carry more moving parts and longer processing times, where one mistake can set you back months. Professional help here is closer to insurance than a luxury.

When are you overpaying for a migration agent?

If your visa is simple and your history is clean, an agent-level fee rarely changes the outcome. Four situations where the money is better kept.

eVisitors and ETAs. The eVisitor (651) is free and the ETA (601) is AUD $20. Both are largely automated and most applications are decided within minutes. The Department granted 98.9% of eVisitor applications decided in the April to June 2025 quarter, so the odds are about as good as they get. Nobody needs to pay $880 or more for one.

That headline hides a real spread, though. In the same quarter the eVisitor grant rate was 99.3% for British citizens but 92.6% for Bulgarians, 82.2% for Lithuanians, 71.8% for Croatians and 61.5% for Romanians. If you hold one of those passports, "basically automatic" is not your experience, and a past refusal or a criminal record can push any eVisitor into manual processing. Both visas also mean using Australian government systems in English, which is not easy if you are not comfortable with online portals. If you want a guided process without doing the work yourself, a low-cost platform fits better than agent-level fees.

Simple tourist visas from low-risk countries. If you hold a UK or US passport with no complications, a Subclass 600 tourist visa is usually within reach on your own, and paying $1,000 or more on top of a AUD $250 government fee is hard to justify.

Be careful with the word "usually", though. In the April to June 2025 quarter the tourist visitor grant rate was 88.5% for British citizens and 89.3% for Americans, against 79.4% across all tourist visitor applications. Those numbers are lower than most people expect from a "good" passport. It helps to remember who is in them: a British tourist taking a two-week holiday uses the eVisitor, so the ones who end up on a 600 tend to be the longer, the sponsored or the more complicated visits. A clean, simple trip is genuinely low risk. A messy one is not, whatever your passport says.

The Working Holiday 417. The Department granted 99.8% of first Working Holiday (417) applications it decided in the six months to 30 June 2025. That is about as close to guaranteed as any Australian visa gets, and the application is designed to be self-service. Unless you have specific complications, an agent adds cost without meaningfully changing the outcome.

The Subclass 462 (Work and Holiday) is a step harder: 95.4% for first applications over the same period, because some countries require a government support letter or proof of functional English. Still high, but that gap means roughly one refusal in every twenty 462 applicants, against one in five hundred on the 417.

When the agent is just typing. An agent earns their fee through knowledge and judgement. Typing is not the valuable part. If all you get is your answers transferred onto government forms, with no strategy, no evidence guidance and no risk assessment, you are paying a premium for something software does for a fraction of the price.

Every grant rate in this section comes from the Department of Home Affairs' own program reports: the Visitor visa program report (BR0112) and the Working Holiday Maker visa program report (BR0110), both published for the period ending 30 June 2025.

The pattern is straightforward. The simpler your visa and the cleaner your history, the less an agent adds. Save the budget for the cases where expertise genuinely changes the result.

What government fees do you pay on top of an agent's fee?

Government visa fees are always separate from any agent or platform charge, and you pay them straight to the Department of Home Affairs. They are non-refundable whatever the outcome, and they rise on 1 July each year. The 1 July 2026 increase lifted most subclasses by about 25% in one step. Every government figure on this page is read live from current Department pricing, and the full table by subclass is in our Australian visa cost guide.

Frequently asked questions

What should you do next?

The next step depends on which visa you are costing up. Tern's prices are fixed and published, and each one covers preparing the application and submitting it for you.