The Best City In Australia to Start Your Business in 2026
We analysed the 50 largest cities in Australia to see which city is the best for starting a business.
The Best City to Start a Business in Australia
Choosing the right city to start a business can be a difficult decision, and the area you select can have a significant impact on your business’s success. Many small business owners could also be overlooking factors that impact how their business runs, including access to skilled personnel, fast and reliable internet, cost of living, and the business landscape.
To help Aussies make informed decisions about where to start a business, the team at Reckon analysed 17 socioeconomic factors across Australia’s 50 largest cities, ranked by importance to business owners, to identify the best places to start a business in 2026. We ran this same study in 2024 and 2025, but with Australia’s business landscape always shifting, we compared the results to see how things have changed.
Top 10 places to start a business in Australia
Cities in Queensland surged to the top, claiming five of the top 10 best places to start a business. Despite the high cost of living, Brisbane ranks as the best place thanks to its strong internet speed score, thriving business landscape, and diverse talent pool. Brisbane placed 8th in 2024 and 2nd in 2025, showing its steady rise and increasing appeal for start-ups.
Perth ranks 2nd, which is a spot lower than in 2025. Adelaide has also fallen from 3rd to 4th, while Melbourne has dropped from 4th in 2025 to 10th in 2026.
The best place to start a business by state
New South Wales
Regional areas continue to perform strongly, with Morisset–Cooranbong rising from 10th to 2nd in NSW, alongside Dubbo (3rd) and Wollongong (4th). In contrast, Canberra–Queanbeyan has dropped significantly, ranking 11th in the state and falling 31 places nationally due to weaker results in business landscape and internet speed.
Queensland
Brisbane leads Queensland and the nation, with solid scores across talent pool, business landscape and the highest internet speed score in Australia. While it has the fifth-lowest cost-of-living score nationally, its strong performance across the board drives its position to the top. Other high-ranking cities like Gladstone and Townsville have also risen since last year, showing how regional areas are becoming increasingly attractive places to start and grow a business.
Victoria
First-placed Melbourne boasts the second-highest internet speed score in the study and a highly skilled talent pool. Ballarat secured 2nd place with its lower cost of living and strong digital infrastructure, while Shepparton – Mooroopna moved from 4th in 2025 to 3rd in 2026. On the other hand, Geelong has dropped from 1st nationally in 2024 to 25th in 2026, due to its low business landscape and cost of living scores.
Western Australia
Perth continues to take the title as the best city in Western Australia. While the cost of living is high, it delivers a strong performance across all other categories. Geraldton ranks second, recording the highest cost-of-living score and the second-highest internet speed score in the state. Meanwhile, Kalgoorlie–Boulder, which placed 3rd in 2025, has slipped to 6th, mainly due to poor internet performance.
South Australia
Adelaide maintains its position as the best city in South Australia. It records the highest business landscape score in the entire study and solid scores in talent pool and internet speed. Notably, Victor Harbor – Goolwa and Mount Gambier have maintained their state standings since 2025, though their index scores have slightly improved. Mount Gambier has also improved its national ranking, rising from 45th in 2025 to 43rd in 2026.
Northern Territory
Despite Darwin being the only Northern Territory city included in the study, it records the nation’s second-highest talent pool score. The business landscape score has also jumped from 39.03 in 2025 to 64.15 in 2026. However, worsening internet speed and cost of living scores continue to hold the city back. Even so, Darwin has improved its overall position, climbing from 11th in 2025 to 9th in 2026.
Tasmania
In 2026, all Tasmanian cities scale higher nationally, showing the state’s growing business appeal. Launceston has overtaken Hobart, outperforming the capital for internet speed and cost of living. Devonport rounds out the top three. While it’s the most affordable city in the state, it scores significantly lower in all other categories.
Best and Worst City by Factor
Running a successful business means working alongside cost pressures, workforce availability and other challenging conditions. Sydney dominates in multiple positive categories, including the share of educated workers, people without long-term health conditions and business density. However, the city also has the highest monthly mortgages and transport costs.
Other cities in New South Wales also underperform in key areas, including Ballina with the lowest median income, Wollongong with a 6% unemployment rate, and Port Macquarie with only 51.3% labour force participation.
But these pressures are not the same everywhere. Ballarat has the lowest weekly rent, and mortgages in Kalgoorlie – Boulder are over $4,000 less than in Sydney. Workers in Mackay can also see the highest median income, or face the lowest unemployment rates in Warrnambool.
Best place to start a business by factor
Talent Pool
Canberra – Queanbeyan is the area with the best talent pool, as the city records a solid median income and the third-highest education rate. Darwin moved up from third place last year to second, thanks to a greater median income and a higher number of young people in the workforce. Sydney rounds out the top three, with the second-highest number of young workers and the highest education rate in the entire study.
Business Landscape
Adelaide continues to hold its top spot for business landscape with steady growth in annual business numbers and more than half of new businesses surviving either 1 year or 3 years. Perth also maintains its spot in second, as the city records the third-highest annual change and fourth-highest business density. Brisbane ranks third, jumping three places since 2025. This is largely due to higher business density and higher short-term survival rates.
Internet Speed
Brisbane dominates for internet speed, performing strongly across download speed, upload speed, and latency. Regional areas in Victoria and New South Wales are punching well above their weight, including Ballarat, Nowra – Bomaderry, Dubbo, Warragul – Drouin, Wollongong, and Shepparton – Mooroopna, which all crack the top 10. Unsurprisingly, major capitals like Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth are all featured in the top 10.
Cost of Living
Regional towns are proving they’re a smarter choice when it comes to the cost of living. Gladstone, Mount Gambier, and Traralgon – Morwell make up the top three. Across these three areas, weekly rent sits between $464 and $560, while monthly mortgages do not exceed $2,800. Capital cities record the lowest cost-of-living scores, including Sydney, Perth, Canberra – Queanbeyan and Brisbane.
What patterns are emerging?
We have been running our Startup City campaign since 2024. Over the last three years, we’ve seen cities and towns climb up and down the score ladder, and over time, we’ve noticed a couple of things
Queensland rising as the business state
From 2024 to 2026, Queensland has become a leading state in which to start a business. Brisbane has driven this trend, rising from 8th in 2024 to 2nd in 2025 and 1st in 2026.
More regional opportunities
Opportunity doesn’t only present itself in Australia’s big cities, as regional cities like Toowoomba and Mackay remain highly competitive, consistently featuring in the top 10.
Victoria declining in business appeal
Over the last three years, Victoria’s business appeal has declined, dropping from six cities in the top 10 in 2024 to only Melbourne (10th) remaining in 2026. This year alone has shown that businesses within Victoria have the worst survival rate, short-term and long-term, in comparison to their peers.
Geelong and Warrnambool collapse in business ranking
A combination of leaner infrastructure and increased business costs contributes to Geelong and Warrnambool showing Victoria’s decline, with Geelong falling from 1st in 2024 to 25th in 2026 and Warrnambool dropping from 10th to 44th.
Where does your city rank?
ABOUT THE DATA
Methodology
This comprehensive study by Reckon evaluates the top 50 most populated Australian cities (the 50 largest urban areas in Australia by the Significant Urban Area (SUA) measure, using ABS Regional Population data) for startup viability, integrating data from survey responses from small business owners around Australia and public datasets.
The results highlight cities excelling or underperforming in specific categories, and those with high overall scores for business startup suitability. Our analysis looks at 17 essential socioeconomic factors mapped into 4 major categories consisting of Talent Pool, Business Landscape, Internet Speed and Cost of Living.
Talent Pool assesses workforce quality through median weekly incomes, demographic and educational factors, drawing various datasets from the ABS.
Business Landscape evaluates the business environment through business density, growth, and survival rates, using government data.
Internet Speed reviews infrastructure capabilities based on median internet speeds and latency, with Speedtest by Ookla providing the necessary data.
Cost of Living considers living affordability through median rent, mortgage repayments, commute costs, and childcare fees, informed by government and industry publications.
We collected the aforementioned data alongside survey responses from small business owners across Australia. As with the 2025 study, the factor and category weightings are based on the survey conducted in 2024. This data was then processed through the following 5 steps:
- Data collection from various government and authority sources
- Normalisation of Likert scale survey responses and determining aggregated weightings for each factor/category
- Creation of factor scores that are aggregated for all cities and normalised into a 0–100 scale
- Factor scores are aggregated and adjusted by survey weightings to create category scores
- Overall scores are calculated by combining category scores according to survey weightings
It is important to understand that, although the study seeks to provide a statistical representation of the best location to start a business, it does not serve as financial advice for those seeking to do so. Moreover, comparing metrics collected via multiple sources may result in slight variations due to differences in data collection methodology.
The factors used are as follows:
Talent Pool
- Personal Median: Weekly Incomes: people aged 15 and over (employee earnings from main and second jobs)
- Young Workers: the number of people aged 20–29
- Labour Force: percentage of people aged 15 years and over in the labour force
- Unemployment: percentage of people who reported being unemployed, aged 15 years and over
- Education: percentage of people aged 20–74 years with a Bachelor Degree level education and above
- Health: percentage of people with no long-term health condition(s)
Business Landscape
- Business Density: number of businesses in the city
- Business Growth: annual percentage change in businesses
- Short-Term Business Survival: business survival rate year 1 (state*)
- Long-Term Business Survival: business survival rate year 3 (state*)
Internet Speed
- Internet Download: median internet download speed
- Internet Upload: median internet upload speed
- Internet Latency: median internet latency
Cost of Living
- Rental Prices: median weekly rent
- Mortgage Costs: median monthly mortgage repayments
- Transport Costs: average weekly transport costs (capital city vs. regional centre*)
- Childcare Costs: hourly fees, centre-based childcare
*Please note that statewide numbers have been used for business survival rates, while capital city vs. regional centres of each state have been used for transport costs due to a lack of accurate city-specific data.
Notes on the Data
The data collection and methodology behind almost all factors are consistent with the previous version of the Startup Cities Report, so direct comparisons between the two studies can reasonably be made at the factor level. The main points of difference stem from external changes rather than any change in method — most notably the lower interest rate applied to mortgage repayments (5.9%, down from 6.25%) and a marked rise in internet speeds following NBN Co’s nationwide “Accelerate Great” upgrade in September 2025. These account for some variation between the two datasets but do not materially affect overall comparability.
Some factors have come from data sources that are only available at the SA3 or SA4 level, and have thus been converted to SUA. Data for SA4 regions have been amalgamated where necessary for conversion purposes. Please note that there is an imperfect correspondence between these levels of geography. For example, the SA4 region of Bunbury has been used for the SUA regions of Bunbury and Busselton.
Talent Pool
Talent Pool metrics drawn from the ABS labour data were obtained at the SA4 level. The SUAs of “Geraldton” and “Kalgoorlie – Boulder” both fall within “Western Australia – Outback (South)”. However, in the ABS labour statistics the “Western Australia – Outback (South)” and “Western Australia – Outback (North)” regions are reported as a single combined figure. To include this data, both SUAs were mapped to the combined North and South figure, even though they technically sit within the South region only.
Median weekly incomes have been interpolated from the distribution across income ranges at the SA4 level using the ABS Characteristics of Employment, 2024 data. The most recent 2025 release does not publish this particular metric, so the 2024 figures have been retained for this factor only; all other Talent Pool metrics use the latest available 2025 data. Incomes include employee earnings from main and second jobs, and do not factor in those who did not draw a wage or salary, or those who are not employees or owner-managers of incorporated enterprises. Please note that these numbers reflect the working population’s income, and the medians are therefore naturally higher than the general population income reported in the Census.
The long-term health condition figures have been carried over directly from the previous year’s study to keep this factor consistent. These may not match current ABS TableBuilder outputs, as TableBuilder randomly adjusts cell and continuous-variable values to protect data confidentiality, which can also cause minor discrepancies between component items and their totals.
In the case of Warrnambool, the Bachelor Degree level and above category (for Education) was grouped in TableBuilder from the outset to return a category total, rather than summing the individual columns as was done for the other SUAs, in order to obtain a non-zero value.
Business Landscape
For SUAs that exist across state borders, such as “Gold Coast – Tweed Heads”, an average was taken across the two states for the state-level measures of business survival rate.
Internet
Fixed broadband internet speeds were used for comparison. Open data was sourced from Q1 2026 Ookla speed tests and mapped according to SUA shapefiles to obtain the median download speed, upload speed and latency from the average tests within the region. It should be noted that median speeds rose sharply across nearly all cities between the 2025 and 2026 datasets; this largely reflects NBN Co’s nationwide “Accelerate Great” wholesale speed upgrade in September 2025, which automatically lifted the most popular residential plans, rather than localised infrastructure investment. The 2026 figures should therefore be read as a post-upgrade snapshot rather than as evidence of relative improvement between individual cities.
Cost of Living
Housing data (median weekly rent and median house values) was sourced from the Cotality Regional Market Update, February 2026. Cotality is the rebranded name for CoreLogic, the provider used in the 2025 study, so the underlying data source remains consistent.
The median monthly mortgage repayment has been extrapolated from median house values from house sales in the year to February 2026 in each SUA, assuming a 20% deposit, a 5.9% interest rate and a loan term of 30 years. This interest rate is lower than the 6.25% used in the 2025 study, reflecting the fall in market rates over the period.
The transport costs for capital cities and regional centres in each state have been used as proxies for other cities based on their location, for example:
- Wagga Wagga has been used as a proxy for non-capital SUAs in NSW such as Bathurst;
- New South Wales Regional has been used for Albury – Wodonga;
- Australian Capital Territory was used for Canberra – Queanbeyan; and
- Queensland Regional was used for Gold Coast – Tweed Heads.
Childcare costs are the average hourly costs of centre-based childcare, excluding home care.
“At Reckon, we understand that running a business is challenging enough without needing to consider factors often beyond your control, such as the quality of the talent pool, business landscape, internet speed, and cost of living. That’s why we continue to update this study. We know how often the business landscape changes, and we want small business owners to have all the information they need to make confident, well-informed decisions about where to start their businesses.”
‘’For example, by comparing results from 2024 through to 2026, we learned that regional areas are becoming increasingly established as attractive business hubs. We also found that previously top-scoring cities like Perth and Geelong are starting to lose some ground, while cities such as Brisbane, Toowoomba, or Launceston are beginning to surge ahead.”
‘’Whether you own a start-up or an established business, it is more important than ever that business owners keep track of the evolving climate and any factors that could impact how and where their business operates. Doing so can help your business have the best opportunity to develop and grow in the long-term.”
Katy Walker, The Clearing Room
set-up reckon one
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