The Department of Home Affairs treats visa applications differently based on the applicant's country of citizenship. This affects both how long your application takes to process and your likelihood of approval. Factors include the volume of applications from each country, historical compliance rates, and the complexity of verification processes.
The country score ranks your citizenship against all other nationalities based on two factors: how quickly applications are typically processed and how often they are approved. Approval rates carry more weight in the calculation since this is what matters most to applicants. The score ranges from 0-100, with higher values indicating faster processing and higher approval rates relative to other countries.
Our reports are based exclusively on official government data obtained through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Australian Department of Home Affairs: visa refusal rates (FOI Reference DA24/02/00115) and processing times (FOI Reference DA25/10/00449). We keep this data current by calibrating it monthly against official processing times published by the Department of Home Affairs.
Want to see how other nationalities are treated? Use our Country Risk tool to explore visa outcomes for any country.
For a deep dive into how country risk works, what factors the Department considers, and how nationality affects your visa journey, read our comprehensive guide to country risk.