The Subclass 186 visa grants permanent residence to skilled workers nominated by an approved Australian employer. The Direct Entry (DE) stream is the most commonly used pathway and is available where the applicant has not worked for the nominating employer for two years on a 457/482 visa (which would qualify them for the Temporary Residence Transition stream instead).
Phase 1 — Employer obligations and the nomination
Before the applicant can do anything, the employer must act first. There are two things an employer needs to have in place.
The employer must be, or become, an approved Standard Business Sponsor (SBS). If they are already a sponsor under the 482 program, they are generally eligible to nominate for a 186. If not, they must first apply for SBS approval (Form 1024), which takes 4–8 weeks and costs $420 (the SBS approval fee). The employer must demonstrate they are a lawfully operating business, have no adverse information on record, and have a genuine need for the position.
Once approved as an SBS, the employer lodges a nomination (Form 1395 via ImmiAccount). The nomination must demonstrate: that the position is full-time and ongoing; that the occupation appears on the relevant skilled occupation list; that the salary is at or above the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT — currently $73,150 per annum as of mid-2023, indexed); that the employee will be paid at least the Annual Market Salary Rate (AMSR) for the role; and that there is no adverse information about the employer. A Labour Market Testing (LMT) report must also be provided, demonstrating the employer genuinely tried to fill the role with an Australian worker first (unless an exemption applies, such as for an international trade obligation occupation).
Phase 2 — Applicant eligibility and requirements
Now let’s look at what the applicant must satisfy. The Direct Entry stream has more demanding skill requirements than the Transition stream.
The applicant must hold a relevant skills assessment from the appropriate assessing body for their nominated occupation (e.g. TRA for tradespeople, ACS for ICT workers, Engineers Australia for engineers, VETASSESS for many professional occupations). The assessment must find the applicant’s skills suitable for the nominated ANZSCO occupation. For some occupations — those assessed by ANZSCO skill level 1 or 2 — a skills assessment may not always be required, but this must be verified occupation by occupation.
The applicant must also have at least three years of relevant full-time work experience in the nominated occupation (or a related field) in the past five years. This is one of the key differences from the Transition stream. The work must be at the appropriate ANZSCO skill level.
Additionally, the applicant must be under 45 years of age at the time of application (with limited exemptions for certain high-income earners and specific occupations). Health and character requirements apply — the applicant must undergo an immigration medical examination through a panel physician, obtain police clearance certificates from every country they have lived in for 12 months or more in the last 10 years, and must not have any substantial criminal history.
Now here is the timeline and difficulty breakdown across each phase.—
Phase 3 — Government fees breakdown
The government fees are fixed by regulation. They do not include agent fees, translation costs, or assessment body fees — those are on top. Note that these fees are indexed and should always be verified at the time of lodgement on the Home Affairs website
Phase 4 — Agency fees: what to charge, who pays, and how
This is where migration agents often get confused — or where clients push back. Here is a clear framework.
Who should pay the agent?
In Australia, it is legally and ethically permissible to charge either the employer or the applicant, or both on a split basis. However, there is an important ethical and regulatory consideration under the Migration (Migration Agents Code of Conduct) Regulations 2021: the agent must have a written service agreement with each party they represent. If you act for both the employer (nomination) and the applicant (visa), you must have separate agreements with each, and there must be no conflict of interest between them.
In practice, the most common and cleanest arrangement for a 186 is to charge the employer for the nomination component (since the nomination is their legal obligation and the SAF levy and nomination fee are already employer costs) and to charge the applicant for the visa application component. This creates a clean separation of services and avoids the appearance that one party’s interests are being cross-subsidised.
What should the agency charge?
The 186 Direct Entry is one of the most complex visa applications in the Australian migration system. It involves two separate lodgements, detailed legal eligibility analysis, significant document preparation, potential skills assessment coordination, LMT report review, and often multi-member family applications. It is not a simple visa to do well, and it should not be priced cheaply.
Phase 5 — Document checklist
Here is the full document checklist split by party. This is the most common area where applications stall — incomplete or inconsistent documents are the primary cause of delays and s.56 further information requests.
Overall difficulty assessment
The Subclass 186 Direct Entry stream is genuinely one of the harder permanent residence visas in the Australian system. Here is a plain-language summary of why.
The nomination and visa are two separate lodgements processed on two separate timelines, and the visa cannot be processed until the nomination is finalised. This means the end-to-end timeline is additive — it is not uncommon for the total wait from engagement to grant to exceed 12–18 months. The Direct Entry stream requires the applicant to prove three years of highly relevant work experience, which is a higher bar than the Transition stream. Skills assessments are often the critical path item — some bodies (such as TRA for trades) require the assessment to be current and can take several months to obtain. Labour Market Testing must be completed and documented correctly, and if it is deficient, the nomination will be refused. The age cap of 45 is a hard cutoff in most cases, meaning urgency is real for applicants approaching that age.
For your practice at Edvise Hub, the 186 Direct Entry is a premium service that warrants premium professional fees. It is appropriate to price this service at the market standard range of $6,000–$9,000 for a primary applicant, split between employer and applicant parties on a clear written engagement basis, with separate service agreements for each. The complexity, the dual-lodgement structure, and the permanent outcomes it delivers fully justify this fee positioning.
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Important: All fees quoted (government charges) are as at mid-2025 and are subject to annual indexation by the Department of Home Affairs on 1 July each year. Always verify current fees at homeaffairs.gov.au before quoting a client.
