Australia Tourist Visas: eVisitor, ETA and Subclass 600 Explained

Planning a holiday Down Under, visiting family, or scoping out Australia before committing to a working holiday? You don't need the famous WHV — you need a tourist visa. The slightly confusing part is that "Australian tourist visa" is actually three different things, and you don't get to pick: your passport decides which one you need. The great news is that for most travellers it's cheap or free and approved within days, sometimes minutes.

The three options in one table

	eVisitor (651)	ETA (601)	Visitor visa (600)
Who	European passports (EU, UK and others)	USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and other listed passports	Everyone else, or longer stays
Cost	Free	Small app service fee (about AUD $20)	From roughly AUD $200
Stay	Up to 3 months per visit	Up to 3 months per visit	3, 6 or 12 months as granted
Validity	12 months, multiple entries	12 months, multiple entries	Single or multiple entry
Apply via	Online (ImmiAccount)	Australian ETA app	Online (ImmiAccount)

Eligible-country lists shift occasionally, so confirm your nationality's option on the Department of Home Affairs website before booking anything expensive.

eVisitor (subclass 651): the free one

If you hold a UK or EU passport, this is almost certainly yours. It's free, applied for online, and usually granted fast — often within a day. You get 12 months of visits, up to three months at a time. That means you can do three months on the east coast, pop over to New Zealand or Bali, and come back for another three months on the same eVisitor.

ETA (subclass 601): the app one

For American, Canadian, Japanese, South Korean, Singaporean and a handful of other passports, the route is the ETA, applied for through the official Australian ETA app — you scan your passport chip with your phone, pay a small service fee, and approval typically lands quickly. Same shape as the eVisitor: three months per visit across a 12-month validity.

Visitor visa (subclass 600): the catch-all

Everyone whose passport isn't on the eVisitor or ETA lists applies for the subclass 600 — and so do travellers who want a longer single stay, because the 600 can be granted for up to 12 months. It costs real money (budget a couple of hundred dollars, more for longer streams), takes longer to process, and may require evidence of funds, ties to home and travel plans. Apply well ahead of your flight.

The rules that actually matter at the border

• No paid work. None. All three tourist visas are visitor-only. Getting caught working can mean cancellation, removal and a ban that torpedoes any future WHV or migration plans. If you want to earn, get a working holiday visa.
• Short study only — generally up to three months. Longer courses need a student visa.
• Onward ticket and funds. Airlines and border officers can ask how you'll support yourself and when you're leaving. You won't always be asked; you should always have an answer.
• Declare everything. Australia's biosecurity rules are legendarily strict — food, wooden items, dirty hiking boots. Declaring is free; not declaring can cost you thousands.
• Watch your dates. Overstaying even briefly creates a record that haunts future applications. Set a phone reminder for your "leave by" date.

A tourist visa is a one-way promise: you're telling Australia you're a visitor. Keep that promise and the country will happily let you back in — on this visa or a bigger one.

Sorting arrival logistics

The visa is the hard part; the rest of your arrival admin is easy. Australian border processing is heavily automated — eVisitor and ETA holders with chipped passports usually breeze through SmartGates. One genuinely useful pre-flight move: sort your phone data before you board, so you land with maps, transport apps and bookings working from the tarmac. An eSIM takes five minutes to set up from home and spares you hunting for a SIM kiosk at Sydney Airport with 4% battery. Airalo Australia eSIM

Thinking bigger than a holiday?

Plenty of people use a tourist visa as a recon mission — a few weeks along the east coast to decide whether the working holiday leap is worth it. (Spoiler: it usually is.) If you're under 31 — or up to 35 for several nationalities — the working holiday visa is the natural next step, and it's the one that lets you fund the trip with actual jobs.

Two things you can't do, though: you can't work your way along the coast on a tourist visa "just casually", and you shouldn't arrive on a tourist visa intending to switch — border officers can and do refuse entry to people whose real plans don't match their visa. Visit as a visitor, go home, apply properly. Australia rewards people who play it straight.