Regional check · free, no sign-up
Regional Postcode Checker
Type a 4-digit postcode to check whether it’s a designated regional area — the test behind the subclass 491 and 494, and the 5-point regional study bonus. Everything outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane counts; this shows you which category, and what it actually gets you.
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.
Regional or not, the language points are the same five.
A 491 is a five-year commitment to a place. A CCL pass is one test, worth five points anywhere in Australia — worth knowing where you stand before you plan a move.
Free, no account needed. We sell NAATI CCL Punjabi preparation — the practice above is free either way.
Why a postcode decides this at all
Most of the points test asks about you — your age, your English, your experience. The regional test asks about an address instead. That is deliberate: the 491 and 494 exist to spread skilled migration outside the three biggest cities, so the rule has to be geographic rather than personal, and a postcode is the simplest unambiguous way to draw that line. It also means the test is unusually binary — there is no partial credit for living near a regional postcode, only for living in one.
The practical effect is that two addresses a few kilometres apart can land on opposite sides of the rule, because the boundary was drawn along local government or postal-district lines, not along a straight-line distance from a city centre. That is worth knowing before you sign a lease or accept a job on the assumption that “it’s basically regional”.
What a regional postcode is actually worth
A designated regional area is the address test behind the subclass 491 (Skilled Work Regional) and 494 (Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional) visas, and behind the 5-point regional study bonus in the points test if you also meet the Australian study requirement. A 491 nomination or eligible regional family sponsorship is separately worth 15 points in its own right — see which states actually nominate for it. None of these figures move with where you live; the postcode test only decides whether you are eligible to claim them.
Category 2 and Category 3, in practice
Category 2 covers cities and major regional centres large enough that the government still wants to encourage migration there but treats them as a step below Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane: Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle/Lake Macquarie, Wollongong/Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart. Category 3 is everything else regional — from large provincial cities to the most remote parts of the country. For the 491, 494 and the regional study points, both categories qualify equally; more about the settings that do distinguish between them is in the full regional postcodes guide.
What this tool will not tell you
Whether a particular state will actually nominate you for a 491 in that postcode — regional status is necessary, not sufficient, and nomination criteria are a separate question entirely. Whether an employer-sponsored 494 role qualifies. Whether a postcode has changed status since this was last checked. And it will not tell you anything about visa processing times, a skills assessment, or your points total — those are separate questions for separate tools, and ultimately for a registered migration agent.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a designated regional area for the 491, 494 and regional study points?+
Everything in Australia outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane's metropolitan postcodes. Home Affairs then splits that regional area into Category 2 (cities and major regional centres — Perth, Adelaide, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Newcastle/Lake Macquarie, Wollongong/Illawarra, Geelong and Hobart) and Category 3 (everywhere else regional). Both categories count equally for the 491, 494 and the regional study points — the category split matters for a handful of other settings, not for whether an area is regional at all.
Is this the same list Home Affairs uses?+
Yes. It's transcribed postcode-for-postcode from the legislative instrument the Department's own webpage is built from (Migration (Designated regional areas for certain skilled and temporary graduate visas) Instrument (LIN 22/022) 2022), checked on 15 September 2026. The Department's summary page could not be fetched directly from this tool's network, so the instrument itself — the primary legal source — was used instead.
Does living in a Category 3 area count for less than Category 2?+
Not for the 491, 494 visa or the regional study points — both categories are equally 'designated regional area' for those purposes. The category distinction matters mainly for a small number of other settings (concessions on certain skilled occupation requirements), which this tool does not attempt to cover.
My postcode isn't in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane but this tool says it's excluded. Why?+
A few postcode numbers sit in the gap between what's assigned to a real town and what's assigned to those three cities without being one of their well-known suburbs — outer-growth-area postcodes on Sydney and Melbourne's fringes are the most common case. The classification here follows the legislative instrument exactly: if a postcode isn't listed under Category 2 or Category 3, it is not a designated regional area, regardless of how far it feels from a CBD.
Does this change every year like the points table?+
Less often, but it does change — the instrument above replaced an earlier one from 2020, and Home Affairs updates it when ABS postcode boundaries move or policy changes. It has not needed to change every 1 July the way fees and the points table do, but always check the date on this page against the instrument's own page before relying on a boundary postcode.
I live just outside a regional postcode. Can I still claim regional points?+
No — the boundary is the postcode of your actual address, not your general area or your nearest regional town. If your home or work address's postcode isn't in the regional tables, it doesn't qualify, even if you're a five-minute drive from one that does.
Related tools
State Nomination Finder
Eight states and territories, two visa streams, and the requirements each one actually publishes.
Australia PR Points Calculator
Every factor in the skilled migration points test, scored live against the 65-point pool mark.
Read the detail
- State Nomination Points: How 190 and 491 Actually Work
State nomination is worth more points than almost anything else in the table — but most states now invite rather than accept applications, and a 491 carries a five-year regional commitment. Here is how each jurisdiction currently runs it.
- The Australian Study Requirement, Regional Study and the Professional Year
Three small items in the points table reward time spent studying or training in Australia — but regional study points need the study requirement first, and a professional year is a real decision, not a formality.
- The Australia PR Points Table, Factor by Factor
Every factor in the skilled migration points test, with the exact tier values and the item number each one comes from in Schedule 6D — so you can check every figure against the regulations yourself.
Every tool on this site is free and ungated — see all of them.