189 Visa Points Calculator
A subclass 189 awards no nomination points, so the whole 65-point pass mark has to come from your own age, English, work and qualifications. That is the highest personal bar of the three skilled visas — and clearing it puts you in the pool, not in the invitation queue.
Migration (LIN 19/210: Pool and Pass Marks for General Skilled Migration Visas) Instrument 2019, s 6 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026
- Free and ungated
- Every value cited to the legislation
- Rules verified 4 Aug 2026
How the score is made up
Skilled employment outside Australia
Less than 3 years
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Part 6D.3Nomination or sponsorship
Subclass 189 — no nomination
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Parts 6D.12 and 6D.13What the subclass 189 changes about your score
The three skilled visas run on one points test. Schedule 6D is identical for all of them until its final two Parts, and that is where they part company: a subclass 190 invitation is worth 5 points under Part 6D.12, a subclass 491 invitation 15 under Part 6D.13, and a subclass 189 nothing at all, because no nomination Part applies to it.
Everything else — age, English, employment, qualifications, partner — scores identically whichever visa you were invited for. The 189 is not a harder test. It is the same test with one fewer place to earn points, and that has two consequences worth holding on to. Your ceiling is 130 rather than the 145 a 491 applicant can reach. And the pass mark has to be met from your own attributes, with nothing added for where you are willing to live.
If the criteria themselves are what you came for, they are set out one at a time on the Australia PR points calculator. This page is about what the 189 does with them.
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Parts 6D.12 and 6D.13 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026
The subclass 189 points table
The most each Part of Schedule 6D can contribute on this visa. Read the nomination row first: it sits at 0, and everything else has to make up the difference.
| Criterion | Maximum points |
|---|---|
| Age at time of invitation | 30 |
| English language ability | 20 |
| Skilled employment outside Australia | 15 |
| Skilled employment in Australia | 20 |
| Educational qualification | 20 |
| Specialist educational qualification | 10 |
| Australian study requirement | 5 |
| Professional year in Australia | 5 |
| Credentialled community language | 5 |
| Study in a designated regional area | 5 |
| Partner skills | 10 |
| Nomination or sponsorship | 0 |
Nothing in that column stacks with anything else in its own row's Part — a doctorate does not add to a bachelor degree. Each criterion is explained in full on the Australian points test page.
Your points are counted on invitation day — not when you apply
Several pages ranking for this term put the 65-point requirement at the wrong moment: you need it, they say, “at the time you apply”. Schedule 6D disagrees in its own opening words. Every Part of it is measured at the time of invitation to apply for the visa, and by application day the score has long since been fixed.
The gap between those two dates is where a 189 hurts, because nothing shortens it. There is no state agency with a reason to move you up the queue. The department’s own guidance puts the wait at up to two years, followed by 60 calendar days to lodge that cannot be extended — and two years is long enough to cross an age band. Whichever band you occupy on invitation day is the one that scores, however old you were when you made the claim.
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Part 6D.1 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026 · Department of Home Affairs — Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189), Points-tested stream (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026
Who the 189 points test will not work for
Competent English is compulsory, and it is worth nothing. Competent English scores no points but is a mandatory criterion — you must have had competent English at the time of invitation. The points table gives it 0 points, and that combination reads — to a great many people — as though it were optional. It is not. Without it there is no invitation to be scored at all, whatever the rest of your claims come to. Points begin above it, at proficient.
The second bar is age, and it is not in the regulations: neither Part 189 nor Part 190 of Schedule 2 contains an age clause. What exists is the department’s published invitation rule. 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. The age table has no band above the last one for the same reason, so there is nothing to make up elsewhere.
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 2, clause 189.223 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026 · Department of Home Affairs — Skilled Independent visa (subclass 189), Points-tested stream (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026
A worked example: a nurse at the employment cap
Take a registered nurse of 38 with five years in her occupation overseas, five more in Australia, an Australian bachelor degree, proficient English, and no partner claim.
| Criterion | Her position | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Age at time of invitation | 33 to under 40 | 25 |
| English language ability | Proficient English | 10 |
| Skilled employment (combined) | 25 points reduced to the maximum | 20 |
| Educational qualification | At least a bachelor degree (Australian, or of a recognised standard) | 15 |
| Specialist educational qualification | No | 0 |
| Australian study requirement | No | 0 |
| Professional year in Australia | No | 0 |
| Credentialled community language | No | 0 |
| Study in a designated regional area | No | 0 |
| Partner skills | Single, or partner is an Australian citizen or permanent resident | 10 |
| Nomination or sponsorship | Subclass 189 — no nomination | 0 |
| Total | Pass mark 65 | 80 |
She lands on 80 — comfortably clear, and 5 points short of what her years alone would suggest. Her ten years of skilled employment are worth 25 added up, but overseas and Australian experience are capped together at 20, and past that point the eleventh year and the twentieth are worth the same as the tenth: nothing. It is the one place in this test where more of a good thing stops counting.
What is still open to her is English. Moving from proficient to superior would add 10 — more than any further year of work can — and the calculator above will model it before she books the test. What superior English takes, test by test, is a question worth settling first.
Migration Regulations 1994, Schedule 6D, Part 6D.5, item 6D51 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026
Is 65 points enough for a 189?
Enough to be considered. Not enough to be invited.
65 is the pool mark and the pass mark at once: clear it and your expression of interest joins the pool, and the department invites from there in rounds. Where a round stops is set by the queue in front of you, occupation by occupation — and on a 189 nothing about that queue is negotiable. No nomination adds to your total. No state decides it wants your skill set this year. You are ranked on what you brought, against everyone else who brought theirs.
There is a second limit on the 189 that has nothing to do with your score: an occupation ceiling caps how many invitations one occupation group can receive in a program year, and once it is reached that group stops being invited however well its candidates score. Where the ceilings and the EOI pool data are published is its own subject — the department has not put a ceiling figure on its website since 2021.
Cutoff figures for particular occupations circulate widely, and most of them have never been checked against a departmental publication. The ones that have are on our invitation rounds page, which carries every round the department has published — including the minimum score invited for each occupation, which is the number this question is really asking about. The calculator above now reads your total against that range rather than against the floor.
Treat 65 as the entry requirement and every point above it as position rather than entitlement — and check your own occupation, because the spread between occupations in a single round is wider than the gap between most people and the pass mark.
65 is also the figure most often reported as about to rise. It has not: the instrument setting it has never been amended, and the reform announced in the 2026–27 Budget names no pass mark at all. What the announcement actually says, and what would have to happen before any new test applied to you, is set out separately.
Migration (LIN 19/210: Pool and Pass Marks for General Skilled Migration Visas) Instrument 2019, s 6 (opens in a new tab) verified 4 Aug 2026