Bringing your dog or cat to Australia.

The two things that decide an Australia move with a pet, and both are large. Lead time is at least 6 to 7 months, dominated by a fixed 180-day waiting period tied to the rabies antibody test, plus permit processing and quarantine booking. Cost is the highest of any destination we cover, commonly several thousand dollars and often well into five figures for a large dog handled by a relocation company. The biggest lines are air transport as cargo to Melbourne and the mandatory government quarantine.

Australia only accepts pets from approved countries and classes the mainland US as Group 3, meaning rabies is present but controlled, so a testing and waiting sequence applies. Guam and Hawaii are treated differently, so contact Australia's Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry first if your pet is coming from either.

The sequence matters more here than almost anywhere, and one step, the identity check, has to happen before another, the blood draw, or you lose the option to shorten quarantine.

1. Microchip first, before any rabies vaccination.
2. Rabies vaccination with an approved vaccine, given when your pet is at least 84 days old. The vaccination must stay valid all the way through to export, or you risk starting over.
3. Identity check, optional but worth it. Have an official vet verify your pet's identity before the rabies blood draw and at least 180 days before export. This single step cuts mandatory quarantine from 30 days to 10, which usually saves more than it costs. It cannot be done at the same visit as the blood draw.
4. Rabies antibody test (RNATT). After a wait of about 3 to 4 weeks from the rabies shot, a vet draws blood for a titer test (FAVN or RFFIT) sent to an approved laboratory; the result must be at least 0.5 IU per ml.
5. The 180-day residency. A 180-day clock starts on the day the laboratory receives the blood sample, and your pet cannot be exported until it is complete. This is a residency period, not quarantine, so your pet stays home with you, but there are no exceptions to the 180 days.
6. Import permit through BICON. Once the rabies documents are ready, apply for a biosecurity import permit in Australia's BICON system. Processing commonly takes a few weeks.
7. Book Mickleham quarantine. As soon as the permit is issued, book your pet's post-entry quarantine, since space is limited.
8. Final window. Close to travel, your pet gets parasite treatments, a final exam and an export health certificate from a USDA-accredited vet, endorsed by USDA APHIS.
9. Fly as cargo to Melbourne, then quarantine. Pets enter only as manifest cargo at Melbourne, and government staff transfer them to the Mickleham facility for their 10 or 30 day stay. Owners cannot collect a pet at the airport.

Dogs from the US carry a heavier load than cats. On top of the rabies sequence, dogs need a canine influenza vaccination, and depending on your permit they may need testing or treatment for diseases such as Brucella canis and Ehrlichia canis, with conditions that have changed in recent years. Because these dog rules move, read your import permit and Australia's step-by-step guide carefully rather than relying on an old checklist.

Cats are simpler but still need the rabies antibody test, even an indoor-only cat that has never been outside. A handful of dog breeds are banned from entry entirely, so check the list if you have a restricted breed.

The two government charges you can pin down are the BICON import permit, roughly AUD 600 and non-refundable, and the Mickleham quarantine, with a minimum 10-day stay around AUD 1,900 and a 30-day stay considerably more. On top of those sit the rabies antibody test and other lab work, the canine influenza vaccine for dogs, an airline-approved crate, and the single largest cost, air cargo to Melbourne. There is also a smaller airline handling charge collected before your pet is released.

Government fees are reviewed regularly and airfreight pricing swings a lot, so treat these as a budgeting frame and confirm the current figures with the Department of Agriculture and your airline before you commit.

No insurance product reimburses mandatory quarantine. Not pet health insurance, not travel insurance with a pet add-on, not a shipper's own protection plan. If your destination requires a quarantine stay, treat that boarding bill as an out-of-pocket cost and budget it from the start. Nationwide is the one US pet insurer that reimburses vet care at any licensed vet worldwide, and even it excludes boarding, which is what quarantine is.

US pet insurance is written around a pet that lives in the US. Most policies carry a policy territory, typically the US and sometimes Canada or Puerto Rico, and even the ones that reimburse vet care worldwide generally require your primary residence to stay in the US. So a policy may well pay a vet bill on a trip abroad and still lapse the day the move becomes permanent. Read your own policy's territory and residency wording before you assume it travels with you, and for a permanent move plan on taking out local pet insurance in your new country.

As a rough sanity check on any quote, and this is our read of current market pricing rather than an official figure: a standard international pet move tends to run about $1,500 to $6,000, while destinations with mandatory quarantine sit higher, roughly $3,000 to $12,000 and up. Australia in particular often lands between $5,000 and $15,000 once quarantine and the limited set of approved flights are counted. Full-service door-to-door typically costs 30 to 50 percent more than a transport-only booking where you handle the vet work and paperwork yourself.

The costs people forget are the small ones. USDA APHIS charges a user fee to endorse an export health certificate, currently $101 where no test verification is needed, $160 for a certificate covering one or two tests, and $206 for three to six tests, with rabies vaccination not counted in that tally. These rates rose on 10 January 2025, the first APHIS fee adjustment since 2012. Add an airline-compliant crate (roughly $50 to $400), the travel vet visits themselves, boarding on a layover, and summer heat surcharges.

Pet shipping attracts scammers, so verify any company before you send money. IPATA, the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association, is a trade association: its members ship under their own company names, IPATA itself does not ship pets, and there is no legitimate shipper with "ipata" in its name. Scammers clone real shippers' sites, logos and testimonials, so check the company in the member directory at ipata.org rather than trusting a logo on a website. Treat these as red flags: a quote dramatically below every other quote, a domain registered less than six months ago, email coming from a gmail address rather than the company domain, and any request to pay by Western Union or MoneyGram.

The return is far simpler than the outbound trip. Australia is rabies-free, so a dog flying home to the US is on the CDC easy path, usually just a free CDC form receipt with no titer and no quarantine, which we cover in bringing a dog into the US.

For how Australia compares with other destinations on lead time and cost, see traveling with a pet.

Common questions

Quick answers.

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