Australia's Official Qualification-Comparison Database Is Paywalled and Not Meant for You — Here Is What Is Free

Australia’s official database for working out what an overseas qualification compares to is called the Country Education Profiles. It is sold by subscription, and its publisher — the Australian Government Department of Education — states on the same page that it is not for you:

“CEPs are not intended to be used by individuals wanting to know how their overseas qualification is recognised in Australia.”

So the authoritative answer to the most common question in this subject is behind a paywall and disclaimed for individual use. That is not a complaint; it is the starting fact you need in order to stop looking for the wrong door. This page is the inventory of what an individual can actually read for nothing, from official sources only.

What the paywall actually is

We loaded the department’s own fee table on 3 September 2026. The published prices, in Australian dollars, exclusive of GST:

Product	Up to 6 users	7 or more users
Single CEP	45.45	45.45
Africa Regional Set	318	497
America Regional Set	340	531
Asia Pacific Regional Set	390	609
Europe Regional Set	473	739
Middle East and Subcontinent Regional Set	355	555
World Set	1,500	2,344
10 days world set access in 6 months	200	Not available
20 days world set access in 12 months	400	Not available

The department adds: “Prices are exclusive of Goods and Services Tax (GST) … All subscriptions are valid for 12 months unless otherwise stated.”

The product itself is described as “an online qualifications recognition tool designed to help organisations understand overseas higher education and postsecondary technical and vocational educational qualifications”, covering “127 countries”, and including “assessment guidelines … and how they compare with Australian Qualifications Framework qualifications”, “lists of institutions recognised by the relevant country authority”, and “national qualifications framework diagrams”.

Two free samples are advertised: an Australia profile and a Kyrgyzstan profile. The Australia one is a genuinely open PDF (details below). The Kyrgyzstan one is not open in practice — the department notes “to view the Kyrgyzstan CEP you will first need to register an account”, and the login page we reached adds that registration has to be approved by email before access works. The main CEP entry point redirects straight to a subscriber login.

So the picture is: the single-country product is cheap, the intended buyer is an institution, and the publisher has written down that an individual asking about their own degree is not the audience. What follows is what is.

Free official source 1 — the Australian Qualifications Framework itself

The AQF site publishes the whole framework openly: the ten level criteria (knowledge, skills, application of knowledge and skills for each level) and the qualification-type specifications that say which award sits where. Diploma at level 5. Advanced Diploma and Associate Degree at level 6. Bachelor Degree — and, since the framework was extended, Vocational Degree — at level 7. Bachelor Honours Degree, Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma at level 8. Masters at 9, Doctoral at 10. The Senior Secondary Certificate of Education and the Undergraduate Certificate are deliberately not placed at a level.

This is the yardstick every Australian assessing authority measures against, and it costs nothing. It will not tell you where your qualification lands — no free source will, because that is a judgement — but it tells you exactly what the target looks like, in the words assessors use.

Free official source 2 — your state or territory Overseas Qualifications Unit

If you are an Australian citizen or permanent resident, this is the closest thing to a free individual assessment that exists. The department’s FAQ says so directly: state and territory Overseas Qualifications Units “do qualification assessments of overseas qualifications for general purposes for Australian citizens and permanent residents. This service is usually free.”

The department also publishes the contact list and two caveats that people waste weeks on:

• New South Wales has no OQU. The department’s page says so and redirects you to NSW Fair Trading or Training Services NSW for trade qualifications, and “an appropriate professional or industry body” for everything else.
• Victoria’s service is paused. The department’s page records: “As of end June 2025, the Victoria OQU service has been paused.”

Units listed as operating are Multicultural ACT (ACT residents with proof of address only), the Skills Recognition Centre in the Northern Territory, the Queensland OQU in the Department of Trade, Employment and Training, Skilled Arrival Services in South Australia, the Tasmanian Assessment, Standards and Certification body, and the Western Australian OQU in the Department of Training and Workforce Development. Contact details are on the department’s Qualifications Recognition page; we are not reproducing phone numbers here because they change.

If you are not a citizen or permanent resident, this door is closed to you, and you should read the next three.

Free official source 3 — the assessing authority’s own published criteria

Every approved assessing authority publishes the rules it applies, at no charge, and those pages are far more specific than a level comparison. ACS publishes numeric ICT-major thresholds by qualification type. VETASSESS publishes an occupation-by-occupation criteria page and defines what it means by a “highly relevant” field of study and by employment “at the required skill level”. Engineers Australia publishes its pathway logic including the accreditation-agreement routes.

This is the substitute most people miss, because they are looking for a database when what decides their case is a criteria page. If the occupation is known, read the criteria for that occupation before paying anyone for a general level statement — see, for example, what ACS counts as an ICT major and the VETASSESS occupation groups.

Free official source 4 — the two Australian registers

Both are open and searchable, and between them they answer “is this Australian provider or course real, and what is it registered to deliver”.

• TEQSA’s National Register — “the authoritative source of information on the status of registered higher education providers in Australia. You can search by provider or course.”
• training.gov.au — Australia’s national training register, listing “training packages, qualifications, units of competency, skill sets, accredited courses and accredited units/modules” and the registered training organisations “approved to deliver nationally recognised training”.

CRICOS, the register of institutions and courses for overseas students, is likewise public.

These matter in the reverse direction too: if you are being sold an Australian course as a fix for a shortfall, these registers are where you check that the course exists and that the provider is authorised to award it.

Free official source 5 — the Australia Country Education Profile PDF

One CEP is genuinely free: the Australia profile, published as a PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence. It contains the education-system overview, the AQF summary, registered-institution arrangements, higher education and VET courses and qualifications, admission pathways and academic credit, accreditation and quality assurance, and grading systems.

It is written for the assessor looking at Australia, not for you looking from elsewhere. That is exactly why it is useful: it is the department showing its working on how a profile is structured, so you can see what an assessor is trained to look for — recognition of the awarding institution, the level and structure and length of the programme, and the quality assurance behind it.

Free official source 6 — the New Zealand side, which publishes far more openly

If New Zealand is in your picture at all, NZQA gives away material Australia sells:

• The NZQCF framework pages and the qualification-type descriptions table, with credit requirements and entry requirements per qualification type, free as a PDF.
• The NZQF search register of quality assured New Zealand qualifications.
• The recognition arrangements pages, with country-by-country arrangements and the note that “Recognition agreements don’t mean that another country will recognise a qualification, but they can make the process easier.”
• The joint Australia–New Zealand referencing report Enhancing mobility, free, which is the official comparison of the two frameworks. What it does and does not establish is set out in NZQCF levels against AQF levels.

NZQA’s paid individual service, the International Qualification Assessment, is a separate thing — see NZQA IQA versus an Australian skills assessment.

Free official source 7 — the ENIC-NARIC network and the awarding country’s own ministry

The department’s own FAQ points here for the reverse direction: “Many of these authorities are listed on the ENIC-NARIC website. If the country you are in is not listed, contact the relevant government body such as a Ministry of Education or Ministry of Higher Education.” The same logic works forwards. If you need to establish that your institution and your award are recognised in the country that issued them — which is stage one of every assessment we have read — the country’s own ministry or accreditation agency is the primary source, and it is free.

What none of these will give you

None of the above will tell you that your degree “equals” an Australian one. That statement is a judgement reserved to a decision-maker, and the free sources are inputs to it, not substitutes for it. The department’s paid individual assessment, at AUD 295 to 650 depending on the number of qualifications and your residency status, still comes with the disclaimer that it is “advice only”, “not legally binding”, and does not let you work, register, migrate or study.

Which is the real reason this page exists. The question “what is my degree worth in Australia” has no single free official answer because it has no single official answer at all — it has three, decided by three different kinds of body. Work out which one you need before you spend anything: assessment, registration and admission are three separate decisions.

Anything about visas is outside this site entirely; the department, ACS, Engineers Australia and Ahpra all refer it to the same place, and so do we: Department of Home Affairs.

This site summarises published rules and does not replace an assessment by the Department of Education, an assessing authority, or any registration body.