Australia visitor visa from India

The visa application charge for the subclass 600 Tourist stream applied from outside Australia is AUD 250, about ₹17,100, which is the rate in force from 1 July 2026. It is charged per person, including children, so a family of four is paying four times that and it is worth doing the arithmetic before anyone books leave. It is not refunded if the visa is refused. Home Affairs indexes the charge annually, so the figure moves and a number quoted on a travel blog from two years ago will be low. Additional costs can arise where the case officer asks for a health examination or biometrics, which is a request rather than a standard step and cannot be predicted at the outset. Our service charge is ₹14,500. Budget for the charge, our fee and the possibility of a medical rather than the first of the three alone.

Indian passport holders cannot apply for an Australian Electronic Travel Authority. Neither the ETA, subclass 601, nor the eVisitor, subclass 651, is open to an Indian passport, and no amount of searching will turn up a route into either. Indian nationals must apply for the full Visitor visa, subclass 600, which is lodged online through an ImmiAccount, costs AUD 250 and is decided by a case officer over weeks rather than issued automatically in minutes. The difference is not a formality. One is an authorisation granted by a system, the other is a decision made by a person who can ask for more documents, refuse, or grant a shorter stay than you asked for. A great deal of general travel advice about visiting Australia describes the ETA, because it is what most Western passport holders use, and none of it applies to you. Read anything you find with that in mind.

Weeks rather than days, and Home Affairs does not publish a fixed service standard you could hold it to. It publishes a processing time guide instead, built from applications recently decided, and it says explicitly that the guide is indicative and not specific to your application. So the number you find there is a description of other people's files, not a promise about yours, and it moves as the mix of applications changes. Plan on lodging at least four to six weeks before you travel, and more than that if you are going during the Australian summer or over an Indian holiday period when volumes rise. Do not pay for non-refundable flights until the visa is granted, because a case officer request for a health examination or further documents can add weeks that nothing in the published guide would have warned you about.

Three, six or twelve months, and the case officer decides which when they grant the visa rather than you choosing it at the application stage. First-time applicants are commonly granted three or six months, and a longer period tends to follow a history of travelling and returning rather than a request for it. The stay period and the conditions attached to it are stated on the grant notice, which arrives by email and is worth reading properly rather than filing unread. That matters more here than on other routes because there is nothing in your passport to check later: no sticker, no stamp, nothing to glance at when you are trying to remember what you were given. If you cannot find the notice, the details are visible through VEVO using your passport number, and it is worth confirming them before you travel rather than after.

An Australian subclass 600 visitor visa does not permit work. Condition 8101 is attached to subclass 600 visitor visas and prohibits work entirely. It covers employment, freelancing, and any activity that amounts to work someone would otherwise be paid for, rather than only taking a job with an Australian company, so the arrangement that feels informal is still caught. Helping out at a relative's business for a few weeks is the example that comes up most often, and it is work whether or not money changes hands in the ordinary way. Breaching the condition can result in your visa being cancelled while you are in the country and can affect your ability to return afterwards, which is a serious outcome for something that started as a favour. Study is separately limited to three months under condition 8201, so a short course is fine and a semester is not.

It is not always mandatory, but the Department can impose condition 8501 on your visa, which requires you to hold adequate health insurance for your entire stay. Whether it is imposed is a decision made on your file rather than a rule you can check in advance, so the sensible position is to arrange cover either way. There is a stronger reason than the condition. Australia has no reciprocal health agreement with India, which means a visitor pays the full cost of any medical treatment, and Australian hospital costs are not comparable to Indian ones. An ordinary accident on a two-week holiday can produce a bill larger than the trip. Overseas Visitors Health Cover is worth arranging before you travel whether or not the condition appears on your particular grant, and for older travellers it is the single most important thing in the file.