What are the biggest cities in Australia?

The biggest cities in Australia by population are Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Using the significant urban area measurement, Melbourne is now the largest Australian city.

Defining the size of a city depends largely on how you measure it. This is very much the case in Australia, which has a few large cities, and then essentially a series of small to medium-sized towns. Some of those large cities, notably Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, are technically several cities bundled together. There can be a bewildering array of local governments inside a sprawling urban area.

Biggest cities in Australia by area

So, what are the biggest cities in Australia and how do we measure them? Forget about geographical area. This leads to some weird anomalies with massive chunks of the outback being bundled with tiny mining towns.

Another odd measurement is Greater Capital City Statistical Areas, which ends up being a bit of a stretch. The Central Coast gets lumped in with Sydney, for example.

Significant urban areas

Perhaps the most useful measurement comes from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which collects population figures for the “significant urban area”. This can lead to some cities – such as Albury-Wodonga, Gisborne-Macedon and Gladstone–Tannum Sands – being bundled together.

But this isn’t unreasonable. No visitor to Forster or Tuncurry, for example, would realistically treat the two as separate entities.

The significant urban area roughly equates to the city plus suburbs measurement that most people would use to define a city’s area. Using Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for significant urban areas, released in March 2021 and with populations as of 2020, these are the biggest cities in Australia by population.

Biggest cities in Australia by population

1. Melbourne, Victoria – population 4,969,305
2. Sydney, New South Wales – population 4,966,806
3. Brisbane, Queensland – population 2,475,680.
4. Perth, Western Australia – population 2,083,645.
5. Adelaide, South Australia – population 1,357,504.
6. Gold Coast-Tweed Heads, QLD/ NSW – population 709,495.
7. Newcastle-Maitland, NSW – population 498,015.
8. Canberra-Queanbeyan, ACT/ NSW – population 464,995.
9. Sunshine Coast, QLD – population 348,343.
10. Central Coast, NSW – population 337,384.
11. Wollongong, NSW – population 309,345.
12. Geelong, Victoria – population 282,412
13. Hobart, Tasmania – population 219,071.
14. Townsville, QLD – population 183,222.
15. Cairns, QLD – population 155,340
16. Toowoomba, QLD – population 139,526.
17. Darwin, Northern Territory – population 133,268.
18. Ballarat, VIC – population 109,533.
19. Bendigo, VIC – population 102, 499.
20. Albury-Wodonga, NSW-VIC – population 96,075.