Where Australia's trade businesses are: 201 locations, ranked

Short answer

65,117 Australian trade businesses sit across 3,470 suburbs and 201 locations with a page of their own. The five largest — Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide — hold 29.7% of them between them, and that figure is lower than you would guess from population because metropolitan work is split across suburb-level locations: Berwick and Craigieburn are counted separately from Melbourne. Outside the metros the practical consequence is not worse tradespeople — it is fewer of them, so booking further ahead matters more than shopping around.

A directory's geography is a fact about where businesses are findable, which is not quite the same fact as where they are. Two things shape the table below: metropolitan density, and how a metro area gets divided — a business in Berwick is listed under Berwick, not under Melbourne, because "electrician in Berwick" is what people actually search.

The biggest locations

LocationBusinesses listedTrades covered
Melbourne, VIC5,52523
Sydney, NSW5,13123
Brisbane, QLD3,73323
Perth, WA3,00523
Adelaide, SA1,93223
Gold Coast, QLD1,74023
Newcastle, NSW1,12123
Sunshine Coast, QLD96523
Central Coast, NSW85423
Canberra, ACT74622
Geelong, VIC71723
Wollongong, NSW69423
Cairns, QLD59023
Hobart, TAS54622
Townsville, QLD54422
Logan, QLD53720
Dandenong, VIC52421
Toowoomba, QLD48021
Parramatta, NSW46821
Darwin, NT46221
Ringwood, VIC46119
Frankston, VIC42821
Berwick, VIC40819
Craigieburn, VIC40821
Joondalup, WA39322

What a thin location means for you

A location page exists here once at least 20 businesses are near it, and a trade-and-location page once at least 5 are. Those thresholds are deliberate: a page listing two businesses is not a comparison, and publishing it would imply a choice that is not there.

  • Book earlier. In a location with a dozen businesses in your trade, the good ones are booked out, not idle.
  • Widen the radius before you lower the bar. A business 40km away that answers the phone beats one nearby that does not.
  • Expect a travel charge, and ask for it as a number. Outside a metro it is the normal way distance gets priced.

Browse by location

Method

Locations are recovered from address text rather than trusted from a column — the state field is empty on most upstream rows — and folded so that a suburb and its parent location do not compete for the same query. Suburb pages exist for 631 suburbs whose name is genuinely searched and whose slug does not already belong to a larger location. Measured 2026-10-01.

Common questions

Which Australian city has the most trade businesses listed?
Melbourne, with 5,525 across 23 trades.
Why does my suburb not have a page?
A suburb page exists once enough businesses are near it — 20 for a location page — because a page listing two businesses implies a choice that is not there. The larger location covering your suburb will list them.

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