How Much Does a Subclass 820 Partner Visa Cost in Australia? Every Fee Explained

How much a subclass 820 partner visa costs in 2026

The Department application charge for a subclass 820 partner visa is AUD 11,710 for most primary applicants, from 1 July 2026. That single charge covers both the temporary subclass 820 and the permanent subclass 801, so there is no second government fee at the permanent stage.

That figure rose on 1 July 2026 from $9,365. A great deal of material published online still quotes the old amount, including pages updated as recently as this year, so if you have budgeted 9,365 the number you are working from is out of date.

The application charge is not the whole cost. A realistic total for an onshore partner visa also includes health examinations, police certificates from every relevant country, certified translations where documents are not in English, and professional fees if you are represented. Those additions typically run from several hundred dollars to a few thousand depending on how many countries you have lived in and whether you use a lawyer.

The most important thing to understand about the charge is that it is normally not refunded. If the application is refused, or if you withdraw it, the money is usually gone. That is the single strongest argument for getting an application right before it is lodged rather than after a case officer has found the gaps.

Why the charge changes, and when

Department application charges are indexed annually and almost always change on 1 July. The charge that applies to your application is the one in force on the date the Department receives it, not the date you started preparing.

That has two practical consequences. If you are preparing an application in May or June, lodging before 1 July may save you the increase, provided the application is genuinely ready. Lodging an incomplete application to beat an indexation date is usually a false economy, because an incomplete application attracts a request for further information and adds months to a process already running past two years.

The second consequence is that any figure you read anywhere, including this page, needs checking against the Department's own current pricing table before you pay. We review these figures regularly, but the Department can change them and the official page is the only authority.

There is also a payment surcharge to account for. The Department applies a surcharge on credit card and some other online payment methods, which on a charge of this size is not trivial.

One further timing point that catches people out. The charge is assessed against the date the Department receives a valid application, and an application is not valid until it is complete and paid. Starting an application in ImmiAccount in June and finishing it in July does not lock in the June figure. If you are relying on beating an indexation date, the application has to be submitted and paid, not merely begun.

The full cost breakdown

Start with the Department charge, then add everything else.

Department application charge. AUD 11,710 for the primary applicant from 1 July 2026, covering both the 820 and the 801.

Additional applicants aged 18 or over. Roughly half the base charge for each. This applies to dependent children over 18 included in your application.

Additional applicants under 18. Roughly a quarter of the base charge for each.

Payment surcharge. A percentage applied to credit card and some online payments. On a charge above eleven thousand dollars this adds a meaningful amount, so check whether a lower cost payment method is available to you.

Health examinations. Required for every applicant. The cost depends on which examinations are required, your age, and the panel clinic you attend. Expect a few hundred dollars per person.

Police certificates. Required from every country where you have lived for 12 months or more in the past ten years. Australian checks are inexpensive. Overseas certificates vary widely in cost and in how long they take to obtain, and for some countries they are the slowest part of the whole application.

Certified translations. Required for any document not in English. Costs are per document.

Professional fees. Optional, and separate from all of the above. Paid to your lawyer or agent, not to the Department.

The reduced charge for prospective marriage visa holders

There is one significant discount, and it applies to a narrow group.

If you already hold a subclass 300 prospective marriage visa and you then lodge an onshore partner visa application, you pay a substantially reduced Department charge rather than the full amount. The logic is that you paid the full charge once already when you applied for the 300.

A slightly higher reduced figure applies where the prospective marriage visa has already ceased by the time you lodge, so the timing of your lodgement relative to the expiry of the 300 affects what you pay.

This is worth knowing at the planning stage rather than afterwards. For an engaged couple who are outside Australia and cannot yet meet the de facto or married requirements, the subclass 300 followed by an onshore partner visa is not necessarily the more expensive route it first appears, once the reduced second charge is taken into account.

Budgeting for a two year process

The charge is paid once, at lodgement, but the costs of a partner visa are spread across the two years the process takes.

Front loaded costs are the Department charge, the initial health examinations, police certificates and translations. These all fall at or near lodgement, which is why the first few weeks are the most expensive part of the process by a wide margin.

Later costs are the ones people do not plan for. Health examinations and police certificates have limited validity periods, and a subclass 820 application decided at 23 to 29 months can outlive documents obtained at lodgement. If the Department asks for updated ones, that is a second round of the same expense. Sequencing these correctly at the start reduces the chance of paying twice.

There is no additional Department charge at the permanent subclass 801 stage, but there may be costs for updated documents the Department asks for at that point.

What you should not budget for is an expedite fee, because there is not one. There is no priority processing for partner visas, and no amount of money moves an application up the queue. Anyone offering to accelerate a partner visa for a fee is not describing a process that exists.

Finally, budget for the possibility of a refusal. Not because refusals are common in well prepared applications, but because the consequence is severe: the charge is not refunded, and a review to the Administrative Review Tribunal carries its own fee and its own deadline. Our page on partner visa refusals explains how that works.

It is also worth separating the two things that people mean when they ask what a partner visa costs. The Department charge is fixed, published and identical at every firm, because it is a government fee. Professional fees are the only part that varies, and they are the only part you can compare. A quote that bundles the two together makes that comparison impossible, so ask for them separately.

If you want the cost of your specific application worked out before you commit, our partner visa lawyers can go through it with you. You can book a consultation online.