Post Study Work Visa Australia: Subclass 485 for Indian Graduates

The post study work visa Australia grants after a degree is the Temporary Graduate visa, subclass 485, and almost everything about it is settled before you land. The level of your qualification decides which stream you can apply for and how many years you get. The postcode of the campus you sit in decides whether extra regional years are available to you at all. The CRICOS registered length of your course, set against whatever credit your provider hands you at admission, decides whether you qualify in the first place.

None of that is influenced by the job you find afterwards, by your employer, or by how well you do in Australia. By the time most students start reading about the 485 they have already made every decision that matters. What follows is the three streams as they are named today, the durations Indian graduates specifically get, the study requirement that quietly disqualifies people who did nothing wrong, the regional years and what they cost you in freedom, and an honest answer to whether certain courses lead to permanent residency and others do not.

What is the Subclass 485 visa, and which stream will you be in?

The 485 is a temporary visa that lets a graduate live, work and study in Australia after finishing a qualification here. You must be in Australia to apply for it, you must hold or have recently held a Student visa, and you find your own employment. There is no sponsor and no job offer involved.

Three streams are open to new primary applicants. All three were renamed on 1 July 2024, which is why so much of what you will read online uses vocabulary that no longer exists.

A fourth stream, the Replacement stream, closed to new primary applicants on 1 July 2024, though a visa already granted stays valid to its expiry date.

Two rules catch people out. Home Affairs states plainly that it is not possible to change streams after you apply, so a wrong choice is not something an email fixes. And the qualification you use to meet the study requirement is what sets your stream. Home Affairs will not look at your other qualifications to move you into a better one, so a student who only ever held a diploma is in the vocational stream whatever else is on their CV.

How long does the Subclass 485 last for an Indian graduate?

This is the one section where being Indian genuinely helps you, and very few pages say so. Under the Australia India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, Indian nationals get longer stay periods on the Post-Higher Education Work stream than the global default. Home Affairs publishes both sets side by side on its own stream page.

The line worth reading twice is the coursework masters. A taught masters is what the overwhelming majority of Indian students in Australia actually enrol in, and the global default gives that graduate two years while an Indian passport gives the same graduate three. A PhD is four rather than three. This is not a discretionary favour, it is the published stay period, and it is one of the few places where the paperwork of your nationality is worth a full extra year of your life.

The Graduate Diploma default is 2 years, and it may be longer where previous study would have attracted a longer period. The Post-Vocational Education Work stream is a flat 18 months regardless of nationality, with no trade agreement uplift. And the 485 cannot be extended. When it ends, it ends, and the only continuation is the second regional visa described further down.

What decides whether you get a 485 at all?

Before any of the durations matter you have to clear the Temporary Graduate visa study requirement, and this is where people who did nothing wrong lose the visa. It has two limbs, and they are measured differently.

• 92 weeks of CRICOS registered study. Two academic years means 92 weeks as registered on CRICOS, not as experienced by you. If your course is registered for 78 weeks and you take 92 weeks to finish it, you are credited with 78. Only successfully completed study counts and failed subjects are excluded.
• 16 calendar months physically in Australia. This runs from when the course commences, generally the start of lectures and not orientation, to the date you completed all academic requirements. It cannot be shortened by anything.

The problem is credit transfer, and it is set at admission by the person selling you the course. Home Affairs gives its own worked example. A course registered for 138 weeks with 24 equally weighted units reaches two academic years at 16 units, so up to 8 units of credit still leaves you eligible. Take more credit than that, or take credit that compresses your actual time on campus below 16 calendar months, and the 485 is gone. Home Affairs even lists the repairs, which tells you how real the problem is. You can ask the university to cancel the credits and sit those subjects, complete extra elective units counted towards the award, or add another qualification of enough CRICOS length to bring the total back to 92 weeks.

So when an admissions team offers to shorten your masters in Australia from two years to one and a half on the strength of your Indian bachelor degree, that is not purely a saving. It is a trade against your post study work rights. Ask for the CRICOS registered duration in weeks and the exact unit count being credited before you accept.

Three more conditions sit on the same requirement. English language courses and enabling programs cannot be used towards it. Study done solely at an offshore campus of an Australian institution does not count, and nor does online study completed while you were outside Australia. And your completion letter has to state the location of the campus where you studied, which is the department telling you that the campus, not the institution, is the unit it cares about.

Finally, the clock. You must apply within 6 months of your course completion date, and Home Affairs defines that as the date you were first advised in writing that you had met the academic requirements, whether by letter, email, the internet or a noticeboard. It says explicitly that this should not be confused with the date of conferral, which is the graduation ceremony. Students who wait for the ceremony photograph can spend half their window on an event with no legal relevance.

How much can a regional campus add to your 485?

Home Affairs classes most of Australia outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane as a designated regional area, and studying in one buys a second 485 through the Second Post-Higher Education Work stream. Those three cities are the only ones excluded outright.

• Category 2, cities and major regional centres. Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, Wollongong and Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart.
• Category 3, regional centres and other regional areas. Everything else. The whole Northern Territory including Darwin is Category 3, as are Norfolk Island and the other territories. The whole of the ACT is Category 2.

The extra years depend on both where you studied and where you then lived, and Home Affairs publishes the grid.

Tasmania is the standout. Any Tasmanian combination of Category 2 and Category 3 earns the full two extra years, so Hobart behaves like a Category 3 location while Perth, Adelaide and Canberra do not. Move between categories during the first 485 and you are assessed at the shorter visa, unless both places were in Tasmania.

Two details decide more cases than the grid does. The first is that this is campus based, not university based. Home Affairs requires that the campus you studied at was in a designated regional area, and its regional incentives page repeats that the qualification must come from a regional campus of a registered institution. A regional university teaching you at its Sydney city campus does not qualify you, and a metropolitan university teaching you at a genuine regional campus does. Check the postcode on your own offer letter against the department’s list rather than the university’s marketing, and see our guide to universities in Australia for how the campuses fall.

The second is the price of those years. You must have lived only in a designated regional area for at least two years immediately before applying, any work or study in that period must also have been regional, and the second visa carries condition 8610, which requires you to live, work and study only in a designated regional area throughout. Two extra years in Australia are therefore two extra years outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. That is a fair trade for many people and a bad one for anyone whose industry sits in those three cities. You are also barred from the second visa if you were the primary holder of a Post-Vocational Education Work stream visa or an earlier Second Post-Higher Education Work visa.

Is there a PR course list in Australia?

No. There is no official list of courses that lead to permanent residency, there never has been, and any page publishing one is selling you something. What Australia publishes is lists of occupations, and the distance between those two things is where most of the disappointment in this market comes from.

Start with the fact that matters most for a degree student. The Post-Higher Education Work stream requires an eligible degree regardless of your field of study. Home Affairs uses that phrase itself. There is no occupation to nominate, no skills assessment to pass and no list to appear on, so a search for the course that unlocks the post study work visa is looking for a lock that is not there.

The only 485 stream that touches an occupation list is the vocational one. If you hold an associate degree, diploma or trade qualification you must nominate an occupation on the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List, hold a qualification closely related to it, and be assessed as suitable by the relevant assessing authority. Three constraints ride along. You cannot change your nominated occupation after lodgement, skills assessments are valid for a maximum of three years, and Home Affairs warns that assessing authorities may require a higher level of study than the visa itself does. Clearing the visa rule does not mean clearing the assessor.

Then there is the reason a course chosen for a list rarely works out. As at 23 July 2026 the combined skilled occupation list carries 713 entries across four separate lists that do not overlap cleanly. The vocational 485 stream and the skilled visas draw from the MLTSSL on the 2013 version of ANZSCO, while the Skills in Demand subclass 482 and the employer nomination subclass 186 draw from the Core Skills Occupation List on the 2022 version. The same occupation can sit on one and not the other, and carry a different code on each.

Each list is a legislative instrument rather than a webpage. The one governing the vocational 485 stream is LIN 19/051, made in March 2019, renamed in December 2024, and carrying a scheduled repeal date of 1 April 2029 on the Federal Register of Legislation. A student starting a two year course today will graduate against a list with a legislated expiry. Australia does protect applications already lodged, stating that a pending nomination or visa application is not adversely affected by an occupation being removed later, but that protection begins when you lodge, not when you enrol.

So the honest chain, drawn once. Your course gets you a qualification. Your qualification gets you a 485, on level and length and campus, and for degree holders on nothing else. Your 485 buys you time. What you do with that time, meaning the occupation you work in, the skills assessment you pass and the points you score, is what a permanent visa is decided on years later, against rules that will have moved. The course is a necessary step and it is not the deciding one. For the assessment side, our guide to getting an Indian qualification recognised in Australia covers VETASSESS, Engineers Australia and ACS, and health graduates should read the nursing and allied health page, where registration is a separate hurdle again.

What are the age and English bars, and what happens if you miss them?

You must be 35 years of age or under on the day you apply. This applies to all three streams and replaced a bar of 50 on 1 July 2024, which is the single biggest reason older graduates find advice from 2023 misleading.

The exceptions are narrow and worth planning around. On the Post-Higher Education Work stream you can be under 50 if you use a Masters by research or a Doctoral degree to meet the study requirement, or if you hold a Hong Kong or British National Overseas passport. The second regional visa applies the same research degree exception if that degree supported your first 485. The Post-Vocational Education Work stream has no research degree exception at all, only the Hong Kong and BNO route. A 37 year old choosing between a coursework masters and a research masters is therefore choosing between no 485 and a 485.

English is a separate bar, and the numbers changed for tests taken on or after 7 August 2025. Your test must have been taken in the 12 months immediately before the day you apply.

Two things follow from that table. C1 Advanced was dropped entirely for newer sittings, so a Cambridge certificate that would have worked in July 2025 does not work now. And PTE and TOEFL were both loosened slightly, which is unusual and worth knowing if you narrowly missed. Citizens holding a valid passport of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand or the Republic of Ireland do not need a test. The full picture across every Australian visa sits on our PTE and IELTS scores for Australia page.

If you age out or your English does not come up, the 485 is simply not available and there is no discretionary appeal to it. Two things are still worth knowing. You cannot be granted a first 485 as a primary applicant twice, so people who held one as a secondary applicant on a spouse’s visa can still apply in their own right later. And Indian graduates of Indian institutions have a separate route with a much lower age bar, the ballot based MATES stream described on our MATES visa page, which is worth checking before you assume Australia is closed.

What does the 485 cost, and what conditions come with it?

The charges below are the current published figures from the Home Affairs pricing table as at 23 July 2026. Australia reprices visas every 1 July, so date any figure you carry away from here.

A graduate applying with a spouse pays AUD 8,625 for the first 485, which is a number that surprises couples who budgeted for one visa. The 485 is at least exempt from the Subsequent Temporary Application Charge that otherwise applies when you apply for another temporary visa from inside Australia. A concessional rate exists for citizens of thirteen Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste, and India is not among them. Health checks, police certificates and biometrics are extra. For the full picture of what a year in Australia costs, see our cost of studying and living in Australia guide.

On conditions, Home Affairs lists exactly one against the two main streams, which is 8501, maintain adequate health insurance. Two consequences follow. There is no work hour cap on a 485, which is a real change from the 48 hours a fortnight your Subclass 500 student visa allowed. And your health cover obligation does not end with your degree. OSHC bought for a student visa lapses with it, so budget for two to three more years of cover from the day the 485 is granted. The second regional visa carries condition 8610 instead, the regional residence obligation described above.

One administrative detail costs people weeks. The police check must be a complete disclosure National Police Certificate from the Australian Federal Police, marked for Immigration or Citizenship purposes as an Australia name check. Standard disclosure certificates and state or territory police certificates are not accepted, and neither is anything from another organisation.

Sources

• Department of Home Affairs, Temporary Graduate visa Subclass 485 (three open streams, age 35 or under, must hold or have recently held a Student visa, streams cannot be changed after applying)
• Home Affairs, Post-Higher Education Work stream (2 to 3 years, default and AI-ECTA stay periods for Indian nationals, eligible degree regardless of field of study, English score tables, age exceptions, cannot be extended)
• Home Affairs, Post-Vocational Education Work stream (18 months, MLTSSL nomination, skills assessment, occupation cannot be changed after lodgement, assessments valid up to 3 years)
• Home Affairs, Second Post-Higher Education Work stream (1 to 2 years, the residence and study category grid, campus must be in a designated regional area, 2 years of regional residence, exclusions)
• Home Affairs, changes to the Temporary Graduate visa program from 1 July 2024 (stream renaming, age reduced to 35, select degree extension ceased, Replacement stream ceased)
• Home Affairs, meeting the Temporary Graduate visa study requirement (92 weeks of CRICOS registered study, 16 calendar months in Australia, the 138 week and 24 unit credit example, remedies where credit breaks eligibility, completion date versus conferral, campus location on the completion letter)
• Home Affairs, designated regional areas (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane excluded, Category 2 city list, one additional year from a Category 2 regional campus and two from Category 3)
• Home Affairs, designated regional area postcodes (state by state postcode ranges, the whole Northern Territory in Category 3, the whole ACT in Category 2)
• Home Affairs, current visa pricing (Post-Higher Education Work and Post-Vocational Education Work AUD 5,750, Second Post-Higher Education Work AUD 2,265, additional applicant charges of AUD 2,875 and AUD 1,450, Pacific and Timor-Leste concession)
• Home Affairs, skilled occupation list (four coexisting lists, MLTSSL on ANZSCO 2013 for the 485, CSOL on ANZSCO 2022 for subclasses 482 and 186, pending applications not affected by later removals, assessing authorities may require higher study)
• Home Affairs, working in Australia legislative instruments (LIN 19/051 for the 485 Post-Vocational Education Work stream, LIN 24/089 for subclass 482, LIN 24/093 for subclass 186)
• Federal Register of Legislation, LIN 19/051 Specification of Occupations and Relevant Assessing Authorities (made 5 March 2019, in force, renamed 14 December 2024, scheduled repeal 1 April 2029 under section 50 of the Legislation Act 2003)
• Home Affairs, see your visa conditions (condition 8501 on the Post-Higher Education Work and Post-Vocational Education Work streams, condition 8610 on the Second Post-Higher Education Work stream)
• Home Affairs, Student visa Subclass 500 (work up to 48 hours a fortnight when the course is in session, for contrast with the 485)

Related reading. Start with our guide to studying in Australia, pick the campus that decides your regional years in universities in Australia, size the course length question with masters degrees in Australia, build the file that gets you there with the Subclass 500 student visa guide, and budget the whole thing with the cost of studying in Australia.