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Regional Postcode Checker
Enter a four-digit postcode to find out whether it is a designated regional area — the address test sitting behind the subclass 491 and 494 and behind the 5-point regional study bonus. Anything outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane qualifies; this tells you which category it falls in and what that is actually worth.
Use the postcode of the actual address — home or work — not the nearest town or a postal district you don’t live in.
Postcode tables verified against the underlying legislative instrument on 15 September 2026. See the note above this tool for exactly how, and check the primary source before relying on a boundary postcode.
Why a postcode decides this at all
Nearly every other part of the points test asks about you: your age, your English, your work. This one asks about an address. That is on purpose. The 491 and 494 exist to push skilled migration out beyond the three largest cities, so the rule has to be drawn on a map rather than on a person, and a postcode is the least ambiguous way to draw it. The side effect is an unusually blunt test — living near a regional postcode counts for nothing at all.
Which is why two addresses a short drive apart can end up on opposite sides of the line. The boundaries follow local government and postal districts, not distance from a city centre. Worth knowing before you sign a lease or accept a job on the assumption that the area is “basically regional”.
What a regional postcode is actually worth
Designated regional area status is the address test behind the subclass 491 (Skilled Work Regional) and the 494 (Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional), and behind the 5-point regional study bonus if you also satisfy the Australian study requirement. A 491 nomination, or an eligible regional family sponsorship, is worth a further 15 points on its own — see which states actually nominate for it. None of those values change with your address; the postcode test only settles whether you may claim them.
Category 2 and Category 3, in practice
Category 2 gathers up the cities and major centres that the government still wants to grow but ranks a step below Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane: Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, Wollongong and the Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart. Category 3 takes in everything else, from sizeable provincial cities to the most remote corners of the country. For the 491, the 494 and the regional study points, both count the same. If you are weighing a regional move as part of a points strategy, how the 491 sits against the 189 and 190 is the wider picture.
What this tool will not tell you
Whether a state will in fact nominate you for a 491 in that postcode — regional status is a requirement, not a result, and nomination criteria are a whole separate question. Whether an employer-sponsored 494 position qualifies. Whether a postcode has been reclassified since this page was last checked. It says nothing about processing times, skills assessments or your points total either — different questions, different tools, and in the end a registered migration agent.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a designated regional area for the 491, 494 and regional study points?+
Australia minus the metropolitan postcodes of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Within what is left, Home Affairs draws a second line: Category 2 covers the larger cities and regional centres — Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle and Lake Macquarie, Wollongong and the Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart — and Category 3 covers everywhere else. For the 491, the 494 and the regional study points the two categories are treated identically; the split matters only for a few other settings.
Is this the same list Home Affairs uses?+
It is. The postcodes here were taken line by line from the legislative instrument the Department's own page is generated from (Migration (Designated regional areas for certain skilled and temporary graduate visas) Instrument (LIN 22/022) 2022) and checked on 15 September 2026. That summary page would not load for the network this research ran on, so the instrument itself — the primary legal source behind it — was used in its place.
Does living in a Category 3 area count for less than Category 2?+
Not for the 491, the 494 or the regional study points: both categories are equally a designated regional area for all three. Where the distinction does bite is a small number of other settings, chiefly concessions attached to certain skilled occupation requirements, and this tool makes no attempt to cover those.
My postcode isn't in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane but this tool says it's excluded. Why?+
Some postcode numbers sit in the space between a recognisable town and the outer edge of one of those three cities — the growth corridors on Sydney's and Melbourne's fringes are the usual culprits. The classification here follows the instrument to the letter: a postcode that appears in neither the Category 2 nor the Category 3 tables is not a designated regional area, however far from a CBD it feels.
Does this change every year like the points table?+
Not as often, but it does move. The current instrument replaced an earlier one made in 2020, and the Department revises it when postcode boundaries shift or policy changes. It has not needed rewriting each 1 July the way fees and the points table do, though if your postcode sits near a boundary it is always worth comparing the date on this page against the instrument's own.
I live just outside a regional postcode. Can I still claim regional points?+
No. The test runs on the postcode of your actual address, not on the district you consider yourself part of or on the nearest regional town. If the postcode attached to your home or workplace is absent from the regional tables, it does not qualify — a few minutes' drive from one that does makes no difference.
Related tools
State Nomination Finder
Eight programs, two visa streams, side by side — with what could and could not be confirmed.
Australia PR Points Calculator
Age, English, experience, qualifications, nomination — added up live and checked against the pool minimum.
Read the detail
- NAATI CCL Points for the 189, 190 and 491 Visas: Where the 5 Points Actually Sit
The same 5 points behave differently depending on whether you are chasing a 189, a 190 or a 491. Here is where they sit in the points table, and the honest limits of what they buy you.
- NAATI CCL Tamil by City: Why 'Regional' Doesn't Mean What You Think
Composite by-city journeys — plus the detail most guides skip: all of South Australia counts as regional, so does the Gold Coast, and Griffith's Tamil community is smaller than you'd assume. How that changes five candidates' prep and pathway.
- NAATI CCL Tamil for International Students: 5 Points You Don't Need Fast Reading to Earn
International students often assume the CCL will expose weak Tamil reading. It won't — the test is spoken, and every answer here is transliterated too. What's left is a clean 5 PR points you can bank years before you apply for PR.
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