VETASSESS general, trade and priority streams: which one applies to your occupation, and why the trade side is a different organisation's rules

VETASSESS runs two assessment systems under one brand, and they share almost nothing: not the criteria, not the fee schedule, not the processing times, not the appeal routes, and not the underlying rulebook. Sending a trade application to the professional stream’s information is one of the more common ways to waste a month.

The dividing line is not your job title. It is whether your occupation sits in the professional and general set — where VETASSESS assesses against its own published Group A–F criteria — or in the trade set, where VETASSESS acts as a registered training organisation delivering Trades Recognition Australia programmes.

The three streams at a glance

	Professional and general occupations	Trade occupations	Priority processing
Who sets the criteria	VETASSESS, published per occupation as Groups A–F	Trades Recognition Australia, through programme-specific Applicant Guidelines	—
Programmes	one full skills assessment, plus Points Test Advice, Post-485, DAMA and ILA variants	two: the Temporary Skills Shortage (TSS) programme and the Offshore Skills Assessment Program (OSAP)	an add-on to the professional stream
Pathways	four pathways within each group	Pathway 1 and Pathway 2, each split by licensed and non-licensed trades	—
What is assessed	qualifications against the AQF, plus employment	documentary evidence, then “a practical assessment and/or technical interview”	—
Published processing time	7 weeks	none — “You can find the approximate processing times in the relevant Applicant Guidelines”	10 business days after acceptance
Fee	AUD 1,205.60 incl GST / AUD 1,096.00 excl	published separately	AUD 907.50 incl GST / AUD 825.00 excl
Available for trades?	—	—	No — “This service is not offered for trade occupations”

The professional and general stream

This is the one with the group letters. Every occupation page states a group, the group sets the qualification floor, and the floor plus the relevance of your major decides which of four pathways you are on. VETASSESS’s own summary of what it is assessing:

“Generally, for a Skills Assessment application lodged under either ENS, GSM, RSMS or SID visa categories, applicants are required to hold a qualification that is at the educational level required and which is in a highly relevant field to the nominated occupation. In addition to the qualification requirements you also have to provide evidence of having at least one year of highly relevant employment performed at the required skill level within the last five years.”

Six groups, not five. The fee schedule’s review table splits them into two clusters — “Group A and E” and “Group B, C, D and F” — which is the clearest published evidence of how VETASSESS itself groups them for procedural purposes. The substantive difference between the clusters is stated on the occupation criteria pages: “For Groups A and E, the employment must be post-qualification”, while for B, C, D and F pre-qualification employment can count at a price (five extra years for Group B; three for C, D and F). The floors themselves are in what each VETASSESS group demands and the pathway mechanics in the ‘highly relevant major’ requirement.

Two sub-products live inside this stream and are easy to miss:

• Points Test Advice only, for applicants whose occupation is assessed by a different authority. AUD 342.10 incl GST, 2–4 weeks. If your occupation belongs to another body but you need employment years quantified, this is the product.
• Post-Vocational Education Work (subclass 485) assessments, at AUD 457.60 incl GST and 1–2 weeks, with their own review and reassessment fees.

The trade stream

VETASSESS describes its role here differently, and the difference is legally significant: “As part of your skilled migration journey into Australia, you might need to get a trade skills assessment from a TRA-approved registered training organisation (RTO), like VETASSESS.”

Two programmes, described by VETASSESS in the applicant’s own words:

• Temporary Skills Shortage (TSS) Skills Assessment Program — “I want to work temporarily in my trade in Australia to fill a skills gap.”
• Offshore Skills Assessment Program (OSAP) — “I want to use my trade skills to apply for permanent residency in Australia.”

Then two pathways, and the split is about paperwork you already hold rather than about your skill level:

“PATHWAY ONE — ‘I don’t have an Australian qualification or occupational licence…’ To apply, you’ll need to give us evidence (documentation) of your employment, skills and knowledge. We’ll review it and if it meets the requirements for assessment, invite you to do a practical assessment and/or technical interview.”

“PATHWAY TWO — ‘I do have an Australian qualification or occupational licence…’ To apply for pathway 2, you’ll need to give us evidence of your Australian qualifications. We will also need evidence of your work experience… if they meet the requirements, we will invite you to a technical interview.”

Each pathway is further split into licensed and non-licensed trades, because a licensed trade brings a state licensing regime into the picture that has nothing to do with VETASSESS.

There is no published processing time for trades. VETASSESS’s own processing-times table leaves the cell empty and redirects: “Processing time varies depending on the skills assessment program and other factors, such as whether all required documentary evidence has been provided. You can find the approximate processing times in the relevant Applicant Guidelines available for different programs offered by Trades Recognition Australia (TRA).” That is a real answer, not an evasion — the timeframe belongs to TRA’s programme documents, not to VETASSESS.

And priority is not available. The processing-times table states it in the priority row: “Priority processing is available for professional and general occupations. This service is not offered for trade occupations.” A trade applicant cannot buy speed at any price.

Assessment venues matter for trades in a way they do not for professionals, because the practical component is physical: “Some occupations need a practical assessment and we have venues in Australia, India, South Africa and the UK.”

How to tell which stream you are in

Not by job title, and not by whether the work is manual. By the occupation as classified.

The reliable method is the same one used for every other question about assessing authorities: look up the ANZSCO code in the current compilation of the migration legislative instrument, and check which authority and which programme it names. See which Australian authority assesses which occupation. VETASSESS itself points to the same place: “If your occupation is not listed with us, you can try locating the occupation on the Department of Home Affairs website. Details of the relevant assessing authority will be listed there too.”

Two complications sit on top of that.

There are two live ANZSCO versions. VETASSESS: “For most occupations, assessments are based on ANZSCO 2013, as referenced in the applicable legislation. For the Core Skills stream of the Skills in Demand (subclass 482) visa and the Direct Entry stream of the Employer Nomination Scheme (subclass 186) visa, assessments align with ANZSCO 2022.” Trade occupation codes moved in that update along with everything else.

The published counts do not settle, on either side. The trade landing page says VETASSESS uses standards “specific to each of the 25 trade occupations we assess” and then lists 28 occupations on the same page; the published sitemap carries 29 trade occupation pages. On the professional side one page says “more than 341” and another says “341”, while the sitemap lists 363 pages including one named test-profession and three carrying a duplicate -0 suffix. Even the venue list is inconsistent within a single page — one paragraph says “India, the UK, South Africa and South East Asia”, another says “India, the UK, China, South Africa and Southeast Asia”. None of this affects your own assessment. It does mean you should not plan around a headline number from a web page when the operative list is in a dated legislative instrument.

What is the same across both streams

Three things, and they are worth knowing because they are the parts most applicants get wrong.

VETASSESS will not tell you which occupation to nominate for visa purposes. “We are unable to tell you which visa is best for you, which state or territory list your occupation appears on, or whether you will meet the visa requirements.”

An occupation can be removed from a list mid-assessment, and VETASSESS keeps going. “Occupations may be removed from the Skilled Occupation List at any time and without notice by the Australian Government… Should your application be affected by the removal of an occupation from any of these lists please be advised that VETASSESS will continue with the assessment for suitability against your selected occupation.”

Both streams have review and reassessment routes, and they are separately documented. The professional route runs review → appeal → reassessment on a 90-day and 12-month structure; trades have their own reassessment and review page. The comparison across all authorities is in review, reassessment and appeal options.

So what should you actually do

Establish the ANZSCO code and the ANZSCO version first, and from that the stream. If you are in the trade stream, stop reading VETASSESS’s professional pages entirely — including its fee schedule and its 7-week processing time — and go to the TRA Applicant Guidelines for your programme, which is where the timeframes live. If you are in the professional stream, read the group letter before the fee, because the group decides how many years of employment the fee is buying you the right to claim. And if your occupation belongs to another authority but you need employment years quantified for points purposes, the Points Test Advice product exists and costs a quarter of a full assessment.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you which stream you are in, and it does not reproduce either occupation list — those live in the migration legislative instrument and on the authorities’ own pages, both of which are dated and both of which change. It does not state a trade processing time, because VETASSESS does not publish one. Nothing here is a prediction of an outcome, and this site performs no assessments. All quotations were read from VETASSESS’s own pages on 3 September 2026, on which date the professional fee schedule also carried notice of an increase taking effect on 9 September 2026. For visa questions go to the Department of Home Affairs or a registered migration agent.