RxApply is an independent education provider. It is not affiliated with, approved, endorsed by, or connected to the Australian Dental Council or Ahpra. Every figure below is the ADC's or the Dental Board's own published fee, linked to its source.
The Australian Dental Council publishes its fees plainly, on one page, in Australian dollars. Three numbers cover the dentist assessment pathway, and anyone can read them in under a minute.
The trouble is that the fee schedule is a price list for one attempt at each stage, and almost nobody's pathway is one attempt at each stage. It also says nothing about what happens to your money when you withdraw — and the ADC's withdrawal rules treat a refused visa exactly the same as changing your mind.
So this article sets out the official 2026 schedule in full — real figures rather than a forum's recollection of them — and then covers the three things it does not tell you: what repeat attempts do to the total, what a withdrawal actually costs, and which fees on this pathway are not paid to the ADC at all.
How much are the ADC exam fees in 2026?
One clean run through the dentist pathway costs AUD 7,544: AUD 647 for the initial assessment, AUD 2,122 for the written examination application, and AUD 4,775 for the practical examination application. Renewing an initial assessment before its seven-year expiry costs AUD 35; an application for review of a written or practical result costs AUD 1,008, and an independent appeal committee costs AUD 5,305. Fees are payable at application and are only partly refundable if you withdraw — nothing at all is refunded on the initial assessment. None of these figures includes registration with the Dental Board of Australia, which charges a further AUD 392 application fee plus an AUD 818 registration fee on initial registration. Fees for dental hygienists, dental therapists and dental prosthetists are lower: AUD 1,432 written and AUD 3,342 practical.
Source: the ADC's International Practitioners Fees page, last updated 20 July 2026, and the Dental Board of Australia fee schedule, effective 18 September 2025 — both verified 4 September 2026.
The ADC's official 2026 fee schedule for dentists
Every figure below is taken from the ADC's own fees page, last updated by the ADC on 20 July 2026 and read on 4 September 2026. All amounts are in Australian dollars.
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Initial assessment | AUD 647 |
| Initial assessment renewal — registration only | AUD 35 |
| Skills assessment | AUD 647 |
| Skills assessment (work history reassessment) | AUD 265 |
| Appeal against the outcome of the initial assessment | AUD 647 |
| Written examination application | AUD 2,122 |
| Application for review — written examination | AUD 1,008 |
| Independent appeal committee — written examination | AUD 5,305 |
| Practical examination application | AUD 4,775 |
| Application for review — practical examination | AUD 1,008 |
| Independent appeal committee — practical examination | AUD 5,305 |
The three bold rows are the compulsory pathway. Everything else is a fee you pay only if something goes wrong or a deadline passes — which is precisely why the schedule is worth reading before you need it.
What the schedule does not price: attempts
The ADC sets no limit on written examination attempts, and a written pass sat from March 2026 onward is valid for five years — passes from 2025 or earlier still expire after three, because the ADC did not extend periods already running. Read on its own, that sounds generous. Read against the outcome data, it is a budgeting problem.
In its 2024/25 Annual Report, read on 4 September 2026, the ADC recorded a 12% pass rate for the written examination (404 of 3,325 candidates) and an 11% pass rate for the practical (205 of 1,880). These are cohort figures, not individual probabilities — repeat candidates sit inside those denominators, and your own odds depend on your preparation and your training. But they make one thing clear: a candidate who sits each stage twice is having an ordinary experience, not an unlucky one.
Priced out, that ordinary experience looks like this: AUD 647 for the assessment, AUD 4,244 for two written attempts, AUD 9,550 for two practical attempts — AUD 14,441, nearly double the headline figure. The practical is where the money concentrates, and it is also where the calendar bites: candidates cannot sit consecutive practical periods, so a second attempt is roughly eight months and AUD 4,775 away, not a few weeks. We looked at what separates the candidates who clear it in our analysis of the ADC practical pass rate.
The honest way to budget, then, is not AUD 7,544. It is the fee schedule multiplied by the number of attempts you have set money aside for — and deciding that number in advance is worth more than converting AUD 7,544 into your own currency.
The refund rules decide what a withdrawal costs
This is the part of the fee schedule that is not on the fee page. The ADC's Assessments and Examinations Withdrawal Procedure (version 3, effective 1 April 2026) sets out exactly how much of your fee comes back, and the answer depends entirely on timing.
| You withdraw from… | …at this point | Refund |
|---|---|---|
| Initial or skills assessment | any point | None |
| Written examination | before booking a venue with Pearson VUE (at least two weeks out) | 80% |
| Written examination | after booking a venue (at least two weeks out) | 50% |
| Written examination | within two weeks of the examination | None |
| Practical examination | before your session is confirmed | 80% |
| Practical examination | after confirmation, at least six weeks out | 50% |
| Practical examination | within six weeks of the examination | None |
| Either examination | withdrawal due to illness, with a medical certificate | up to 50%, at the ADC's discretion |
Three details in that procedure matter more than the percentages.
The first is clause 4.3. Failing to sit because you could not obtain a visa, could not arrange travel, or did not meet the venue's entry requirements counts as a withdrawal — there is no separate category and no special relief. For candidates travelling to a Pearson VUE centre in another country, that is the single most expensive sentence in the document, and it is the reason to work through visa lead time for Australia before you pay a AUD 2,122 application fee rather than after.
The second is that a refund is never automatic. You must submit a withdrawal request through ADC Connect no later than the day of the examination; miss that and the percentage table is irrelevant. Approved refunds take about ten business days.
The third is the one piece of genuinely reassuring news: if the ADC cancels an examination for reasons beyond its control, you receive a full refund of the examination fee. Note the wording — the fee, not your flights or accommodation, which the ADC states expressly it is not liable for.
The costs of the ADC pathway that are not ADC fees
Search results for ADC costs tend to stop at the exam fees. Three further categories sit on the same pathway.
Registration with the Dental Board of Australia. Passing the practical earns you an ADC certificate, not a licence. Under the Board's fee schedule effective 18 September 2025, initial registration attracts both an application fee of AUD 392 and a registration fee of AUD 818 — AUD 1,210 before you treat a patient, then the annual registration fee thereafter. That takes a clean single-attempt pathway to roughly AUD 8,754 in regulator fees alone. Note what that figure is and is not: it counts what the ADC and the Dental Board charge, and nothing else. Our own working estimate for the all-in Australian pathway — AUD 20,000–30,000, set out in our step-by-step ADC guide — adds travel, accommodation, English testing, preparation and living costs on top. That range is RxApply's estimate built from candidate-reported costs, not a regulator's figure, and it is the one number on this page no official source stands behind.
Travel and venue. The written examination runs through Pearson VUE test centres worldwide, and the ADC warns that centres have capacity limits and that you may have to travel outside your home country to sit it. The practical is held only at the ADC's Melbourne examination centre, so every international candidate travels to Australia for it. Neither cost appears on any fee schedule, and for candidates in this region both are usually larger than the fee itself — we compare the all-in figures across destinations in our cost comparison for dentist migration.
English testing and preparation courses. English proficiency is a Dental Board registration requirement rather than an ADC one, but the accepted tests and their fees are a real line in the budget. Preparation courses are a bigger one, and the ADC's position on them is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing away: it states on both examination pages that it does not recommend or endorse any proprietary or informal preparation course, that such courses are developed without ADC input, and that it cannot be held responsible for their quality. That statement covers RxApply's courses exactly as it covers everyone else's — no provider, ours included, is endorsed by the ADC or has any standing with it. Price a course as an expense you have chosen, not a step the regulator requires.
Paying from outside Australia
Fees are charged in Australian dollars through ADC Connect at the point of application, which has two consequences. Your bank's international card fee and its exchange rate — not the mid-market rate quoted online — set what a fee really costs in your own currency, and that spread on AUD 4,775 is not trivial. And because payment falls at application, the money leaves your account months before you sit: a written application paid in the December 2026 window buys a seat in March 2027.
ADC fees for hygienists, therapists and prosthetists
The same three-stage structure applies to other dental professions at lower fees. Dental hygienists, dental therapists, oral health therapists and dental prosthetists all pay AUD 647 for the initial assessment, AUD 1,432 for the written examination and AUD 3,342 for the practical — AUD 5,421 for a single clean run. Review and appeal fees are identical across all professions at AUD 1,008 and AUD 5,305. Dental assistants undergo a skills assessment at AUD 647 rather than examinations.
Source: the ADC's International Practitioners Fees page, last updated 20 July 2026, read 4 September 2026.
Common questions about ADC fees
Do the fees include GST?
The ADC publishes each fee as a single AUD figure with no separate tax line. Take the published number as what you will be charged, and confirm with the ADC if you need a tax invoice for a particular purpose.
Are the fees the same for every country?
Yes — one schedule for all international candidates, with no regional pricing and no discount for repeat attempts.
Can I transfer my fee to a later sitting?
The withdrawal procedure provides for refunds, not transfers. Candidates who receive a refund may apply for a new examination place when a new application period opens, provided they are still eligible — a fresh application, at the full fee.
What are the ADC exam fees in rupees, or in my own currency?
We do not publish a converted figure, because any rate we printed would be wrong within days and you would not be charged it anyway. The ADC bills in Australian dollars; what you pay is the AUD amount at your own bank's rate on the day, plus its international card fee. Convert the AUD figures above yourself, on the day you pay.
How often do the fees change?
The ADC reviews them periodically; the current page was last updated on 20 July 2026. Because our figures carry a verification date, check the official page before you pay rather than trusting any third-party copy of it, ours included.
What if my initial assessment expires?
Renewal is AUD 35 and the assessment lasts seven years. If it lapses, the ADC's position is that you begin the whole process again with a new application and fee, and previously passed examination results become void. It is the most lopsided arithmetic on this pathway, and the ADC calendar guide sets out the dates it turns on.
Official sources: the ADC's International Practitioners Fees page, the written examination and practical examination pages, the Assessments and Examinations Withdrawal Procedure, the ADC Annual Report 2024/25, and the Dental Board of Australia fee schedule. All figures verified 4 September 2026. Fees change; check the official pages before paying.
The three stages end to end are in the step-by-step ADC guide, and the wider picture in our Australia guide. To place these figures against your own timeline, you can book a consultation.
About this article. RxApply is an independent education provider. It is not affiliated with, approved, endorsed by, or connected to the Australian Dental Council or Ahpra. Official requirements and fees are published at adc.org.au and dentalboard.gov.au. This is general educational information about published licensure processes — not immigration, legal, financial, or professional advice, and not a substitute for a licensed adviser in the destination country.
