The 10 Best Australian Cities to Start a Business in 2026

Brisbane is the best Australian city to start a business in 2026. That is the headline finding of the latest Reckon Startup Cities Report. The right city for your venture still depends on what your business actually needs from its location.

Where you set up shop is not a branding decision. For founders and CFOs, it is a capital allocation call. It shapes your runway, your hiring costs, and how easily you can tap government support. Capital cities used to win this by default. Rising overheads and better regional infrastructure have changed that.

We built this guide using data from the 2026 Reckon Startup Cities Report, alongside broader economic indicators. We have left out the marketing rhetoric. What matters here is median income, business survival rates, infrastructure, and the real cost of operating in each location.

1. Brisbane, QLD (67.75/100)

Category highlights: Internet Speed 94.69, Business Landscape 74.72, Talent Pool 78.85, Cost of Living 19.85

Brisbane climbed from 8th place in 2024 to 1st in 2026, and the data explains why. Its biggest advantage is digital infrastructure: the city posts the highest internet speed score in the country, backed by the NEXTDC SC1 subsea cable landing station.

• Key industries. Aerospace, space commercialisation, cleantech, and sportstech. Brisbane anchors an innovation corridor that includes PsiQuantum’s billion-dollar quantum computing project and Gilmour Space Technologies, which raised $140 million in Series E funding in 2026.
• Government backing. The Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation actively de-risks early-stage ventures, including through its Female Founders Co-Investment Fund.
• Talent pipeline. Local universities feed a strong graduate pool. Software engineer salaries average $79,500 USD, a competitive figure by global standards.

2. Perth, WA (65.78/100)

Category highlights: Business Landscape 87.37, Talent Pool 84.00, Internet Speed 78.23, Cost of Living 12.67

Perth slipped to 2nd place in 2026 but remains a serious hub for industrial, B2B, and resource-focused businesses. Business density grew 4.71% year on year, with strong survival rates across the board.

• Key industries. Mining technology, automated resource extraction, marine engineering, and logistics.
• Workforce. Perth’s technical workforce commands a personal median weekly income of $1,541.40, a reflection of Western Australia’s high-wage, resource-driven economy.
• The trade-off. A low Cost of Living score (12.67) is Perth’s main constraint, driven by expensive commercial real estate. For businesses that need direct access to WA’s resource sector, the overhead is usually worth it.

3. Toowoomba, QLD (64.93/100)

Category highlights: Cost of Living 67.10, Internet Speed 75.24, Business Landscape 61.19, Talent Pool 54.58

Toowoomba is Queensland’s strongest regional performer. It proves regional hubs can compete on infrastructure without capital-city costs.

• Affordability. Regional transport costs sit well below metro rates, and median monthly mortgages come in under $2,800. That keeps the operating burn rate low.
• Connectivity. Despite being inland, Toowoomba records the lowest internet latency in the country at 8ms, a strong result for cloud-reliant logistics or AgTech data operations.
• Stability. Toowoomba has the lowest projected business exit rate among regional centres by 2030, at just 182 closures per 10,000 residents.

4. Adelaide, SA (64.52/100)

Category highlights: Business Landscape 88.13, Talent Pool 70.20, Internet Speed 68.29, Cost of Living 31.22

Adelaide posts the highest Business Landscape score in the entire study, 88.13, backed by a 77.9% first-year survival rate and a 52.1% three-year survival rate.

• Key industries. Space commercialisation, defence tech, advanced manufacturing, and machine learning. Adelaide hosts the Australian Space Agency headquarters, which draws specialised government-backed capital.
• Talent at a discount. Senior developer salaries in Adelaide range from $110,000 to $150,000 AUD. Sydney’s equivalent runs from $165,000 to $210,000 AUD.
• Lower tax burden. South Australia offers lower payroll taxes and dedicated regional investment bodies.

5. Gladstone, QLD (64.19/100)

Category highlights: Cost of Living 87.32, Internet Speed 70.93, Business Landscape 50.27, Talent Pool 46.80

Gladstone posts the highest Cost of Living score in the national top ten, 87.32. For bootstrapped startups and manufacturers where floor space is the main cost driver, that number carries real weight.

• Low overhead. Median weekly rent sits at $551, with monthly mortgage equivalents averaging $2,787.06. Warehouse and manufacturing space costs a fraction of capital-city rates.
• Key industries. Heavy industrial, green hydrogen and clean energy, and port logistics.
• Momentum. Gladstone climbed nine spots nationally between 2025 and 2026, driven by industrial decarbonisation projects and regional infrastructure spending.

6. Mackay, QLD (63.95/100)

Category highlights: Talent Pool 77.36, Cost of Living 63.28, Internet Speed 62.75, Business Landscape 53.00

Mackay sits between high-yield industrial markets and regional affordability, and it has held a national top-ten spot consistently.

• Income vs. cost. Mackay records the highest personal median weekly income among regional hubs analysed, $1,690.48, ahead of Sydney and Melbourne, while holding a competitive cost-of-living score of 63.28.
• Key industries. Mining Equipment, Technology and Services (METS), sub-tropical agriculture, and industrial logistics.
• Market access. Mackay works well for heavy engineering startups chasing direct enterprise sales with Queensland’s resource operators.

7. Launceston, TAS (63.60/100)

Category highlights: Internet Speed 73.96, Business Landscape 69.48, Cost of Living 68.93, Talent Pool 39.93

Launceston climbed ten places in 2026 to overtake Hobart as Tasmania’s top business location, a sign of the state’s growing commercial pull.

• Tax environment. Tasmania’s overall business tax sits at 10%, well below Victoria’s 14%.
• Infrastructure. Launceston beats Hobart on internet speed and hosts deep-tech data centre operators such as Firmus, which has raised over $1 billion in all-time funding.
• Running costs. Rent and cost-of-living figures stay competitive, making Launceston a solid base for hardware, deep-tech, or agricultural startups.

8. Townsville, QLD (62.42/100)

Category highlights: Cost of Living 74.54, Internet Speed 67.81, Business Landscape 60.10, Talent Pool 46.01

Townsville balances commercial viability with lifestyle, and it is the home base of SafetyCulture, one of Australia’s global industrial SaaS success stories.

• Operating costs. Weekly rent averages $578, with mortgages around $3,030.02, keeping burn rates tight.
• Key industries. Marine science, mineral processing, tropically adapted agriculture, and industrial SaaS.
• Regional growth. Townsville climbed seven positions nationally between 2025 and 2026.

9. Darwin, NT (61.84/100)

Category highlights: Talent Pool 86.27, Business Landscape 64.15, Cost of Living 62.25, Internet Speed 38.42

Darwin holds the nation’s second-highest Talent Pool score, 86.27, which makes it a genuine outlier among regional cities.

• Workforce strength. Darwin has the country’s highest labour force participation rate, 75.2%, and unemployment sits at just 3.08%. Median weekly income is $1,549.35.
• Rapid shift. Darwin’s Business Landscape score jumped from 39.03 in 2025 to 64.15 in 2026, signalling a real move toward structured corporate activity.
• The catch. Internet speed is Darwin’s weak point, 38.42, a result of its remote location. It suits logistics, trade, and construction ventures better than latency-sensitive SaaS.

10. Melbourne, VIC (60.50/100)

Category highlights: Internet Speed 91.60, Talent Pool 81.42, Business Landscape 41.62, Cost of Living 24.25

Victoria’s overall business appeal has slipped over the past three years, but Melbourne still leads the country for engineering-heavy, research-led product development.

• Talent density. Melbourne has Australia’s largest young technical workforce, 697,400 workers aged 20 to 29, fed by Monash and the University of Melbourne.
• Key industries. HealthTech, biotech, life sciences, and enterprise SaaS. Victoria is home to over 40% of the nation’s listed healthtech companies.
• Infrastructure. Melbourne posts the second-highest internet speed score in the study, 91.60, supporting high-performance computing and AI training workloads.

Matching Your Business Model to a City

Choosing a location means matching your operational dependencies to a city’s actual strengths. Get this wrong, and you have picked one of the more common reasons startups fail in Australia.

Also read: R&D tax incentive offers Australian tech startups a way around the capital-city talent squeeze

If your venture needs Tier 1 venture capital and top-tier technical talent, Sydney or Melbourne remain the default choice. You pay for it in cost of living, but you buy recruiting speed and network density.

If you are building a deep-tech, hardware, or AgTech company, Adelaide, Launceston, or Toowoomba let you keep costs down without giving up infrastructure. That extends your runway. And wherever you set up, the 43.5% Refundable R&D Tax Incentive works the same way: it offsets technical payroll costs regardless of your postcode.

Beyond the Rankings: Market Access and Export Support

A good ranking tells you about internal conditions. It says less about how easily you can reach customers outside Australia.

At a recent Adelaide export session, 66% of attendees identified as active exporters, and 49% named Southeast Asia as their primary market. That reflects how much regional hubs now depend on integrated supply chains to compete internationally, not just on local cost advantages.

Government programs support this shift. Austrade’s Trade Resilience Service, for example, gives exporters a practical channel to navigate disruptions, enter new markets, and build resilience into their supply chains. When you weigh up a location, factor in proximity to target markets and partners, alongside local zoning, licensing, and regulatory costs.

Where These Rankings Fall Short

We would be doing you a disservice if we presented this data as gospel. Every ranking system has blind spots, and the Reckon Startup Cities Report is no exception.

The index combines multiple categories into a single composite score, and most methodologies weight each category equally. That can flatten the real-world importance of any one factor for your specific business. A logistics company and a SaaS startup do not care about internet latency to the same degree, but an equal-weighted score treats them as if they do.

Composite scores also trade nuance for simplicity. A single number is easy to compare across ten cities, but it can hide category-specific detail that would actually shape your decision. Read the full category breakdowns, not just the headline score, before you commit to a location.

Rankings like this one also rely on underlying data that varies in quality, frequency, and transparency depending on the source. Treat this guide as a strong starting point for your own research, not a substitute for it.

How Pattens Group Can Help

Wherever you decide to set up, understanding which grants and R&D incentives you qualify for matters as much as your postcode. That is where we come in. Pattens Group works with founders across Australia to identify and secure the government support their business is entitled to, regardless of location.