ImmiAccount Uploads: 5 MB per File, 30–60 Files, and What Gets Rejected

ImmiAccount is unusual among government portals because the Department of Home Affairs publishes its limits directly and precisely. There is no guessing:

The maximum file size for each attachment is 5 MB. The maximum number of files that can be attached ranges from 30 to 60 depending on the application type.

That is from the Department's own help text. Two constraints, both hard, and both easy to plan around once you know them.

The two limits

The file count is the constraint people forget. It is cumulative across the whole application, including documents you attach after lodgement. If you used 45 slots when you applied, you have 15 left for anything the Department later requests — and Section 56 requests for further evidence are common.

Two habits protect you:

• Put multiple pages of the same document in one file, rather than uploading each page separately.
• Print and scan several photographs into a single file instead of attaching them individually. The Department's own guidance suggests this for relationship evidence.

If you need to combine files, the merge tool runs locally in your browser.

What gets rejected

That last one is small but real: filenames should use only letters (A–Z), numbers (0–9), dashes, and underscores.

Quality is part of the requirement

The Department warns that attaching low-quality scanned documents can delay processing, and asks that images and text be clearly visible before you attach them.

There is one specialized case worth knowing: for facial images and other proof-of-identity documents attached to citizenship applications, the Department prefers scanned documents no larger than 500 KB.

So the target is not "as small as possible" — it is "as small as possible while everything stays legible." That is a compression decision, not a minimum-file-size competition.

Getting documents under 5 MB

1. Scan sensibly. 200 DPI in grayscale is plenty for most text documents. A 600 DPI color scan of a text page is mostly wasted bytes.
2. Combine related pages into one PDF — this addresses the file-count limit and the size limit at the same time.
3. Check the size. If it is over 5 MB, compress.
4. Compress in your browser. Open the compress tool and reduce it. Passports, police checks, and financial records are processed on your device and never uploaded to a server.
5. Open the output and check every page. Small text, stamps, and signatures are what degrade first.
6. Flatten any fillable form before the final save.

If you are uploading through myGov for Centrelink instead

Different service, different rules — and these one are published too. Services Australia states that for Centrelink online account uploads:

• The total size of all files for each upload must be under 10 MB — note that this is a total per upload, not a per-file cap
• Up to 10 files per upload
• PDF, PNG, or JPEG only
• Remove password protection before uploading

That "total per upload" framing is the important difference from ImmiAccount's per-file cap. Ten files can be 10 MB between them, not 10 MB each.

Official sources

• ImmiAccount — how to attach documents before submitting a visa application — Department of Home Affairs, stating the 5 MB per-attachment limit and the 30–60 file range
• Centrelink online account help — upload documents — Services Australia, stating the 10 MB total per upload and 10-file limit

Before you upload

• ☐Each file is under 5 MB
• ☐Total file count is within your application's cap, with room for later requests
• ☐Format is PDF, JPG, or PNG
• ☐No ZIP, no password protection, no encrypted or fillable PDFs
• ☐Filename uses only letters, numbers, dashes, underscores
• ☐Multiple pages of the same document combined into one file
• ☐Every page opened and legible, including stamps and small text