Is the Australian citizenship test free?

The short answer

Yes. Sitting the Australian citizenship test does not cost you anything on top of your citizenship application. There is no separate test fee, no booking fee, and no charge to sit it again if you do not pass the first time.

What you do pay is the citizenship application fee, which you pay once when you lodge the application. The test is part of that process rather than a product sold next to it.

What is free, and what is not

Free: sitting the test. Re-sitting the test. The study booklet. Practising here.

Not free: lodging the citizenship application itself.

The study material is genuinely free and it comes from the government, not from us. Our Common Bond is the booklet the Australian Government publishes for the citizenship test, it is free to download, and it is published in 40 community languages. Every question and answer on this site comes from it.

For the current application fee, read the Department of Home Affairs website. We do not print the figure here because it changes, and a stale number on a page like this one would mislead someone making a real decision.

Why people ask this

Two reasons, and they pull in opposite directions.

The first is that plenty of sites charging for citizenship practice look official. They use the coat of arms, or a name close to a government one, and a visitor reasonably assumes the test itself must also be something you buy. It is not.

The second is that the application genuinely does cost money, so "is the test free" and "is becoming a citizen free" get mixed together. They are different questions with different answers. The test is included. The application is not.

What this site charges

Practising here is free, with no account and no card. You can sit the full test and every topic drill without paying anything, as many times as you like.

There is one optional paid upgrade on this site. It is a single one-time purchase, not a subscription, and it is not required to pass. Everything you need to prepare is in the free material. If you never buy it, nothing on this site stops working.

We say that plainly because the question you came here with was about cost, and answering it honestly matters more than selling you something.

How to tell an official page from a lookalike

This matters more than it sounds, because the sites that charge most aggressively are the ones built to look official.

Three tells, and they are quick.

Look at the end of the web address. Australian government pages end in `.gov.au`. Nothing else does, and no amount of coat-of-arms imagery changes that. If the address does not end in `.gov.au`, you are not on a government page, whatever the design suggests.

Ask what is being sold. Nobody can sell you the test, an earlier appointment, or a pass. Those are not purchasable. A site offering any of them is either confused or dishonest, and either way it is not where your money should go.

Check whether the booklet is behind the payment. Our Common Bond is free from the Department of Home Affairs, in 40 community languages. A site charging you for the booklet itself is charging you for something the government gives away.

Paid practice material is a legitimate thing to sell, including ours. Paid access to the test is not a thing that exists.

Where to practise, free, right now

Sit the free test first. Twenty questions, forty-five minutes, marked the way the real one is marked: fifteen of twenty to pass, and all five values questions correct.

Then drill whichever part the score exposed. There are 595 questions on this site across the four parts of the booklet, each one with the correct answer and a short explanation in plain English.

If you are not sure what you are being asked to pay for

Check the Department of Home Affairs website before paying anyone for anything connected to your citizenship. That is the only place the fees are authoritative. This site is not the Australian Government, is not affiliated with it, and does not give immigration advice.