Brisbane vs Sydney running costs, matched suburb by suburb

How we measured this

We compared every suburb across Greater Sydney's 32 council areas inside the official Greater Sydney Commission boundary (760 suburbs; Wollondilly is excluded, on the reasoning that its residents are not realistic daily CBD commuters). Against that, every suburb across Greater Brisbane's five councils: Brisbane City, Moreton Bay, Logan, Ipswich and Redland City (443 suburbs).

Running cost means the money that leaves your account every year just to live somewhere: council rates, water and sewerage, electricity, the commute, and building insurance.

What the headline totals include. For each suburb we add four bills, water, electricity for a 2-person household, building insurance and the commute (driving, or public transport where stated), then take the median across the city. Council rates are never added to a Brisbane vs Sydney total. Our Moving to Brisbane study compares three of these bills and leaves electricity out; on that basis Brisbane is $912 dearer by car and $1,456 cheaper on public transport. Brisbane's cheaper electricity is what narrows the driving gap here.

Data updated

23 July 2026

Suburbs analysed

1,203 (760 + 443)

Cost variables

5 per suburb

Update cycle

Annually, each council budget

It does not include the purchase price, the mortgage, or rent, and it never will on this page. The buy-in gap between the two cities is enormous and already well covered elsewhere.

What this page adds up is what a home costs to keep running once the deposit is gone, the number almost nobody shows you before you move.

We used the median rather than the average so a handful of extreme suburbs cannot skew the citywide picture. The median of the totals is not the sum of the medians: the suburb in the middle on water is rarely the one in the middle on insurance, so the line items below add up to a slightly different figure, and the table after them shows both. Every figure below is for a house on a driving commute unless stated. Public transport gets its own section, because in this comparison it decides the whole result.

Component breakdown, where the money actually differs

Council rates get their own section further down. Queensland and New South Wales measure them on different bases, and lumping them in here would repeat the mistake this page is built to avoid. Everything below is genuinely apples to apples.

The totals, and why the lines don't add up to them

The headline figures on this page come from the two bold rows: each suburb's four bills added together, then the median taken across the city. That gives a $491 gap by car and $1,791 on public transport. Adding up the line medians instead gives $512 by car. Both point the same way. The median total is the better measure, because it describes a real suburb rather than a combination of four different ones.

Check your own suburb's full breakdown →

The commute reframe, better network vs shorter distance

The old assumption is that Sydney's sprawl makes its commute punishingly worse than Brisbane's. Compared like for like, full metro to full metro, that's no longer really true, and the real story is more interesting than either city being simply "worse."

Compare any two of these suburbs →

Driving is close enough to a wash that it isn't really a factor in the relocation decision: $5,311 in Sydney against $5,378 in Brisbane, both costed at the identical ATO rate with the same distance-tapered trip model. See the full Brisbane commute cost breakdown or the Sydney equivalent for the suburb-by-suburb version of this table.

One real difference our suburb matcher surfaced while building this page: fewer Brisbane suburbs sit far out. 25% of Greater Sydney's suburbs are more than 40km from the CBD, against 15% of Greater Brisbane's. The dataset also classes Brisbane suburbs beyond about 40km as regional rather than outer, while Sydney's outer tier runs to 60km. Because the matcher stays within one location tier, a commuter at Penrith (49.9km) or Campbelltown (42.8km) is matched with Brisbane suburbs about 40km out. Brisbane suburbs as far out as Penrith do exist, up to 75.1km, but they sit in a different tier.

Public transport is the one number in this whole comparison that isn't close. Queensland runs a flat 50-cent fare across all of Translink, so a Brisbane commuter spends about $192 a year. Sydney's Opal fares rise with distance but are capped weekly, and a typical annual commute costs around $2,400, about 12.5 times Brisbane's figure for the same trips to work.

No other bill on this page differs by anything like that ratio. It's large enough on its own to turn a Sydney-favouring result into a clear Brisbane win, for anyone who can and will actually catch the train.

What doesn't get cheaper

A page that only says "Brisbane is cheaper" is marketing. These costs stay the same, or get worse, on the move:

• Building insurance is meaningfully higher in Brisbane, $2,150 against Sydney's $1,850 on the median house, driven by broader riverine flood and severe-storm exposure across the metro. This is the single largest line item running against Brisbane on this whole page.
• Water is higher in Brisbane too, $1,900 against $1,548, a bill you cannot opt out of regardless of which suburb you pick.
• The driving commute barely improves either. It's close to a dead heat, so a household that drives everywhere saves next to nothing here.
• Council rates may not get cheaper either. On the reported figures Brisbane's median is $199 lower, $1,298 against $1,497, but Brisbane's figure is a minimum and Sydney's an average, so a typical Brisbane bill sits above $1,298 and the real gap is smaller, possibly reversed.
• Groceries and everyday spending aren't modelled by this index at all, in either city, so we won't claim a number we don't have. If that matters to your budget, check it separately; running cost and cost of living are related but not the same question.

What genuinely does get cheaper: public transport, by a wide margin, and electricity, by about $207 a year at the median.

That's the honest list. It's shorter than most "move to Brisbane" pieces would have you believe, and the big item on it, public transport, only helps if you'll actually use it.

So, is Brisbane cheaper

On the citywide median, not by much, and only if you catch the train. But citywide medians hide more than they show, because the matcher above runs this exact comparison suburb by suburb, and the results genuinely swing both ways.

Take Middle Cove, an inner Sydney suburb 8.6km from the CBD. Its closest Brisbane match is Everton Park, 8.6km out and in the same location tier. On water, electricity, insurance and a driving commute, the Brisbane suburb comes out $805 a year cheaper. Now take Bondi, 6km out on Sydney's eastern side. Its closest Brisbane match, Camp Hill, comes out $795 a year more expensive, not less. Same city, same distance band, opposite answers.

That's the whole point of building a matcher instead of publishing one number. A move from Middle Cove to Everton Park and a move from Bondi to Camp Hill are not the same decision wearing different suburb names, they're genuinely different financial outcomes. If you're weighing a move yourself, or considering Queensland more broadly, run your own suburb through the tool above before you trust any citywide average, ours included.

To try it with your own budget, the Sydney suburb finder and the Brisbane suburb finder list the suburbs in each city that fit what you want to spend each month, by car or public transport.