How wide is the pint-price gap between pubs?
The middle half of the national venue sample runs from $11.70 to $14.90. Here is what the spread looks like within each city.
price span covering the middle half of venue averages
Price span covering the middle half of venue averages, by city
Regular venue-average pints · AUD · n = contributing venues
- Melbourne$1.91491 venues
- Sydney$2.83181 venues
- Brisbane$3.0084 venues
- Gold Coast$2.6539 venues
- Perth$1.50197 venues
- Adelaide$2.70125 venues
Rows with fewer than 30 venues are omitted. Beer comparisons use identified products labelled “pint” on the recorded menu. Unspecified tap/house beer listings are excluded. The label does not guarantee the same volume everywhere, particularly in South Australia; these figures are not a like-for-like volume ranking.
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One average cannot show the whole menu of choices
A city can have the same middle price as another and still have a wider spread. The lower and upper quartiles show where the middle half of pub averages sit.
A high price is not proof of a rip-off
The mix of beers, location and pub offering can differ. These are position markers in PINTR’s regular-price sample; compare a named beer and the same venue if you want a closer match.
Regular venue-average pint price distribution
| Place | Venues | 10th percentile | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | 90th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 1,732 | $10.00 | $11.70 | $13.30 | $14.90 | $16.00 |
| Victoria | 650 | $12.00 | $13.53 | $14.72 | $15.67 | $16.88 |
| New South Wales | 352 | $9.91 | $11.18 | $12.25 | $13.81 | $15.50 |
| Queensland | 260 | $9.98 | $10.50 | $11.50 | $12.90 | $14.30 |
| Western Australia | 249 | $11.93 | $13.00 | $13.67 | $14.50 | $15.20 |
| South Australia | 155 | $9.38 | $10.00 | $11.00 | $12.50 | $13.69 |
| Melbourne | 491 | $12.20 | $14.00 | $14.92 | $15.91 | $16.93 |
| Sydney | 181 | $10.00 | $11.50 | $12.95 | $14.33 | $16.00 |
| Brisbane | 84 | $9.86 | $10.50 | $11.93 | $13.50 | $14.32 |
| Gold Coast | 39 | $10.74 | $11.23 | $12.20 | $13.88 | $15.02 |
| Perth | 197 | $11.56 | $13.00 | $13.75 | $14.50 | $15.20 |
| Adelaide | 125 | $9.46 | $10.00 | $11.50 | $12.70 | $14.07 |
The data behind the report
Summary tables, contributing venue figures and a chart you can use. No sign-in or email required.
Frozen edition 2026-11-07-501081af9ed8. These download URLs remain attached to this snapshot.
What the fields mean
- venues / n
- Distinct contributing venues in that place and table; not all pubs in the area.
- value
- Venue-average named regular pint price, in AUD. Tables then calculate percentiles across those venue averages.
- checked
- Recorded source-check date. Blank means a complete date is unavailable. For a venue average or bill, every part needs a date; the earliest date is retained.
- snapshot_date
- When the public PINTR catalogue snapshot was retrieved, not when every venue’s menu was checked.
How we counted
1,732 distinct venues contribute 1,732 venue-level figures to this report. 893 of those figures have a complete recorded source-check date.
- PINTR includes pubs, bars, clubs and other licensed venues. Every headline count refers to the matching PINTR sample, not every pub in an area.
- A beer price must match a visible venue in the retrieved full catalogue. Unmatched venue records are excluded.
- This is a snapshot of reported prices in PINTR, not a representative survey of every Australian pub. A venue without a matching price is outside the denominator, rather than counted as expensive.
- Regular prices only. Happy hours, daily specials, members’ prices, alcohol-free products and drinks without an explicit serving label are excluded. Known venue aliases are counted once.
- A table row needs at least 30 contributing venues. City areas use PINTR’s published state-boundary and radius definitions; neighbouring city catchments can overlap.
- A snapshot date records when PINTR’s public catalogue was retrieved. It does not mean each menu was checked that day. Individual source-check dates, including blanks, are retained in the downloads.
- First average named regular pints within each venue. Sort those venue averages. Percentiles use linear interpolation at (n − 1) × p, rounded to cents. The middle-half span is the 75th minus 25th percentile.
- Beer comparisons use identified products labelled “pint” on the recorded menu. Unspecified tap/house beer listings are excluded. The label does not guarantee the same volume everywhere, particularly in South Australia; these figures are not a like-for-like volume ranking.
Prices come from PINTR’s published venue and price catalogue, retrieved . The public directory and downloads show the supporting figures. This report does not measure inflation, national market share or changes over time.
PINTR price methodologyCite this finding
The middle 50% of regular venue-average pint prices in PINTR’s 1,732-venue sample ran from $11.70 to $14.90.
PINTR. “How wide is the pint-price gap between pubs?” The PINTR Times. Catalogue snapshot 7 November 2026. https://www.pintr.com.au/articles/data/pint-price-ranges-by-city
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Using the figures and charts
You’re welcome to quote PINTR’s aggregate findings and reuse these charts in your reporting. Please credit PINTR and link to this report. Keep the snapshot date and sample description with the figure. Venue photography and third-party material are outside this permission.
Need a particular city or a calculation checked? Contact the PINTR data desk.