Australia is not turning students away. It raised the 2026 intake to 295,000, which is 25,000 more than 2025. What it changed is everything that happens after graduation: the Temporary Graduate visa went from AUD 2,300 to AUD 5,750 between March and July 2026, it refuses anyone over 35, and of the 185,000 permanent places in the 2026–27 Migration Program, 129,590 are reserved for people already in Australia, leaving 55,110 for everyone offshore.
If you are in that squeeze, Canada is a real alternative. It is not an easier version of Australia, and anyone selling it that way is not counting. Canada issued 128,982 Express Entry invitations between 1 January and 16 September 2026 — more than twice Australia's entire offshore allocation — but 80.4% of them went to two groups you may not be in.
Here is the arithmetic, both sides.
What Australia actually changed
The intake figure is the one that gets quoted, and it is the least restrictive thing on the list. The National Planning Level is a visa processing prioritisation system, not a refusal cap — a provider that hits its allocation sees processing slow, not stop.
The binding changes are downstream of it:
| Change | Before | Now | Effective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subclass 485 charge | AUD 2,300 | AUD 4,600 | 1 March 2026 |
| Subclass 485 charge | AUD 4,600 | AUD 5,750 | 1 July 2026 |
| Subclass 485 age limit | under 50 | 35 or under | 1 July 2024 |
| Subclass 485 English | IELTS 6.0 | IELTS 6.5 | — |
| Core Skills Income Threshold | AUD 76,515 | AUD 79,499 | 1 July 2026 |
That is a 150% rise in the post-study visa charge in four months. The age rule is the harder wall: at 36 there is no fee to argue about, because there is no visa. Masters by Research and PhD graduates, and Hong Kong and British National (Overseas) passport holders, can still apply up to 50.
And then the permanent program, announced in the Budget on 12 May 2026:
- 185,000 places total, of which 132,240 are Skill stream
- 129,590 to applicants already onshore
- 55,110 offshore, which the government describes as largely reserved for the highly skilled
- 300 special eligibility
Read those two numbers together. Australia is running a system that takes students in at the front and converts them to permanent residents at the back — provided they are already inside it, under 35, and can pay. If you are outside it, the number that applies to you is 55,110.
What Canada is actually selecting for
Canada's targets are bigger. For 2026: 380,000 permanent residents, of which 239,800 are economic, 109,000 Federal High Skilled and 91,500 Provincial Nominee Program. Canada's federal high-skilled allocation alone is nearly double Australia's entire offshore program.
But the target is not the selection. This is every Express Entry round held from 1 January to 16 September 2026, computed from IRCC's own rounds feed — 56 rounds, 128,982 invitations:
| Category | Invitations | Rounds | CRS range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canadian Experience Class | 53,250 | 16 | 507–523 |
| French-language proficiency | 50,500 | 10 | 382–420 |
| Healthcare and social services | 11,500 | 3 | 467–475 |
| Provincial Nominee Program | 8,537 | 18 | 697–805 |
| Trades | 3,000 | 1 | 477 |
| Senior managers, Canadian experience | 1,000 | 3 | 389–429 |
| Physicians, Canadian experience | 891 | 3 | 169–223 |
| Transport | 300 | 1 | 470 |
| Skilled military recruits | 4 | 1 | 368 |
Canadian Experience Class and French together took 103,750 of 128,982 invitations — 80.4%. CEC requires twelve months of skilled work *in Canada*, which by definition you do not have while you are in Australia. Three more categories now say "with Canadian Work Experience" in their names.
Strip out everything that requires you to already be in Canada and the genuinely offshore-reachable total for 2026 is 23,341 invitations — 18.1%.
That is the honest number, and it is still substantial. It is also concentrated in specific places.
### The single largest lever is French, not a job offer
Look again at the two big rows. French-language draws issued 50,500 invitations at CRS cut-offs between 382 and 420. Canadian Experience Class draws issued 53,250 at between 507 and 523.
That is a gap of roughly 90 to 140 CRS points for the same permanent residence, and French is the only factor on the list you can acquire from Sydney or Melbourne without moving countries first. Nothing else in Canada's system returns that much for study you can do where you already live.
### Healthcare is the open occupational door
11,500 invitations across three rounds at CRS 467–475, with no requirement to be in Canada. If you are a nurse, an allied health professional, or in social services, this is the most direct route on the board, and it links to the other half of the system: the same nurse scored in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta does not get the same number.
### If you are in tech, read this before you plan anything
Canada has held no STEM category draw since 11 April 2024. Since that date there have been 151 rounds and 309,408 invitations, and not one of them was STEM — 29.3 months. Australia's squeeze is pushing a lot of software and engineering people to look at Canada, and Canada currently has no category draw for them. They compete in the general pool or through a province.
### The trap that catches hospitality and care workers
Australia's cost-of-living pressure moves people toward whatever job is advertised. Canada's Job Bank carried 53,799 postings in August 2026, and the most-advertised occupations in Ontario were retail salespersons, cooks and home child care providers. 36.1% of those postings are TEER 4 and 5 — the tier Ontario scores at zero and Express Entry's nomination points exclude, and a share that grew by 2.5 points in a single month. Being in demand and being scorable are different things in both countries.
The one place Canada is unambiguously more generous: age
This is where the comparison is not close, and it matters most to exactly the people Australia has just excluded.
- Australia's subclass 485: hard cut-off at 35.
- British Columbia does not score age at all. Its grid is work experience, education, language, hourly wage and area of employment. A 42-year-old and a 26-year-old with identical files score identically.
- Alberta scores age 5 points at 21–34 and 4 points at 35–49 — one point of a 100-point grid.
- Federal CRS age points decline with age and reach zero at 45, so age costs you federally — but it never disqualifies you.
If you turned 36 in Australia and lost the graduate visa entirely, B.C.'s grid is the single most relevant page on this site for you, and Alberta's is the second.
Where Canada is tightening too
Leaving this out would make the rest of the page untrustworthy.
Canada capped study permits as well. For 2026 it expects to issue 408,000 — 155,000 to new students and 253,000 as extensions — with 309,670 application spaces under the cap. It wants the temporary resident population below 5% of the national total by the end of 2027, and it is steering permanent selection toward people already in the country, which is the same instinct driving Australia's 129,590.
Two differences worth knowing:
- Master's and doctoral students at public institutions are exempt from the provincial attestation letter requirement in 2026, with about 49,000 permits expected in that group. The route Australia is pricing at AUD 5,750 is the route Canada has deliberately left open.
- Post-Graduation Work Permit eligibility now depends on field of study for non-degree programs where the study permit was applied for on or after 1 November 2024. Degree graduates are exempt from the field-of-study restriction but need language results at CLB 7.
So: Canada's entrance is narrower than it was, and its exit is wider than Australia's. Australia is the reverse. Choose which constraint you would rather live under, with the actual figures in front of you.
If you are deciding, in order
1. Do you have or can you get French? It is worth 90 to 140 CRS points of cut-off difference. Everything else on this list is worth less. 2. Are you in healthcare or social services? 11,500 invitations, no Canadian experience required. 3. Are you over 35? Then look at provinces before you look federally. B.C. scores no age, Alberta costs you one point, and Ontario is a different grid again. 4. Are you in tech? Assume no category draw. Plan around a province or a general-pool score. 5. Check the live cut-offs before you commit to anything. The draws page reads IRCC's feed directly.
Nothing on this page is a prediction. Category selection is set by the Minister and has changed before — STEM was a category and has not been used in 29 months.
Sources
Australian figures: the 2026 National Planning Level of 295,000 and its description as a prioritisation mechanism rather than a cap, from the Minister for Education's statement on managing a sustainable international education sector and Study Australia, read 2026-09-20. Subclass 485 charges of AUD 4,600 from 1 March 2026 and AUD 5,750 from 1 July 2026, from Australian migration law firm summaries of the Migration Amendment (Temporary Graduate Visa Application Charge) Regulations 2026, read 2026-09-20; Home Affairs' own pricing pages could not be retrieved at the time of writing, so these are secondary and the department's visa pricing estimator governs. Age limit of 35 effective 1 July 2024 with Masters by Research, PhD, Hong Kong and BNO exceptions to 50. Core Skills Income Threshold AUD 79,499 from 1 July 2026, up from AUD 76,515, a 3.8% AWOTE indexation, per Baker McKenzie, read 2026-09-20. Migration Program 185,000 / 132,240 Skill / 129,590 onshore / 55,110 offshore / 300 special eligibility, from the Federal Budget of 12 May 2026 as reported by BDO and Fragomen, read 2026-09-20.
Canadian invitation figures are computed directly from IRCC's machine-readable rounds-of-invitations feed, read 2026-09-20: 56 rounds and 128,982 invitations dated 1 January to 16 September 2026, and 151 rounds and 309,408 invitations issued after the last STEM draw of 2024-04-11.
Admissions targets from IRCC's Supplementary Information for the 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan on canada.ca: 380,000 overall for 2026, 239,800 economic, 109,000 Federal High Skilled, 91,500 PNP. Study permit figures from IRCC's notice "2026 provincial and territorial allocations under the international student cap", dated 25 November 2025.
Age scoring is read from this site's own grid files: British Columbia's Skills Immigration grid, which contains no age factor, and Alberta's AAIP grid, which scores 5 points at 21–34 and 4 points at 35–49. Job Bank counts are from Employment and Social Development Canada's open dataset for August 2026, retrieved 2026-09-21.
This is not immigration advice, and a comparison between two countries' systems is the kind of thing worth paying a licensed professional an hour for before you act on it. Where an official source disagrees with this page, the official source is right — tell us and it gets fixed.