Australia's Partner Visa for Indians: Sponsoring a Spouse or De Facto Partner Through the 820/801 and 309/100 Two-Stage Maze

A product manager in Melbourne, an Australian permanent resident on a subclass 190 visa, sent me a one-line message that I have now received in some form dozens of times. He wanted to bring his wife over from Hyderabad and had heard the partner visa "costs about ten grand and takes forever." He was hoping I would tell him the number was exaggerated. It is not. The Australian partner visa is one of the most expensive family visas in the world, the headline charge sits at 9,365 AUD in 2026, and the path from lodging the application to holding permanent residence routinely runs three to five years. The good news, which most people miss in the sticker shock, is that the 9,365 AUD is paid once and covers both stages, and that an onshore applicant can usually work the entire time they are waiting.

The 30-second answer: An Australian citizen, permanent resident, or eligible New Zealand citizen can sponsor a married or de facto partner for a partner visa. The structure is two stages on a single application: onshore you apply for the subclass 820 (temporary) then 801 (permanent), offshore you apply for the 309 (temporary) then 100 (permanent). The Department charge is 9,365 AUD for the main applicant in 2026, paid once to cover both stages. De facto couples must show 12 months of cohabitation before lodging unless the relationship is registered or a waiver applies; married couples are exempt. Temporary-stage processing runs roughly 16 to 24 months; permanent residence typically lands 2 or more years after lodgement. Onshore applicants get a bridging visa with full work rights while they wait; offshore applicants do not.

This guide is for the Indian who is already in Australia, or already an Australian citizen or PR, and wants to bring a husband, wife, or de facto partner across. It is not for someone still planning their own move. If your own status is not yet settled, read the Australia skilled visa guide for Indians and the moving to Australia for work guide first, because you cannot sponsor a partner until you hold an eligible visa yourself. What follows is the part that actually decides outcomes and real money: the two-stage structure and why it exists, the onshore-versus-offshore choice, the prospective marriage visa for couples who are engaged but not yet married, exactly what the 9,365 AUD buys, the four pillars of relationship evidence, the sponsorship limits and obligations you are signing up to, the de facto 12-month rule, work rights while you wait, and the family violence provisions that matter if the relationship breaks down.

The two-stage structure, and why one application has two visas

The single most confusing thing about the Australian partner visa is that one application gives you two visa subclasses, applied for and granted at different times. This is deliberate. Australia does not hand permanent residence to a partner on day one. It grants a temporary visa first, makes you live the relationship for roughly two years under that temporary status, and only then assesses you for the permanent visa. The logic is fraud control: a relationship that survives two years of real life and real scrutiny is far more likely to be genuine than one assessed at a single point in time.

Which two subclasses you get depends entirely on where the applicant is physically located when the application is lodged.

• Onshore (applicant is in Australia): you lodge a combined application for the subclass 820 (temporary partner visa) and the subclass 801 (permanent partner visa). The 820 is assessed and granted first. About two years after the original lodgement date, the Department assesses the 801, and if the relationship is still genuine and continuing, permanent residence is granted.
• Offshore (applicant is outside Australia): you lodge a combined application for the subclass 309 (provisional partner visa) and the subclass 100 (permanent partner visa). The 309 is granted first and lets the partner enter and live in Australia. The 100 is assessed roughly two years after lodgement.

The 820/801 and the 309/100 are functionally the same journey, temporary then permanent, just split by whether the applicant was inside or outside Australia at lodgement. The fee is the same, the evidence is the same, and the two-year wait to the permanent stage is the same. You choose your pathway based on where the applicant can realistically be when you lodge, and on whether they need to work in Australia while waiting.

There is one important shortcut. If, at the time the permanent stage is assessed, the relationship has been long-term, generally three years, or two years where there is a dependent child, the Department can grant the temporary and permanent visas close together and collapse the usual two-year gap. Most couples do not qualify for this at lodgement, but couples who have been together for years before applying sometimes do, and it is worth flagging in your application if it applies to you.

Onshore or offshore: the choice that decides work rights

For an Indian couple, the onshore-versus-offshore decision usually comes down to one practical question: does the partner need to work in Australia while the application is processed?

If you apply onshore for the subclass 820, the applicant must be in Australia on a valid visa when they lodge. On lodgement they are typically granted a Bridging Visa A, which keeps them lawfully in the country while the 820 is decided, and that bridging visa generally carries full, unrestricted work rights. This is the single biggest advantage of the onshore route. Your partner can work, full time, in any job, from the day the application is lodged, through the entire 16-to-24-month wait for the 820, and onward. For a couple already living together in Australia, this is usually the deciding factor.

If you apply offshore for the subclass 309, the applicant is outside Australia at lodgement. There is no bridging visa and no work right attached to the offshore application. The partner waits in India, or visits Australia on a separate visitor visa that carries no work permission, and can only work once the 309 is granted and they enter the country. The offshore route suits couples where the Indian partner is still in India, has a job or family to wind up there, and is not in a hurry to start working in Australia.

A common mistake: lodging onshore when the partner is on a visa with a condition 8503 ("no further stay"). That condition blocks an onshore partner application unless it is waived, and the waiver is not automatic. Check the partner's current visa conditions before assuming onshore is open to you. The other thing to remember is that the 820 generally requires the applicant to be in Australia both when the application is lodged and when it is decided, while the 309 generally requires them to be outside Australia at the time of grant. You cannot freely switch between the two once you have lodged, so choose deliberately.

The prospective marriage visa, subclass 300, for couples not yet married

The partner visa, in both its onshore and offshore forms, assumes you are already married or already in an established de facto relationship. If you are engaged but not yet married, and crucially not yet living together for the 12 months a de facto application would require, the relevant visa is the subclass 300 prospective marriage visa, sometimes called the fiance visa.

The subclass 300 lets your prospective spouse come to Australia and marry you within nine months of the visa being granted. It is offshore: the applicant must be outside Australia when they apply and when the visa is granted. Once granted, they enter Australia, the couple marries within the nine-month window, and the applicant then lodges an onshore subclass 820/801 partner visa from inside Australia to move toward permanent residence. So the 300 is not a destination, it is a bridge to the partner visa for couples who want to marry in Australia rather than in India first.

The cost is where this gets uncomfortable. The subclass 300 has its own visa application charge, separate from the partner visa, and reported figures across migration practices in 2026 cluster around 8,000 to 9,365 AUD for the main applicant, with the official immi.homeaffairs.gov.au figure being the one to rely on. The honest read is that the 300 is the most expensive way to do this, because after paying the 300 charge you then pay the full 9,365 AUD partner visa charge again when you lodge the 820/801 after marrying. Two large charges, not one.

For an Indian couple, the realistic question is whether you can simply marry in India first. A registered Indian marriage with a proper marriage certificate lets you skip the 300 entirely and go straight to a partner visa, paying the charge once. The 300 makes sense mainly where there is a genuine reason the marriage must happen in Australia, or where the couple cannot satisfy the de facto 12-month rule and cannot marry quickly in India. If you can marry in India and then apply for a partner visa, you usually should, on cost alone.

What the 9,365 AUD actually buys, and the rest of the bill

The headline Department of Home Affairs visa application charge for a partner visa is 9,365 AUD for the main applicant in 2026. The most important thing to understand about this number is that you pay it once and it covers the entire two-stage process, both the temporary 820 (or 309) and the permanent 801 (or 100). You do not pay a second large charge when the permanent stage comes up two years later. People budget for "two visas" and panic; it is one charge for both.

That said, 9,365 AUD is not the whole bill. The realistic all-in cost for an Indian couple includes:

• The main applicant charge: 9,365 AUD in 2026. Confirm the current figure on immi.homeaffairs.gov.au before paying, because it is indexed and moves.
• Additional applicant charges if dependent children are included in the application, charged at a lower rate per person.
• A card payment surcharge of around 1.4 per cent on most credit and debit card payments to the Department, which on a 9,365 AUD charge is roughly 130 AUD on its own.
• Health examinations, typically 400 to 700 AUD per adult, done through a panel physician in India for offshore applicants or a Bupa clinic in Australia for onshore applicants.
• Indian police clearance certificates, plus Australian and any other-country police checks where the applicant has lived abroad.
• Certified English translations of Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, or other regional-language documents such as the marriage certificate, birth certificates, and any relationship evidence.
• Migration agent fees if you engage a registered agent, which commonly run 3,000 to 8,000 AUD on top of everything above, though many straightforward Indian married-couple cases are done without an agent.

So a couple budgeting honestly should plan for 10,000 to 12,000 AUD without an agent, and meaningfully more with one. This is why I tell people the partner visa is one of the world's most expensive: the charge alone dwarfs the equivalent in the UK, Canada, or most of Europe.

The four pillars of relationship evidence

Australia assesses a partner relationship across four standard categories, and your application is essentially an exercise in proving each one. Officers are trained to look for these four pillars, and a thin file in any one of them is where applications stumble. The four are:

1. Financial aspects. Evidence that you share finances or support each other financially. Joint bank accounts and statements showing shared spending, shared liabilities such as a lease or a loan, joint ownership of assets, evidence of pooling income, money transfers between you. For an Indian couple, remittances and shared expenses documented over time carry weight.
2. The nature of the household. Evidence that you live together and share domestic life. A joint lease or mortgage, utility bills in both names, mail addressed to both of you at the same address, a statement of how you divide household chores and responsibilities.
3. Social aspects. Evidence that you are recognised as a couple by others. Joint invitations, photographs together over time and across different events, evidence of joint travel, declarations from friends and family, membership of social or sporting bodies as a couple, social media that genuinely reflects the relationship.
4. The nature of the commitment. Evidence that the relationship is genuine, exclusive, and long-term. The history of how you met and the relationship developed, knowledge of each other's circumstances, plans for the future, periods of separation and how you stayed in contact, and the terms of your will or superannuation nomination if you have named each other.

A practical point that catches Indian couples out: arranged marriages are fully accepted by the Department, but they require careful evidence because the relationship may be short at lodgement and the couple may not have lived together long. If you married through an arrangement and applied soon after, expect to lean heavily on the financial, household, and commitment pillars, and document the development of the relationship from engagement onward. Two formal Form 888 statutory declarations from people who know the relationship, ideally Australian citizens or PRs, support the social pillar and are worth obtaining.

Sponsorship: who can sponsor, the limits, and the obligations

The sponsor must be an Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident, or an eligible New Zealand citizen, and generally at least 18 years old. That is the floor. As an Indian who came to Australia on a skilled or employer visa, you become eligible to sponsor a partner once you hold permanent residence or citizenship; a temporary visa holder generally cannot sponsor a partner visa.

Two limits matter and surprise people:

• You can generally sponsor a partner only twice in your lifetime, and there must be at least five years between sponsorship applications. So if you sponsored a previous partner, you may be barred from sponsoring a new one until five years have passed, and you can only ever do it twice. This rule exists to stop serial sponsorship.
• If you yourself were sponsored as a partner to get your own permanent residence, you generally cannot sponsor a new partner until five years after you were granted your visa. So someone who came to Australia on a partner visa and later wants to sponsor a different partner faces a five-year wait from their own grant.

The Department can waive these limits in compelling circumstances, such as where the previous partner has died or where there are children of the new relationship, but do not assume a waiver. If either limit applies to you, build it into your timing.

On obligations, the sponsor signs an undertaking to provide adequate accommodation and financial support to the partner for the duration of the temporary stage, and to support their settlement. Australia does not impose the same long, two-decade financial liability that, say, Canada attaches to parent sponsorship, but the support undertaking is real and the sponsor's conduct is scrutinised. Critically, sponsors are now subject to character and police checks, and a sponsor with a relevant criminal history, particularly family violence or sexual offence convictions, can be refused approval to sponsor at all. The Department also discloses certain sponsor criminal history to the visa applicant where relevant, so the applicant knows who they are committing to.

A worked example: the fee and the timeline from temporary to permanent

Take Priya, an Australian PR since 2023 on a subclass 190 visa, sponsoring her husband Arjun, whom she married in Pune in January 2026. They decide Arjun should move to Melbourne and start working as soon as possible, so they choose the onshore 820/801 route and lodge in March 2026 while Arjun is in Australia on a visitor visa with no condition 8503.

Here is how the money and the clock play out:

• March 2026, lodgement. They pay the Department charge of 9,365 AUD for Arjun as the main applicant. With the 1.4 per cent card surcharge that is about 9,496 AUD on the card. There are no dependent children, so no additional applicant charge.
• Other costs at lodgement. Health examination through a Bupa clinic in Melbourne at about 490 AUD, an Indian police clearance Arjun obtained before travelling at roughly the rupee equivalent of 70 AUD, and 120 AUD for certified English translations of their Hindi marriage certificate and Arjun's birth certificate. They do not use an agent. All-in cost: roughly 10,200 AUD.
• March 2026 onward, work rights. On lodgement Arjun is granted a Bridging Visa A with full work rights. He starts a job in May 2026 and works continuously from then on. This is the practical payoff of going onshore.
• Mid 2027, the subclass 820 is granted. Roughly 16 months after lodgement, in line with the 2026 processing pattern where about half of 820 applications are decided within 16 months and 90 per cent within 24 months. Arjun now holds the temporary partner visa.
• March 2028 onward, the subclass 801 is assessed. Two years after the original lodgement date, the Department invites further evidence that the relationship is still genuine and continuing. Priya and Arjun submit updated joint bank statements, a joint lease, photographs across two years, and updated Form 888 declarations.
• Late 2028 to 2029, permanent residence. The 801 is granted, giving Arjun permanent residence. No second large charge is payable for the 801, because the original 9,365 AUD covered it.

End to end, Priya and Arjun spent about 10,200 AUD and roughly two and a half to three years from lodgement to permanent residence, with Arjun working the entire time from May 2026. That is the realistic shape of an onshore married-couple case in 2026.

Now contrast the de facto evidence question. Suppose Priya and Arjun were not married but had lived together in Melbourne since early 2024. They would apply as de facto partners, and the marriage certificate that did so much heavy lifting above would not exist. To satisfy the de facto requirement they would need to prove 12 months of cohabitation before lodging, and their file would lean far harder on the household and financial pillars: a joint lease running back to 2024, joint utility bills, a joint bank account with shared spending, and Form 888 declarations confirming they lived as a couple. A married couple proves the relationship partly through the certificate; a de facto couple proves it almost entirely through the four pillars and the 12-month history. That is the core practical difference between the two evidence paths.

Edge cases

The general rules above cover most Indian couples. These are the exceptions that change the answer.

The de facto 12-month rule, and the two ways around it

If you are not married, you apply as de facto partners, and the default is that you must have been in a genuine de facto relationship for at least 12 months immediately before lodging. The 12 months means living together in a committed relationship, not merely being in a relationship while living apart. There are two main ways to avoid the 12-month wait. First, register your relationship with an Australian state or territory relationships register, available in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, the ACT, Tasmania, and South Australia. A registered relationship generally waives the 12-month requirement entirely. Second, the Department can waive the requirement for compelling and compassionate circumstances, for example where there is a child of the relationship. For couples who can marry, marriage sidesteps the 12-month rule completely, which is one concrete reason some Indian couples choose to marry before applying rather than spend a year documenting cohabitation.

Subclass 300, when marriage has not happened yet

If you are engaged but cannot satisfy the de facto 12-month rule and want to marry in Australia, the subclass 300 prospective marriage visa is the route, as covered above. The catch worth repeating in the edge cases: it is offshore only, the marriage must happen within nine months of grant, and you then pay the full partner visa charge again when you lodge the 820/801 after marrying. It is the most expensive path and is justified mainly where marrying in India first is genuinely not an option.

Sponsorship limits that can block you outright

As covered above, you can generally sponsor a partner only twice in a lifetime, with five years between sponsorships, and if you were yourself sponsored as a partner you generally wait five years from your own grant before sponsoring someone new. These are easy to overlook and can stop an application before it starts. If you have a sponsorship history, confirm you are eligible to sponsor before paying anything.

Relationship breakdown and the family violence provisions

This is the edge case that matters most, and the one people are least comfortable discussing. What happens if the relationship ends after you have lodged but before permanent residence is granted? The default is grim: the partner visa is built around an ongoing relationship, so if the relationship genuinely ends, the temporary visa can be refused or cancelled and the permanent stage falls away.

There is a critical exception. The family violence provisions allow an applicant to still be granted the permanent partner visa even after the relationship has ended, where the relationship was genuine and the applicant or a member of their family experienced family violence committed by the sponsor. This exists so that a sponsored partner is not trapped in an abusive relationship purely to secure their visa. The applicant must provide evidence of the family violence, which can be judicially determined evidence such as a court order, or non-judicial evidence assessed against the regulations. If you are an Indian partner in this situation, this provision can mean the difference between keeping permanent residence and losing your status entirely, and it is worth getting proper legal advice rather than walking away. Sponsors, separately, can be refused approval where they have a relevant family violence conviction, as noted above.

The closing read

The honest read on the Australian partner visa is that the cost is brutal and the structure is slow, but the design is fair and the work rights are generous. You pay 9,365 AUD once, not twice, and it carries you through both the temporary and permanent stages, so the "two visas" framing that frightens people is misleading. If your partner is already in Australia and you go onshore through the 820/801, they can work from the day you lodge, which over a two-to-three-year wait is worth far more than the headline fee. If your partner is still in India and in no rush to work in Australia, the offshore 309/100 is the cleaner path.

For most Indian couples, the cheapest and simplest route is to marry in India first and then lodge a partner visa, which avoids both the de facto 12-month evidence grind and the double charge of the subclass 300. Marry, gather your four pillars of evidence from day one, budget 10,000 to 12,000 AUD all-in without an agent, and expect three to five years to permanent residence. If you have lived together for years already, flag the long-term relationship provision and you may compress that timeline. And if the relationship turns abusive, do not assume you have lost your visa: the family violence provisions exist precisely so you do not have to choose between your safety and your status. Plan for the cost, document relentlessly, and the partner visa is one of the most reliable family routes Australia offers.

Related guides

• Australia's skilled migration routes for Indians
• Moving to Australia for work: the financial guide
• Returning to India with a foreign spouse: the visa
• Spouse and dependant visa options compared
• Canada spousal and family sponsorship for Indians
• Naturalisation timelines compared across countries
• Relocating with family and pets
• Dual-career couples and relocation
• The India-Australia DTAA, in depth
• Australia NRI: CGT on your Indian investments
• Australia NRI: property CGT when departing
• Cost of moving back to India
• NRI residency and RNOR rules
• Sending money to India

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This guide is general information for Indians navigating Australia's partner visa system, not legal or migration advice. Visa subclasses, application charges, sponsorship limits, and processing times change, and the Department of Home Affairs charge of 9,365 AUD quoted here is indexed and updated periodically. Always confirm current requirements, charges, and processing times on immi.homeaffairs.gov.au before lodging, and seek advice from a registered migration agent or immigration lawyer for your specific circumstances, especially where sponsorship limits, condition 8503, or family violence provisions are in play.