Free pages, guide, plan — or a shipper

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The government charges the same either way

Before comparing anything, note what none of these options changes. The department’s estimated cost of importing one cat or dog is AUD 3,114 with 10-day quarantine or AUD 4,234 with 30 days, plus AUD 626 for the first import permit. Those are paid whichever route you take — by you, or by a shipper on your behalf with their margin on top.

What the options below change is how much of the work and the risk is yours.

Side by side

When each is right

The free pages are enough if you are organised, your case is ordinary, and you are willing to read. Nothing is withheld: every requirement, citation and verification date on this site is free and stays free.

The $4 USD guide buys ordering and assembly for one corridor and species — the same evidence, arranged in the sequence you actually have to do things in. It is worth $4 USD if reading a dozen pages and building your own checklist is not how you want to spend an evening.

The $19 USD plan buys arithmetic. Your dates against the encoded rules, producing the earliest travel date the rules permit and what is still missing. It refuses cases it was not validated for rather than guessing.

A shipper buys someone else doing it — and for a substantial set of moves, that is the correct purchase, not the lazy one.

Choose a shipper when

Be honest with yourself about these. Every one of them is a case where $19 USD of automation is the wrong tool:

• Your timeline is already too short. The 180-day wait has no exceptions. If your dates do not fit, you need someone managing an exception-shaped problem, not a plan confirming the bad news.
• The animal travels unaccompanied. Pets fly to Australia as manifest cargo on their own air waybill, so this is normal — but it is a freight booking, and freight is what shippers do.
• Your dog’s breed or morphology is the hard part. Australia bars five breeds and four wolfdog hybrids, and airlines add their own, stricter restrictions. When route selection turns on which carrier will accept your animal, you want someone who books these weekly.
• Your cat may be a hybrid. Bengals have been barred since 1 March 2026, and the published list is not exhaustive. Getting a determination is not a scheduling problem.
• Your dog is leaving Canada unvaccinated for canine influenza. Ten days of isolation, a PCR within 7 days and an examination within 48 hours, on top of the parasite schedule — this is the corridor where coordination earns its fee.
• You simply do not want to own the risk. That is a legitimate reason on its own.

What no product here can do

None of these options — including the paid ones — guarantees entry, boarding, quarantine release, or that your animal is fit to fly. None includes case review, advocacy with an authority, or booking. And no product here is ever reviewed by a person, which is the design choice that makes accurate information affordable at $4 USD instead of hundreds of dollars.

If what you need is a person accountable for your move, that is a shipper, and this site will keep saying so. Once you have decided that, the next problem is which one — the questions worth asking before you pay.

Availability

All six corridor guides and the plan are on sale now. Every purchase carries a 30-day refund if it turns out to be the wrong corridor, species or product for your move — see the refund terms.