This article is general information about Australian Partner Visa fees. It is not migration advice. For advice on your circumstances, consult a registered migration agent (search MARA).
The cost of an Australian Partner Visa went up on 1 July 2026. The main government fee — the Visa Application Charge (VAC), paid to the Department of Home Affairs when you lodge — rose from AUD $9,365 to AUD $11,710 for most applicants. That's an increase of about 25%.
Here are the new figures, who they apply to, and the one rule that decides which fee you pay: the date you lodge.
What changed on 1 July 2026
The government updated its visa fees on 1 July 2026. For the onshore Partner Visa (subclass 820/801) — the visa most readers of this site are researching — the new charges are:
- Most applicants: AUD $11,710, up from $9,365.
- Eligible passport holders from 13 Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste: a new lower rate of AUD $9,600.
- Each additional applicant aged 18 or over: AUD $5,860.
- Each additional applicant under 18: AUD $2,935.
The additional-applicant charges apply to each extra person included on the application — for example, a dependent child included on a parent's application.
One fee covers both the 820 and the 801
The onshore Partner Visa is one combined application for both the temporary subclass 820 and the permanent subclass 801, and you pay one Visa Application Charge for both stages. When you submit your stage 2 documents for the 801 — roughly two years after you first apply — there is no second fee.
So $11,710 is the government fee for the whole 820/801 journey, paid once when you lodge.
Offshore and Prospective Marriage visas
The offshore Partner Visa (subclass 309/100) and the Prospective Marriage Visa (subclass 300) also moved to an $11,710 base fee, with the same additional-applicant charges.
VisaBinder supports both the onshore 820/801 and offshore 309/100 Partner Visa pathways — the Prospective Marriage (subclass 300) figures are here purely for reference.
The fee depends on when you lodge
The new fees apply to applications lodged on or after 1 July 2026. The charge is locked in on the day you lodge, so an application lodged on or before 30 June 2026 keeps the old $9,365 fee — even though it will be decided well after the change.
Home Affairs publishes the current fees on the official subclass 820 page and in its Visa Pricing Estimator. Both are worth checking directly — fees are typically reviewed each year on 1 July.
The fee generally isn't refunded if you're refused
Home Affairs is clear that the Visa Application Charge is generally not refunded if an application is refused. For applications lodged from 1 July 2026, that's $11,710 on the line for most applicants.
An invalid application is a different track: it's returned without being assessed, and the charge is generally refunded. The real cost there is the lost time — and, for some applicants, a lodgement window that may have closed in the meantime. We've covered the most common invalidity trap for onshore applicants in our guide to the no-substantive-visa statutory declaration requirement.
Preparing the application yourself after the fee rise
The Visa Application Charge goes to Home Affairs however you lodge — it's the same whether a registered migration agent prepares your application or you prepare it yourself, and an agent's professional fees are a separate cost on top of it. What you fully control on the self-prepared path is the documentation: the evidence you gather across the four Home Affairs categories, how it's organised, and whether every file meets ImmiAccount's format and 5 MB size limits.
If that's the path you're taking, start with our subclass 820 evidence checklist — it walks through all four categories, what counts in each, and what's overkill — and our Form 888 guide for the witness statements that support your social evidence.
VisaBinder turns the evidence you've gathered into upload-ready PDFs — category PDFs, each under 5 MB, formatted the way ImmiAccount expects. It's a $99 one-time purchase — less than 1% of the fee most applicants now pay the government — and it's a document-compilation tool only: it doesn't review applications or give advice. For advice on your circumstances, including how the fee rules apply to you, talk to a registered migration agent.