The picture here cuts against the rest of this collection: Canberra pays the most of any Australian jurisdiction, and it costs close to the most too. This chapter prices that trade rather than assuming it away.
Why we don’t print prices
We used to print a weekly rent and a monthly budget table here. We have taken them out. A figure that was true when a page was written is misleading a year later, and a candidate who plans a move around a stale number is worse off than one who plans around none.
What does not go stale is the shape of a month, and the judgement about which lines will surprise you. For today’s actual numbers use the calculators at the foot of the page, and use them to compare Canberra against the city you are leaving. That is the only comparison that decides anything.
The headline
Canberra rents sit closer to Sydney’s and Melbourne’s than to Adelaide’s or Perth’s, which is the one number that surprises people who’ve read the “regional classification” line and assumed it meant cheap.
What everyday life costs
The proportions, for one person on a mid-range budget. Proportions move slowly; prices move every quarter. Rent is fifty-nine per cent of the month — this chapter prices the trade rather than assuming it away.
Canberra pays the most of any Australian jurisdiction and costs close to the most, so the two numbers have to be read together. The transport line is the one clear bargain — a small, planned city where a single fare card covers most of it.
The costs the income has to cover
Where the money comes back
The advantages are real even if they aren’t a discount: no toll roads, short commutes that save real childcare and fuel money, an extensive free-to-use lake and reserve system in place of a beach subscription, and — useful — salary packaging available on much public-health and not-for-profit pay before tax. How packaging, tax and superannuation work is national and lives once in Pay & conditions; the habit worth copying is asking payroll about it in week one.
Plan the bridge, not just the destination: temporary accommodation, a bond of up to four weeks’ rent, a first car if you’re outside the light rail corridor, and setting up a home for a cold winter. Canberra’s income cushions that bridge better than most cities — but only for people who’ve priced it first.
These are live and updated continuously. Put the city you are leaving in the other box.
- Numbeo cost-of-living calculator — the most complete comparison tool, and the one most clinicians already use. Crowd-sourced, so treat it as a ballpark.
- Expatistan — the same idea with a cleaner side-by-side. Worth running as a sanity check when Numbeo looks off.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics — official and slower, and the one to trust on the direction of travel.
If what you find differs from what we say here, tell us and we will correct it.