The maximum fine for a single AHPRA advertising breach is $60,000 for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate. That has been the figure in every Australian jurisdiction, and Western Australia, since July 2024. On 7 September 2026 we read 13 healthcare marketing guides that rank for AHPRA advertising questions. Ten of them named a maximum. Between them they named three different numbers, and only four of the 13 printed both correct numbers.
What did we actually check?
We searched for the guides an Australian practice owner would actually find. Queries about AHPRA advertising guidelines, healthcare marketing rules and cosmetic advertising compliance. We took the top results that were marketing agency guides, compliance consultancies or software blogs, rather than AHPRA itself.
That gave us 13 pages. We fetched all 13 on 7 September 2026. Every one returned a live page. Then we pulled every dollar number that sat near the words penalty, fine, offence, breach or infringement.
Then we checked those numbers against the AHPRA advertising guidelines themselves, archived on 6 September 2026. We also checked them against the sections of the National Law they quote.
One correction we had to make to our own method. The first pass searched only for figures written with a dollar sign. One guide writes “AUD 60,000 for an individual and AUD 120,000 for a body corporate”. That is correct. Our script scored it as naming no figure at all. Every count on this page comes from the corrected pass. A measurement that quietly punishes one formatting choice is not a measurement.
The three answers the guides gave
Ten of the 13 guides named a cap penalty. Here is what they said the cap is for an individual who breaches the advertising rules.
| Number published | Guides saying it | Status |
|---|---|---|
| $60,000 individual, $120,000 body corporate | 4 | Correct |
| $30,000 individual, $60,000 body corporate | 2 | Half the real cap. These are the Western Australian figures for a different offence |
| $5,000 individual, $10,000 body corporate | 1 | Superseded in 2022. Twelve times too low |
| $60,000 described as the limit for a corporation | 1 | Right number, wrong entity. $60,000 is the individual maximum |
| A six-figure sum from a different Act | 2 | Accurate, but it is a TGA matter, not an AHPRA one |
| No figure at all, despite discussing penalties | 3 | Not wrong, but not useful either |
Read three of these pages and you can come away with three different beliefs about what one mistake costs. The gap between the highest and lowest figure on offer is twelve times.
What is the real cap fine?
The rule is section 133 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. For an individual, the cap is $60,000 per offence. For a body corporate it is $120,000.
The word that matters there is per offence. It is not a cap on the whole matter. The same non-compliant sentence on a website, a Google Business Profile and three Instagram posts is not automatically one breach.
Those figures came in through a 2022 amendment. They replaced $5,000 and $10,000. AHPRA states that as of July 2024 the increased penalties apply in all jurisdictions, including Western Australia.
Why do the guides disagree?
Because there is more than one penalty here. The guides collapse them into one number. There are at least four separate regimes in play.
| What you did | Which rule | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising a regulated health service in a prohibited way, such as using a testimonial | Section 133, National Law | $60,000 individual, $120,000 body corporate |
| Using a protected title you are not entitled to, or holding yourself out as registered | Sections 113 to 119, National Law | $60,000 per offence, up to three years imprisonment, or both. $120,000 for a body corporate |
| The same title offence, in Western Australia | Sections 113 to 119, as applied in WA | $30,000 individual, $60,000 body corporate |
| Advertising a prescription-only substance to the public | Therapeutic Goods Act and the Advertising Code | A separate regime with its own infringement notices |
Look at rows two and three. That is where $30,000 comes from. It is a real figure in the guidelines. It is the Western Australian maximum for a title offence. Two guides lifted it out and printed it as the national cap for an advertising offence.
It is an easy mistake to make and an expensive one to rely on. Budget your risk on $30,000 when the real exposure is $60,000 and you are out by half. That is before anyone counts how many offences you committed.
Where do the stale numbers come from?
From AHPRA. This is the part that makes the mess make sense.
We read the current advertising guidelines line by line last week. Section 1.4 is headed with the question about what penalties apply. It prints $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a body corporate. Appendix 1, which reproduces section 133, prints the same pair.
The right numbers do appear in the document. They sit in an update panel recording the 2022 amendment. That panel says the guidelines will be updated when they are next reviewed.
So the two places a careful reader would look both understate the maximum by twelve times. You can quote the official guidelines accurately and still publish a number that is twelve times too low. We wrote about that in the AHPRA advertising self-audit checklist.
This is the practical lesson. “We got it from the official guidelines” is not the same as “we got it right”. On this particular number, the official guidelines are the source of the error.
Why do some guides quote six-figure sums?
Because they have moved to a different Act without saying so.
Two of the cosmetic guides quote a six-figure total for infringement notices issued to a body corporate. Those are TGA matters under the Therapeutic Goods Act, not AHPRA matters under the National Law. Advertising a prescription-only injectable to the public is a therapeutic goods problem. Using a patient testimonial is an AHPRA problem. A clinic can manage both at once.
Worth noting: the two guides quote two different totals for it, sixty dollars apart. Neither says which enforcement action it refers to or when it happened. A dollar figure with no date and no case attached to it is decoration.
Worried about the prescription-medicine side? Those rules live in the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code. It is instrument F2021L01661 on the Federal Register of Legislation. We cover it in the TGA advertising code guide.
How do you check a number before you trust it?
Four questions. They take about five minutes and they would have caught every error on this page.
| Ask | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Which Act, and which section? | A penalty with no provision attached cannot be checked. Section 133 and section 113 are different offences with different maximums |
| Individual or body corporate? | The two figures differ by a factor of two. One guide put the individual figure against corporations |
| Which state? | Western Australia carries different maximums for title offences. That is where the $30,000 figure comes from |
| As at what date? | The advertising maximum changed in 2022 and reached every jurisdiction in July 2024. Anything written before that, or copied from something written before that, is wrong |
Ask your marketing agency those four questions about any compliance claim on your site. If the answer is a shrug, the claim is not evidence. It is a number someone found.
And the liability does not sit with them. The guidelines are explicit. A person, a business or a corporate entity advertising a regulated health service is the advertiser. The agency wrote the page. You published it. That is the thinking behind our compliance-first SEO work: every claim on a page should carry the provision it comes from.
What this check does not show
Thirteen pages is a sample, not a census. A different set of search queries on a different day would return a different thirteen. We are not claiming a rate for the whole industry.
We are also not claiming any of these guides is bad in general. Several are careful and one is more precise about the different regimes than most law firm summaries. The finding is narrower. On this one number the market does not agree. The official document is part of the reason.
Nothing here is legal advice. It is a reading of a public document and a count of what other public documents say about it. If you are facing a notification, get a lawyer.
Finally, a maximum is a maximum. Most advertising matters never reach a court. AHPRA says its approach is risk-based and proportionate, and many matters close once the advertising is fixed. The number sets the size of the risk you carry. It is not the invoice to expect.
