How We Score Every Suburb in Australia

There's no shortage of opinions about which suburbs are "good". What's been missing is a consistent, transparent way to compare them on the things that actually matter. That's what SuburbCheck is for — and the only way that's useful is if you can see how the numbers are built.

One overall score, three components

The headline overall score combines the three metrics we can measure to a consistent standard in every state and territory:

• Transport — public-transport access from GTFS timetable data: trains, trams, buses, ferries, service frequency and CBD commute time.
• Liveability — walkable amenities, open space and climate comfort, from OpenStreetMap and the Bureau of Meteorology.
• Education — average school ICSEA (a nationally standardised index) blended with the share of residents holding a degree.

The chart shows how those three are weighted. We keep it simple on purpose: a score you can't explain is a score you can't trust.

Why safety is scored separately

You'll notice residential safety isn't in the overall score. That's deliberate. Crime data quality varies enormously by state — NSW, Victoria, SA and the ACT publish detailed suburb-level statistics, Queensland reports at the LGA level, WA and the NT only at a regional level, and Tasmania publishes nothing below the state. Folding that into a single number would punish suburbs simply for living in a state with coarser data. So safety is shown as its own independent score wherever the data supports it.

Scoring fairly across very different places

Two more choices worth knowing about:

• Transport is a national percentile. Most Australian suburbs have no public transport at all, so benchmarking against a state median made every city suburb saturate at 100. Ranking suburbs against each other nationally keeps the score meaningful — inner-city, middle-suburban and regional suburbs stay genuinely apart.
• Safety and liveability are benchmarked per state. Crime is counted differently and amenities are distributed differently in each state, so a "70" means "around the state median" wherever you are.

Property is data, not a score

We show median prices, rents and yields throughout, but they never feed a score — what counts as "affordable" depends entirely on your budget. We'd rather give you the facts than bake an opinion into a number.

For the full detail — every formula, data source and known limitation — see our methodology page, or just start exploring suburbs.