Melbourne sits second on every Australian cost table: clearly below Sydney, clearly above Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The version is that you are paying for system depth and city life, and the two lines newcomers underestimate are heating and the second car.
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 Melbourne against the city you are leaving. That is the only comparison that decides anything.
The headline
The structural point: an inner-ring family house here is a serious financial commitment, while an inner-ring flat on a tram line is very achievable on a clinical salary. Which of those you need changes the whole calculation.
What everyday life costs
The proportions, for one person on a mid-range budget. Proportions move slowly; prices move every quarter. Rent takes just under sixty per cent — clearly below Sydney, clearly above Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Two of these lines are the ones newcomers underestimate: heating, because older terraces and weatherboards are poorly insulated, and the second car. Inside the tram rings you may run none; in the outer corridors most households run two.
The costs the brochure skips
Where the money comes back
Public transport is the big one — a car-free life is possible here in a way it is not in Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide, and that is thousands a year. Then the free city: the gardens, the galleries with free entry, the laneways, the beach on the bay, and a festival calendar that runs most of the year. Groceries at the markets beat the supermarkets, and Victoria grows most of what it eats an hour or two away.
On the income side, public-health and not-for-profit roles here can salary-package part of your pay before tax — ask payroll on day one. How packaging, tax and superannuation work is national and lives in Pay & conditions.
Plan the bridge as well as the destination: temporary accommodation, a bond of about four weeks’ rent plus rent in advance, winter bedding and heating, and either a car or a Myki. Then decide whether you need the inner-ring house or the inner-ring flat — in Melbourne that one choice moves the budget more than anything else.
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.