Australia Student Visa Fees in 2026: What a Pakistani Applicant Actually Pays

What does the subclass 500 visa itself cost in 2026?

The Department of Home Affairs charges what it calls a base application charge. For most students that figure is AUD 2,500. It rose from AUD 2,000 on 1 July 2026, and the date that decides your price is the date you lodge, not the date you were offered a place and not the date you started gathering documents. Lodge on 30 June and you would have paid the old charge. Lodge on 1 July and you paid the new one.

The charge is not the same for every sector of study, which is where a lot of confusion starts. The department's own visa pricing table splits the subclass 500 into six lines, and only one of them applies to the typical Pakistani degree applicant.

The sectors and what each one pays

• All other students. This is the line that covers a bachelor's degree, a master's by coursework, a diploma, or a vocational course. The base charge is AUD 2,500.
• Postgraduate research sector. A research master's or a PhD sits here, and the base charge is also AUD 2,500.
• Independent ELICOS. A standalone English course lodged on its own carries a lower charge, roughly AUD 2,050 on the pricing table read on 28 August 2026.
• Non-Award sector. Short study that does not lead to an Australian qualification, such as a study abroad semester, also sits at roughly AUD 2,050.
• Foreign Affairs or Defence sector. Nil. This covers students sponsored under those arrangements, which almost never applies to a self-funded Pakistani applicant.
• Secondary exchange within the schools sector. Also nil, and again a narrow category.

One point worth holding on to. If your English course is packaged in front of a degree, the whole application is priced by your main course of study, so packaging ELICOS with a bachelor's does not get you the ELICOS price. The lower charge is for an independent English course lodged by itself.

Why does a Pakistani applicant pay the full charge?

When the charge went to AUD 2,500, the Australian Government kept three groups on the old price plus a small annual inflation adjustment. Those groups are eligible ASEAN passport holders, eligible Pacific Island and Timor-Leste passport holders, and applicants in the independent ELICOS and Non-Award sectors. Pakistan is not an ASEAN member and is not a Pacific Island state. So the passport concessions do not reach a Pakistani applicant at all.

The sector concession is the only door open, and it is a narrow one. It applies to the course, not the person. A student from Sialkot who lodges for a twenty week English course on its own would pay the lower charge. The same student lodging for a master's at a Victorian university pays AUD 2,500.

This matters because a lot of the material circulating on Pakistani social media in July and August 2026 blurred the two. Read carefully, a headline saying some students are exempt from the increase is true. Read carelessly, it sounds like an exemption you might qualify for. You almost certainly do not.

What does it cost to bring a partner or a child?

Every family member who applies with you pays an additional applicant charge on top of your base charge. The department sets a different amount for adults and for children. On the visa pricing table read on 28 August 2026, an additional applicant aged eighteen or over on an all other students application was shown at roughly AUD 1,530, and a child under eighteen at roughly AUD 500.

We are writing those two as approximate figures on purpose. The department's own pricing table is the only place that states them, and several widely read sites were still publishing the older amounts on the same day, so a second independent official source could not be confirmed. Treat them as the right order of magnitude and confirm the exact amount in the estimator before you transfer money.

There is one more charge that surprises people, and it only bites inside Australia. If you already hold certain temporary visas and you apply for another one while onshore, a subsequent temporary application charge of roughly AUD 700 is added for each applicant. An applicant lodging from Pakistan is outside Australia, so this charge does not apply to a first application from home. It becomes relevant later, if you extend a course or move onto another visa without leaving.

What a family of three actually pays in charges

So a married student with one young child is looking at something close to double the headline figure, before a single medical has been booked. Families rarely budget for that. It is one of the most common reasons an Australian application stalls halfway through.

What do you pay in Pakistan before you can lodge?

The Australian charge is paid in Australian dollars to Home Affairs. Everything below is paid in rupees, in Pakistan, and mostly before you ever open the application. None of these have a single official published price that holds across the country, so treat every figure here as indicative and get a written quote from the provider.

• English test. IELTS, PTE Academic or TOEFL iBT, booked through the test provider in Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad. A large Australian university put the indicative cost of an English test at AU$310 to AU$490 in its 2026 pre arrival estimate, which is a fair guide to what a Pakistani centre charges once converted.
• Immigration medical. Booked against a HAP ID with a departmental panel clinic, not with your family doctor. A chest x-ray is standard for applicants from Pakistan, and extra tests are ordered case by case. Our post on the immigration medical exam for Canada and Australia student visas sets out what happens on the day.
• Police character certificate. Required in many cases, and required for every country you have lived in for the relevant period. Gulf certificates take far longer and cost more than a Pakistani one.
• Passport. A machine readable passport with enough validity left, renewed through the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports if yours is close to expiry.
• Document attestation. IBCC for intermediate results, HEC for degrees, plus certified translations if anything is not in English.
• Biometrics and courier. Collected at the visa application centre, with a service charge and a courier fee that are quoted at the counter.
• Bank arrangements. Statements, a certificate from the branch manager, and in many cases the cost of moving money between accounts to build a clean record.

Add these up honestly. For a single applicant from Lahore the Pakistan side of the process commonly runs into low six figures in rupees before the visa charge is paid at all. That is not a reason to be discouraged. It is a reason to plan the sequence so that you are not paying for a medical in a month when the tuition deposit is also due.

How much money must you show, and does showing it cost anything?

Showing funds is not a fee. You are not handing the money to anybody. But the amount is large, it has to be genuinely available to you, and arranging it has real costs, so it belongs in any honest budget.

As of 28 August 2026 the department asks a single student to show AUD 29,710 of living costs for twelve months, AUD 10,394 for a partner who comes with you and AUD 4,449 for each accompanying child, set out on the Home Affairs subclass 500 page. On top of that you show twelve months of course fees, less anything you have already paid and can prove, plus the cost of travel. School fees are added for any school age child travelling with you.

Work the arithmetic through for a typical case. A master's student with a first year tuition figure of AUD 40,000, travelling alone, is showing living costs of AUD 29,710 plus AUD 40,000 of tuition less any deposit already paid, plus airfare. Even after a deposit is deducted, the evidence sits comfortably above AUD 60,000. That is the number families should be planning around, not the visa charge.

How that evidence is built matters as much as the total. Money that landed in the account last week, from a source nobody can explain, is the classic refusal. Our guide to how much bank statement is needed for an Australia student visa from Pakistan goes through what a case officer is looking at.

What does a realistic first year in Australia add up to?

Here the honest answer is a range, because tuition varies by course and city more than by anything else. One large Australian public university published its own 2026 estimates for international students, and they are a reasonable middle of the market guide: tuition of AU$36,000 to AU$56,000 a year depending on the course and level, living expenses in Melbourne of AU$30,000 to AU$45,000, single Overseas Student Health Cover of AU$590 to AU$750, and a student services and amenities fee of up to AU$373. Those are that institution's indicative figures rather than a national rule, and a regional university or a vocational provider will sit well below the bottom of the tuition band.

Health cover deserves its own line because it is a visa condition, not an optional extra. You must hold Overseas Student Health Cover for the length of your visa, and most students pay for the whole period up front rather than monthly. Prices differ between the licensed insurers for cover that is close to identical, so comparing before you let the university auto enrol you is worth real money. We cover the wider question in our post on whether Pakistani students need health insurance to study abroad.

The full picture, single applicant, first twelve months

Notice the shape of that table. The visa charge is under five per cent of a first year. Families who spend weeks arguing about the visa fee and then sign a tuition contract without reading it have their attention in the wrong place.

What happens to the charge if the visa is refused?

You do not get it back. The department states plainly on its refunds page that it does not usually refund the visa application charge, even if the application is refused or withdrawn. Read that sentence twice before you lodge a weak application to see what happens.

This is the strongest argument for getting the file right the first time. A refusal costs you the charge, the medical, the time, and it also becomes something you must declare on later applications to Australia and elsewhere. It is far cheaper to delay a lodgement by three weeks and fix the funds evidence than to lodge in a hurry and pay twice.

Timing is the other half of that. Charges are set by the lodgement date, and processing is not instant, so a late lodgement risks both a missed intake and a repriced charge if the government adjusts fees again. Our post on how long an Australia student visa takes from Pakistan explains what the current processing directions mean for offshore applicants.

What does the pathway cost after you graduate?

Most Pakistani students in Australia want the post study work stage, so it belongs in the cost conversation from the start. That stage got considerably more expensive this year. As of 28 August 2026 the Temporary Graduate visa charge has risen from AUD 4,600 to AUD 5,750, according to the Study Australia notice on the July 2026 charge changes, and the Home Affairs subclass 485 page shows the same figure.

Put the two together and the government charges alone across a two year master's and a post study work visa come to well over AUD 8,000, before health cover for the graduate period. That is not an argument against Australia. It is an argument for knowing the whole number at the start rather than meeting it in year three. Our guide to the Australia post study work visa subclass 485 covers who qualifies and for how long.

Where do Pakistani families get the arithmetic wrong?

Budgeting the visa charge and forgetting the family

A married applicant who includes a spouse roughly doubles the charge. Nobody tells them until the payment screen.

Assuming the concession applies

The lower charge is for particular passports and particular sectors. Neither reaches a Pakistani degree applicant.

Converting once and never again

Rupee amounts move with the exchange rate. A shift of five rupees to the Australian dollar changes a AUD 2,500 charge by more than twelve thousand rupees, and the rate on the day you pay is the rate that counts. Our post on how Pakistani students pay university tuition fees abroad explains the remittance side.

Treating the funds figure as a fee

You show it. You do not pay it to anybody. But you cannot borrow it for a week and send it back, and applications built that way do not survive scrutiny.

Paying an agent before reading the offer letter

Deposit refund terms after a visa refusal are set by the institution, not by government, and they vary enormously. Read the clause before the transfer, not after.

A worked example with real dates

Take Hamza, a twenty four year old from Johar Town with a BS in computer science, aiming at a two year master's in Melbourne starting in February 2027. Here is how the money leaves the account.

• September 2026. Books and sits IELTS. Pays the test centre in rupees, receives the result in about two weeks.
• October 2026. Applies to three universities, receives a conditional offer from one, gets the degree and transcript attested.
• November 2026. Pays the tuition deposit the university requires before it will issue a Confirmation of Enrolment. He reads the refund clause first, and asks in writing what happens if the visa is refused.
• Late November 2026. Receives the Confirmation of Enrolment, buys twenty four months of Overseas Student Health Cover, and compares two insurers rather than accepting the default.
• Early December 2026. Creates an ImmiAccount, completes the application, generates a HAP ID and books the medical with a panel clinic in Lahore.
• Mid December 2026. Pays the AUD 2,500 base charge on lodgement, gives biometrics at the visa application centre, and uploads the funds evidence the family has been building since the summer.
• January 2027. Responds to a request for more information about the source of his father's business income. Sends tax returns and a letter from the accountant.
• February 2027. Grant. He flies out with the balance of the first year tuition already scheduled for payment through his bank.

Two things in that sequence are deliberate. Hamza paid for health cover before he lodged, because the department wants to see it, and he booked the medical before rather than after the request for more information arrived. Sequencing is what keeps a February intake from becoming a July one.

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