Australia PR Points Calculator

How the points test works

Points are counted at the time you are invited to apply — not when you lodge your expression of interest, and not when you apply for the visa. That single detail decides more borderline cases than any other, because an EOI can sit in the pool while a birthday quietly moves you into a lower age band.

Within each Part of the points test you are given points for one item only. Where more than one applies, you get the highest, so a doctorate and a bachelor degree do not stack. The subclasses 189, 190 and 491 all run on this same test; what differs between them is the nomination points at the end and the eligibility rules around them.

You claim points in an expression of interest, and the department invites from the pool. Claims are checked against evidence at application, so a score you cannot document is not a score.

Points are given for only one item in each Part; where more than one applies, the item attracting the highest number of points is given. Migration Regulations 1994, regulation 2.26AC(4) (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026

Age points

Age is the largest single block of points in the test, and the band you are in on invitation day is the band that counts. The scale is not linear: it peaks in your late twenties and early thirties, then steps down twice.

At 45 or over the calculation stops mattering. You must be aged under 45 when you are invited to apply. Turning 45 after an invitation is issued does not affect your application, but if you turn 45 before being invited, no invitation will be issued. There is no age band above 44 in the points table, so there is no way to make the difference up elsewhere.

English language points

English is the criterion most people can still move, and the one where the calculators we checked are most often out of date.

Competent English earns nothing, which misleads people into treating it as optional. It is not: competent English scores no points but is a mandatory criterion — you must have had competent English at the time of invitation. Proficient and superior English are the scoring bands above it.

Your test must have been taken within the three years before your invitation. A passport from Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom or the United States establishes competent English without a test — but only competent, so it carries no points on its own.

Skilled employment points

Employment points are counted separately for work outside Australia and work in Australia, then capped together. If the two together would exceed 20 points, you are given 20 for the combination and nothing under either Part on its own — so eight years offshore plus eight years onshore is worth the same as the cap, not the sum.

Only work in your nominated skilled occupation, or one closely related to it, counts, and only within the ten years before invitation. “Employed” means paid work of at least 20 hours a week. Australian experience additionally requires that you held a substantive visa, or a Bridging A or Bridging B visa, and complied with its conditions. The department treats an occupation as closely related where it sits in the same ANZSCO Unit Group, follows a career-advancement pathway, or is recognised as related by your assessing authority.

Where overseas and Australian employment together exceed 20 points, exactly 20 points are given for the combination and no points are given under either Part separately. Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Part 6D.5, item 6D51 (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026

Education, specialist qualifications and Australian study

Your highest qualification is the one that scores, and only one qualification row applies. Qualifications from outside Australia have to be of a recognised standard, which in practice means your assessing authority recognised it as suitable for your nominated occupation.

Two separate criteria sit alongside the main qualification, and they can both apply on top of it. A specialist educational qualification is an Australian masters by research or doctorate with at least two academic years of study in a specified science, technology, engineering, mathematics or ICT field — worth 10 points, not the 5 that several competitor tables still list. The Australian study requirement is a different thing again: one or more Australian degrees, diplomas or trade qualifications from registered courses, completed over at least 16 calendar months and amounting to at least two academic years, taught in English, studied while you held a visa allowing it. The 16-month floor is what catches people who finished a two-year program quickly.

Partner points — and the 10 points for single applicants

If you have no spouse or de facto partner, or your partner is already an Australian citizen or permanent resident, you are given 10 points. Applicants routinely miss this because it reads like a penalty box rather than a scoring item.

Where your partner is applying with you, their English requirement is competent — not proficient. Several ranking calculators state the higher bar and cost people points they were entitled to claim. The full 10 points also need your partner to have been under 45 at the time of your invitation, to have nominated a skilled occupation, and to hold a suitable skills assessment for it that was not obtained for a subclass 485 visa. Competent English alone, with nothing else, is worth 5.

One caveat the department states and almost nobody repeats: this item is not assessed as at the time of invitation, and if your marital status changes while the application is being processed the points may not be awarded.

State nomination and regional points

Nomination points depend entirely on which visa you were invited for. A State or Territory nomination for a subclass 190 visa is worth 5 points. Regional nomination — or sponsorship by an eligible relative — for a subclass 491 visa is worth 15. These are different Parts of the points test, and confusing them is a recurring error in the ranking calculators — one of the tools we checked awards the regional figure to the 190, and another folds nomination points into the partner row entirely. We score each subclass on its own page: the 189 visa points calculator works without nomination points, and the 190 visa points calculator carries the state nomination in the total from the first answer.

Three smaller criteria each add 5 points and are worth checking off deliberately. A professional year in Australia counts if it ran at least twelve months and finished within the four years before invitation. A credentialled community language means a NAATI credential at the specified standard. Study in a designated regional area requires that you met the Australian study requirement, lived and studied in the region, and did none of it by distance.

Is the Australian points test changing in 2026?

Not yet, and nothing has commenced. The points test in force today began on 16 November 2019, and Schedule 6D of the Migration Regulations 1994 has not been amended since — that is the amendment history in compilation No. 288 of the regulations, dated 1 July 2026, not our reading of it. The pass mark instrument is likewise unamended.

There is a genuine review under way. The government released a discussion paper on 24 April 2024, took submissions until 24 May 2024 and received 204 of them. No replacement instrument has been made, no draft is registered, and no commencement date has been set.

That gap is being filled with confident dates. Pages currently ranking for this question announce a new test “from July 2026”, others from 1 July 2027 with a 70-point minimum. Those are projections presented as law. If a new instrument commences, this page changes the day it does, with the citation attached.

Migration Regulations 1994 — current compilation (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026 · Home Affairs — Review of the points test (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026

The English score most calculators still get wrong

On 7 August 2025 the instrument specifying English test scores was replaced, and the old one was repealed outright. Most calculators have not noticed.

Under the repealed instrument, PTE Academic was a flat 50 for competent English, 65 for proficient and 79 for superior — the same number across all four components. The current instrument sets each component separately, and the writing and speaking thresholds are markedly higher than the old flat figures. IELTS was left alone at 6, 7 and 8.

The practical cost is real. Someone booking a PTE sitting against a target of 65 across the board, expecting proficient English, is aiming at a threshold that no longer exists. The current numbers are in the English table above, and they come from the instrument itself.

Migration (Specification of Language Tests, Test Scores and Passports) Instrument 2025 (LIN 25/016), Schedule 2 (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026

A worked example: scoring a 32-year-old engineer

Take a mechanical engineer who turns 33 four months from now, has six years of overseas experience and none in Australia, an overseas bachelor degree assessed as suitable by Engineers Australia, proficient English, and a partner who is not applying and is not Australian.

She lands on 65 — exactly the pass mark, not comfortably past it. That is the whole lesson of this example: a well-qualified engineer with six years of experience and good English clears the threshold by nothing at all, and only while she is still 32. If the invitation comes after her birthday she drops to 60 and is below the pass mark entirely.

Two moves are worth the same to her: sitting the PTE again for superior English, and a partner skills assessment if her partner joins the application and qualifies — each adds 10. Model both in the calculator above before committing to either, because on these numbers the difference between them is timing and cost, not points.

What score do you actually need?

65 points gets you into the pool. It does not get you invited.

Invitations are issued in rounds, and how far above the pass mark a round reaches depends on how many people with your occupation are waiting. In competitive occupations the effective cutoff has sat well above the pass mark for years; in others it has not. Anyone quoting you a single national number for “the score you need” is describing an average that applies to nobody in particular.

We publish round-by-round invitation data on a separate page rather than guess at it here, and this calculator will show your score against those cutoffs once it does. Until then, treat 65 as the floor, and treat every extra point as buying you position rather than entitlement.

Migration (LIN 19/210: Pool and Pass Marks for General Skilled Migration Visas) Instrument 2019, s 6 (opens in a new tab) verified 27 Jul 2026

How we verify these rules

Every number on this page comes from the legislation, not from other calculators.

The points values are read from Schedule 6D of the Migration Regulations 1994, checked against the compilation currently in force on the Federal Register of Legislation. The pass mark comes from its own ministerial instrument. English test scores come from the instrument that specifies them, and the NAATI credential standard from the instrument that specifies that. Each criterion in the tables above carries a link to its source and the date we last checked it.

We re-check every source monthly and whenever migration policy moves, and when a rule changes the data is updated first, then the wording, then the page date. If you find something wrong here, tell us and we will correct it in public with a dated note — the same standard we hold competitors to when we point out that theirs is stale. Our editorial and verification policy sets out who checks and how, and about this site explains why it exists.

Frequently asked questions