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Sydney follows with 5.14 million people, up 2.0% over the year.
Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide round out the top five, with Perth and the Sunshine Coast recording some of the fastest five-year growth.
Regional centres like Geelong, Newcastle–Maitland, Sunshine Coast, Canberra–Queanbeyan and Gold Coast–Tweed Heads feature strongly.
Smaller but fast-growing areas include Warragul–Drouin, Bunbury and Bundaberg, highlighting regional expansion.

Glenn Capuano

Customer Success Manager

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Demographer Glenn Capuano provides the latest update to the top 50 cities and towns in Australia.

This is the 2025 update to .id's most popular and enduring blog series of all time - “Top 50 cities and towns in Australia”. Everyone loves a league table, and this list shows the largest 50 urban areas in Australia by the Significant Urban Area measure, using population data from the ABS for the year to June 30th 2024.

This is one of a few measures that use the urban extent (built up area) of a city to define its boundaries. While some outlying rural areas are included, they must be within 5km of a built up area to qualify. Generally the Significant Urban Area measure is smaller than the "Greater Capital City Statistical Division" which we use to benchmark all our major cities LGAs on community profile. But it equates better with what most people would understand as an urban area - and also applies to smaller centres outside of our major cities.

Top 50 cities in Australia by population, June 30th 2024

Rank	Significant Urban Area - State	2024 preliminary ERP	5 year change %	1 year change %
1	Melbourne Vic	5,245,182	6.9%	2.8%
2	Sydney NSW	5,143,256	5.9%	2.0%
3	Brisbane Qld	2,693,649	11.1%	2.7%
4	Perth WA	2,363,562	12.8%	3.1%
5	Adelaide SA	1,449,366	7.1%	1.5%
6	Gold Coast - Tweed Heads Qld-NSW	750,997	10.1%	2.1%
7	Newcastle - Maitland NSW	534,033	7.7%	1.4%
8	Canberra - Queanbeyan ACT-NSW	510,641	8.0%	1.5%
9	Sunshine Coast Qld	417,982	12.9%	2.5%
10	Central Coast NSW	351,237	2.6%	0.8%
11	Wollongong NSW	318,258	5.2%	1.5%
12	Geelong Vic	308,915	11.5%	2.3%
13	Hobart Tas	233,592	4.9%	0.4%
14	Townsville Qld	189,356	5.1%	1.4%
15	Cairns Qld	163,214	6.0%	1.4%
16	Toowoomba Qld	152,087	8.3%	1.5%
17	Darwin NT	138,567	3.6%	0.9%
18	Ballarat Vic	119,284	10.5%	2.5%
19	Bendigo Vic	106,022	5.3%	1.1%
20	Albury - Wodonga NSW-Vic	101,370	6.5%	1.3%
21	Launceston Tas	93,194	3.0%	-0.3%
22	Mackay Qld	89,193	7.7%	1.2%
23	Rockhampton Qld	82,876	4.6%	1.2%
24	Bunbury WA	82,626	7.6%	1.5%
25	Bundaberg Qld	78,626	7.8%	1.8%
26	Coffs Harbour NSW	76,479	4.5%	0.9%
27	Hervey Bay Qld	62,184	10.4%	2.2%
28	Wagga Wagga NSW	57,963	1.8%	0.3%
29	Shepparton - Mooroopna Vic	55,212	3.8%	1.3%
30	Mildura - Buronga Vic-NSW	54,510	2.4%	0.2%
31	Port Macquarie NSW	52,661	8.2%	1.3%
32	Gladstone Qld	48,021	5.5%	1.5%
33	Ballina NSW	47,844	6.6%	1.4%
34	Warragul - Drouin Vic	46,710	17.6%	2.5%
35	Tamworth NSW	45,878	4.5%	0.9%
36	Busselton WA	44,881	11.9%	2.3%
37	Traralgon - Morwell Vic	44,013	3.4%	0.6%
38	Orange NSW	42,977	3.5%	0.8%
39	Bowral - Mittagong NSW	42,278	4.6%	0.7%
40	Dubbo NSW	42,112	5.6%	0.8%
41	Geraldton WA	41,540	6.2%	1.1%
42	Nowra - Bomaderry NSW	40,056	5.6%	0.9%
43	Bathurst NSW	38,642	4.6%	0.8%
44	Albany WA	37,571	6.3%	1.4%
45	Warrnambool Vic	36,496	3.0%	0.7%
46	Devonport Tas	32,932	4.5%	0.2%
47	Kalgoorlie - Boulder WA	30,719	1.0%	0.6%
48	Mount Gambier SA	30,663	2.5%	0.3%
49	Morisset - Cooranbong NSW	30,459	15.2%	3.5%
50	Victor Harbor - Goolwa SA	30,324	10.9%	1.7%

Source: ABS: Regional Population, 2023-24

Yes, Melbourne is larger than Sydney by this measure - and the gap has widened a little to just over 100,000.

By the more commonly used Greater Capital City measure (a wider area), Sydney remains the larger city with 5.56m to Melbourne's 5.35m. This is primarily because Greater Sydney includes the Central Coast, while the Sydney SUA does not. And if you were to add in Newcastle and Wollongong to Sydney - to get a ~150km radius (still predominantly urban), while similarly adding Geelong to Melbourne - Sydney is bigger by over 600k).

Since the last update two years ago, there is surprisingly little change in the rankings of this list. The top 50 is fairly stable.

Only Alice Springs has dropped out (to #51) replaced by Morisset - Cooranbong in the Lake Macquarie area entering at #49 and the largest percentage increase of any area in the list over the past 5 years.
You need to go all the way down to #32 in the list to find any change in the rankings since 2022. Gladstone and Ballina have swapped places, and just below this, Warragul-Drouin has just gone ahead of Tamworth while Busselton has gone ahead of Traralgon-Morwell.
Gold Coast-Tweed has hit three quarters of a million people and is on track to be our 6th million-city - though this is likely to take another 10 years.
Victor Harbor-Goolwa is likely to become the 2nd largest urban centre in South Australia in the next two years - overtaking Mount Gambier, which itself overtook Whyalla a few years back (no longer in the top 50).
The previous version of this list had some boundary changes which caused areas to shift significantly due to including more population. Melton, which was previously included was subsumed into Melbourne's population in 2022, and Ballina was expanded. There are mininimal boundary changes in the 2024 version, hence the rankings don't alter much, despite uneven population growth.

These top 50 cities comprise 22,830,210 people. 84% of the total population of Australia live in these 50 cities which illustrates just how urbanised the nation is! 38% live in just the top 2 and 62% in the top 5.

That's an incredible increase of over 1.1 million in two years, and 94% of Australia's population growth.

Notably, NONE of these areas have fallen in population over 5 years, and only ONE has fallen over the last 1 year (Launceston, Tas).

States/Territories by number of cities in the top 50, 2024

State/Territory	Cities in the top 50
NSW	18
Vic	10
Qld	12
SA	3
WA	6
Tas	3
NT	1

NSW has the greatest number of cities in the top 50, followed by Qld and Vic. Note that this table adds up to 53 - due to the border crossing urban areas which are in multiple states.

Estimated Resident Population for 2024 has now been updated on all the .id sites. You can see our LGA summary on the Demographic Indicators page. While we don’t use the Significant Urban Area classification much, detailed population information by suburb, town and custom areas is in the community profiles for all subscribing places.

If you’re interested in adding a community profile for your area, please contact us via demographics@id.com.au.

Where will grow next?

This is how the population has changed - but where will it grow next? Read the latest analysis from our forecasters for your region here, or visit our National Forecasting Program to learn more or contact our team to request our latest forecasts for your suburb or a custom catchment area.

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