Australia's Electronic Travel Authority (subclass 601) is applied for inside the official Australian ETA app on a phone. The app reads the chip in your passport, takes your photo and sends the application to the Department of Home Affairs. There is no paper form and no visa label: the authorisation is stored against your passport number. A service charge applies, in the region of AUD 20. Decisions are usually fast, often inside a day, though some applications are referred for further checks and take longer.
One thing is worth settling first. Many European passport holders never use the ETA at all, because Australia gives them eVisitor (subclass 651) instead: the same visiting pattern, applied for on the web, with nothing to pay. The steps below cover the ETA, and the section after them explains which of the two your passport falls under. If you want the answer for your own passport and route straight away, our visa requirements checker returns it.
How to apply, step by step
Allow twenty minutes and have the passport physically in your hand. The chip scan is the step that fails most often, and it needs the document itself.
- Install the official Australian ETA app. It is published by the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, and the ETA is lodged in the app itself, with no web form involved. Read the publisher line in the app store before you install, because lookalike apps and lookalike websites both exist.
- Enter your passport details exactly as printed. Given names in the order shown on the bio page, hyphens and apostrophes included, passport number character by character. The authorisation is stored against that number, so a transposed digit produces an approval that does not match the document you travel on.
- Scan the passport chip. The app asks you to hold the phone against the passport so it can read the chip. Take the case off the phone, then move it slowly across the cover; holding it still in one place is what usually fails. Chip position varies by issuing country, so the sweep matters more than the pressure.
- Take the photo in the app. The app takes the photo live; a picture you already have cannot be uploaded. Plain background, even light on the face, no hat, no sunglasses. Glasses come off if there is any glare on the lenses.
- Answer the declarations honestly. The app asks about criminal convictions, earlier visa refusals or cancellations, and health matters. A declared history gets assessed on its facts. An undeclared one that surfaces later is treated as a false statement, and that follows a passport for years.
- Pay the service charge. Card payment, inside the app, currently in the region of AUD 20. It pays for processing, so it stands whether the answer is yes or no.
- Wait for the decision and then read it. Many come back within minutes or hours. Some are referred and take days. When the grant notice arrives, check the names, passport number and dates against the passport before you file it away, while a correction is still cheap.
Every traveler needs their own ETA, whatever their age; infants and children cannot travel on a parent's authorisation. Filing for a family means running the app once per person, each with its own charge.
Who can use the ETA, and who should use eVisitor instead
Eligibility is a property of the passport, not of where the traveler lives. Australia opens the ETA to a specific set of passports, and that set does not match the lists other countries use for their own schemes, so it is worth checking instead of assuming from a neighbouring nationality.
The distinction that catches most people is eVisitor. Australia runs a second, near-identical authorisation, subclass 651, for holders of eligible European passports. It covers the same kind of visit, it is applied for online through the Department's own system with no app involved, and Australia charges nothing for it. If you hold a European passport and someone has pointed you at the ETA app, check before you pay, because that service charge may be money you have no reason to spend.
The two schemes do not overlap. A passport sits on one list or the other, and lodging under the wrong one costs a fee and gains nothing. Both lists move over time as arrangements change, which is why the live answer beats a list copied into an article. Ours is in the requirements checker, resolved per passport and per route.
The ETA against Australia's other visitor routes
| Route | Who it is for | How you apply | Charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| ETA (subclass 601) | Holders of the passports Australia opens the ETA to | Official Australian ETA app | Service charge, around AUD 20 |
| eVisitor (subclass 651) | Holders of eligible European passports | Online, through the Department's system | Nothing |
| Visitor visa (subclass 600) | Everyone else, and visits the electronic routes do not cover | Online application with supporting documents | A visa application charge, higher than the ETA's |
The Visitor visa (subclass 600) is the general route. It exists for passports that neither electronic scheme covers, and for visits that fall outside the shape of an ETA, including stays longer than three months. It is a fuller application: more questions, supporting documents, a higher charge, and a decision measured in weeks rather than hours. If your trip fits what the ETA allows, it is much the shorter path; if it does not, starting an ETA first only delays the application you actually need.
What none of the visitor routes carries is a right to work. An ETA covers tourism, visiting family and friends, and business visitor activities such as meetings, conferences and negotiations. Paid work in Australia sits under an entirely different visa, and doing it on an ETA puts both the authorisation and any future application at risk. Study is limited to short courses.
The mistakes that cost people time
- Confusing the validity with the stay. An ETA typically runs for 12 months from grant, or until the passport expires if that comes first, and it allows as many entries as you like inside that window. Each individual visit is capped at three months. The 12 months describes how long you may keep arriving; the three months describes how long you may stay once you have.
- Renewing the passport after the grant. The authorisation lives against a passport number, so a new passport means a new application. The old ETA does not transfer, and turning up on the new document with the old authorisation is a conversation at the check-in desk that ends badly.
- Small differences between the authorisation and the ticket. A middle name printed on the booking but missing from the passport, or a compound surname split across two fields, is enough to trigger a manual check. Our guide on handling name mismatches on tickets, passports and e-visas covers which mismatches airlines will correct and how to avoid the rest.
- Leaving it until the day before. Most decisions are quick, but a referred application sits in a queue nobody can hurry, and no amount of paying extra changes that. Apply as soon as the trip is real.
- Paying an operator that does not say what it charges. Search results carry paid listings, some charging several times the government amount without breaking out the difference, and a few imitate the Department's branding closely. Whoever you use, look for the government charge and the service charge shown separately before you enter passport details.
- Reading the grant as a guarantee of entry. An ETA is permission to board a flight and to be assessed on arrival. Border officers can still ask about the purpose of the visit, funds and onward travel. Australia's biosecurity rules are the other half of that arrival: food, plant and animal products go on the declaration, and undeclared items attract fines.
- Assuming the ETA can be extended. It cannot. A stay beyond three months needs a different visa, applied for before the current stay runs out, and an overstay is recorded against future applications, in Australia and elsewhere.
Before you fly
Australian border systems read the ETA from your passport, so there is nothing to print for the border itself. Airlines are the reason to keep a copy anyway: check-in staff occasionally ask to see the grant notice, and having it open on the phone turns that into ten seconds. Save the notice so it opens without a signal, and keep the reference number somewhere separate from the notice itself.
Then run the checks that apply to any electronic authorisation. Dates against the trip, names against the passport, copies in more than one place. Our guide on what to do immediately after receiving an electronic visa sets them out in order of what actually stops a traveler at the airport.
Have two things ready before you land: an address in Australia for the first night, and the incoming passenger card, which asks what you are carrying as well as where you are staying.
The process itself is short. The step that decides how the rest of it goes is the first one: confirming whether your passport takes the ETA, eVisitor or a Visitor visa before you spend anything.