Age Pension Australia: Rates, Eligibility, and How It All Works

✅ Who qualifies for the Age Pension?🔗

🎯 The essential: Three boxes to tick: age 67+, residency, and passing both means tests. It's not all-or-nothing, most recipients get a part pension, not the full rate.

Age. You must be 67 or older. Services Australia has confirmed there are no plans to raise this further. That's a separate number from when you can actually afford to retire, which depends on your own savings and super, not this eligibility age.

Residency. You need at least 10 years total as an Australian resident, with at least 5 of those years continuous, no long breaks. You also need to be living in Australia and be a citizen, permanent visa holder, or a protected Special Category visa holder from New Zealand when you claim. Refugees are exempt from the 10-year rule.

The means tests. You need to pass both the income test and the assets test, covered in detail below. Failing either reduces your payment, or cuts it to zero once you're well above the thresholds.

💰 How much is the Age Pension?🔗

The figures below are the current maximum fortnightly rates, set at the 20 March 2026 indexation and running until the next indexation on 20 September 2026. Rates are reviewed and adjusted twice a year to track inflation and wages. Your actual payment depends on the income and assets tests below.

Each payment is made up of a basic rate plus the Pension Supplement (covers phone, internet and pharmaceutical costs) and the Energy Supplement. Couples who are separated due to illness each receive the full single rate. Want your actual number rather than the maximum? Our retirement income calculator runs both means tests against your own balance and adds in your own super drawdown, so you can see a total figure rather than just the headline rate.

📊 The income test🔗

The income test looks at money coming in: wages, investment returns, rental income, and deemed income from financial assets.

Once your income passes the cut-off, the pension drops to zero: $2,627.80 per fortnight for singles, $4,016.80 per fortnight combined for couples.

If you're still working past 67, not all your wages count against you. The Work Bonus credits $300 of fortnightly employment income as exempt from the income test, and unused amounts build up in a Work Bonus balance, up to a cap of $11,800 (new claimants start with $4,000 already banked).

🏠 The assets test🔗

The assets test looks at what you own: super balances, savings, shares, investment properties, cars, and most other assets. Your family home is exempt, but whether you own one changes which threshold applies to you.

Full pension asset limits (below these, assuming you also pass the income test):

For every $1,000 of assets above the threshold, your pension reduces by $3.00 per fortnight. For example, a single homeowner with $433,000 in assets is $100,000 above the $333,000 threshold, that's 100 × $3 = $300 less per fortnight than the maximum rate.

Once assets exceed the upper cut-off, the pension reduces to zero entirely:

What counts as an asset: super balances (once you're of Age Pension age), account-based pensions, bank accounts and term deposits, shares, ETFs and managed funds, investment properties at market value minus any mortgage, and vehicles. What doesn't: your primary home, most personal items, and prepaid funeral expenses up to certain limits.

🥚 The Age Pension and superannuation🔗

This is where most people in their 30s and 40s have the wrong mental model. "I'll have super, so I won't get the Age Pension" is often wrong, the thresholds are high enough that a meaningful super balance and a part pension can genuinely coexist.

Super in accumulation phase (not yet drawing from it): once you reach Age Pension age, the balance counts as an asset under the assets test. It isn't assessed under the income test until you start drawing from it. Building that balance in the decades before retirement, including through salary sacrifice, is what determines how much of a part pension gap you'll actually have to fill.

Super in pension phase (converted to an account-based pension): it counts as an asset under the assets test, and the balance is deemed to earn income under the income test, using the same deeming rates covered above.

Selling the family home later in life and making a downsizer contribution to super can shift previously exempt home equity into an assessable super balance overnight, worth modelling carefully before you sell.

Even a small part pension is worth having, because any payment amount at all unlocks the Pensioner Concession Card: cheaper PBS medicines, bulk-billed GP visits at many practices, reduced council rates in most states, and discounts on utilities, transport and car registration. The real-world value can easily run to a few thousand dollars a year depending on your state and health needs, on top of the payment itself.

If you're still decades from retirement, this is mostly a reason not to over-index on "I won't need the pension" as a planning assumption, how you structure your drawdown later, and how assets are split between partners, can meaningfully affect what you're entitled to. If you're aiming to retire well before 67, treat the pension as a bonus rather than the plan itself.

📋 When and how to apply🔗

You can lodge your claim up to 13 weeks before you turn 67. Do it early, your payment start date is generally the date you submit your claim, not the date it's approved, and if you don't provide requested documents within 14 days, Services Australia can reject the claim outright.

Online via myGov is the recommended method, link your myGov account to Centrelink and follow the Age Pension claim steps. If you have a partner, they'll get their own task to complete within 3 days. You can also claim by phone (132 300, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm), in person at a service centre, or on paper.

You'll need proof of age, bank details, your tax file number, residency documents if relevant, relationship status, and full income and assets information: bank and term deposit statements, super statements, income stream schedules if you're already drawing from super, and documents for any investment property.

If you own your home but have limited super or savings, the Home Equity Access Scheme is a separate, government-run option worth knowing about: it lets eligible Australians borrow against home equity to top up retirement income. It's a loan, not a pension, interest accrues, but the rate is lower than most commercial reverse mortgages, and repayment happens when you sell or pass away.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗