How we rank a pub.
PINTR’s score combines reported food and beer value with Google reviews. It is a catalogue comparison, not a critic’s review or a guarantee of today’s menu. The PINTR score is separate from the Google star rating shown beside it.
What goes into the score?
+ 25 × beer value ratio ÷ (1 + beer value ratio)
+ 25 × food value ratio ÷ (1 + food value ratio)
The result is out of 100: Google contributes up to 50 points; beer and food contribute up to 25 points each. A higher score is better. This is a relative comparison, not a percentage of customers who recommend the pub. Paid promotion does not influence this score.
How do you compare prices in the area?
For each beer, we match the product and serving size: a pot is never compared with a pint, and Carlton Draught is kept separate from Carlton Dry. Meals are compared within the same category, such as chicken parma, steak or steak sandwich. Where the catalogue lacks portion or cut details, food categories cannot account for those differences.
Each item’s value ratio is the median price at other venues divided by this pub’s price. We start in the suburb and require at least 5 other venues. If there are too few, we try the city, then state, then Australia. City pages use approximate nearby-area search radii, rather than council boundaries: Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane use 60 km; Gold Coast uses 50 km. Regional city areas use 15–45 km around the median of catalogue venue locations labelled with that city. Each card names the comparison area, sample count and median.
A ratio of 1 means the listed price matches the comparison median. A ratio of 1.25 means the comparison median is 1.25 times the pub’s price: a $10 pint against a $12.50 median. One venue contributes one price per product and size; duplicate regular listings use the highest price. The pub itself is excluded from its benchmark.
We bound each item’s scoring ratio between 0.5 and 2 so an unusually low or high price cannot dominate. Ratios are combined using a geometric mean, giving each beer equal weight after combining its serving sizes, and each meal category equal weight. The displayed value ratios use those bounded item ratios; the example prices remain the original reported amounts.
Why does the number of Google reviews matter?
A rating with few reviews is pulled toward the catalogue’s mean of 4.30 stars. As reviews accumulate, the adjusted rating approaches the pub’s actual Google rating. This stops one five-star review automatically outranking a well-reviewed pub. We use the Google rating and count on file, not the text of individual reviews.
Which pubs can be ranked?
A venue needs a Google rating with a positive review count, at least one comparable regular beer price and at least one comparable regular main-meal price. Cheap chips alone do not qualify. A venue also needs a pub, bar or brewery signal in its name, recorded features or matched business categories. Obvious non-pub attractions are excluded. Places without enough classification evidence remain unranked; all their catalogue data stays available. Choosing several features requires a venue to have every selected feature. “Any feature” removes the feature restriction.
1,130 of 7,637 catalogue venues currently meet the ranking criteria. Missing data is not treated as a zero score, and an unranked venue is not necessarily a worse pub. Stable ties are ordered by Google review count and then venue slug.
How current is the data?
These rankings are prepared when PINTR’s catalogue is published, so location pages can open without loading the full venue database or making Google requests. Regular prices may be older or undated. Timed offers, daily specials and member-only deals are excluded from ranking. Check the venue page for the listed menu and current details before heading out.