Almost everyone chooses where they live based on lifestyle quality as much as practicality, including the schools, restaurants, shops, parks, healthcare and entertainment nearby, all of which shape the feel of a neighbourhood. However, not every area offers the same amenities, and the same lifestyle can come with a very different price tag depending on where it’s located.
To show Australians where the lifestyle they love might be available for less elsewhere, we profiled every Australian local government area (LGA) across seven everyday lifestyle categories: education, food and drink, shops and retail, parks and recreation, healthcare, entertainment and culture, and transport and connectivity, then matched each area to its closest “lookalikes” nationwide. We then looked at housing costs, revealing where an almost identical lifestyle costs significantly less in rent and mortgage repayments.
Want to know which regions offer a similar lifestyle for over 70% less?
Enter where you currently live to see your area’s closest lifestyle lookalikes, category-by-category comparisons, and the potential savings of relocating.
Having trouble viewing the calculator? Open it in a new tab.
Key takeaways
- For two in three LGAs and 56% of Australians, their closest lifestyle lookalike is in another state, with 352 of the 548 areas analysed (64%) finding their most similar area interstate.
- Capital city inner councils are so distinctive that they have no close lookalike. The City of Adelaide tops the national lifestyle ranking with a score of 84.6/100, yet its best match nationally is City of Perth with a 59.2% match, while the City of Perth’s closest lookalike is the City of Sydney, with a 51.2% match.
- The coastal lifestyle that Sydney’s Eastern LGA’s offer is available in regional South Australia for $596 a week less in rent. Woollahra and Mount Gambier are an 87.9% lifestyle match, yet Woollahra’s median rent of $871 per week compares to Mount Gambier’s $276. A saving of $30,940 a year, plus roughly $49,700 a year off a comparable mortgage.
- Housing costs vary widely across comparable lifestyle areas, with median weekly rents ranging from $871 in Woollahra down to $132 in East Pilbara, and monthly mortgage repayments spanning $5,978 in Hunters Hill to $1,296 in Broken Hill.
Australia’s lookalike LGAs: The closest lookalike pairs
Having trouble viewing the map? Open it in a new tab.
Australia’s closest ‘lookalike LGAs’ are pairs that are each other’s number one lifestyle match in the entire country, based on how closely their amenities align across all seven categories.
Each ‘lookalike’ pair represents the closest lifestyle match for the other out of every LGA in the country, based on how closely their amenities align across all seven categories, with the lookalike LGA offering a more affordable alternative for renters and potential buyers.
Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield in Sydney's South West are the country's most identical pair, with a 97.3% match. Both are large councils with similar amenities, and with Fairfield's median rent only 2.5% below Canterbury-Bankstown's, they are similar in cost as well as lifestyle.
The research identifies LGAs in different states that have very similar lifestyles despite being far apart, and in each case, the lookalike is the cheaper of the two. Camden, in Sydney's south-west, and Casey, in Melbourne's south-east, are a 97.2% match, with Casey 24% cheaper to rent in. Meanwhile, Wyndham (Vic) finds its match in the more affordable Moreton Bay (Qld) at 96.2%. Regional Australia has its own cheaper lookalikes too, with Bathurst matching Tamworth at 96.4% for 6.3% less rent, and Toowoomba matching Rockhampton at 96.2% for 6.7% less, showing that lookalikes aren't just for the big cities.
Some lookalikes are almost free to swap between. Georges River and Fairfield, both in Sydney, are a 96.2% match with rents 13.3% apart, while the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast (95.8% match) sit just 2.2% apart. Their closeness could explain the tiny cost gap; each pair shares a similar housing market, though proximity is no guarantee of similarity, as there are equally strong matches that turn up on opposite sides of the country; for example, Hume (Vic) and Wanneroo (WA) are a 96.4% lookalike match.
Across the 518 areas with a cheaper lookalike, 62.5% find their closest one in another state. New South Wales and Victoria are the strongest interstate pairing, with 55 areas finding their number-one lookalike across that border, followed by Queensland and Western Australia at 43. In the most extreme cases, the remote WA mining city of Karratha finds lifestyle lookalikes in Central Coast (91.5%) and Latrobe (91.2%) in Tasmania, on the opposite side of the country, further than Sydney is from Perth, proving the model matches on lifestyle composition, not geography.
The big cities and their cheaper lookalikes
Having trouble viewing the comparison? Open it in a new tab.
For each state capital's inner-city council area, the study identifies the closest lifestyle match that's genuinely cheaper on both rent and mortgage repayments. The results reveal just how distinctive Australia's CBDs really are.
Brisbane’s Inner City has the strongest match of any capital, with Knox in outer Melbourne a 92.7% lifestyle fit while saving $10 per week in rent and $28 per month on a mortgage. Darwin follows closely, matching Kalgoorlie-Boulder (WA) at 92.5% with a $100 per week rent saving, while Sydney’s nearest genuine lookalike is Yarra (Vic) at 72.2%, cutting rent by $124 per week and mortgage repayments by $566 per month.
Melbourne and Perth both find their closest cost-saving lookalike in regional Victoria. Melbourne matches Warrnambool at 71.2%, saving $127 per week in rent and $797 per month on a mortgage, while Perth's match with Hepburn Shire is slightly less at 27.8% but saves even more week to week, $132 per week and $751 per month. Hobart lands on Hepburn too, matching at 72.0% and saving $119 per week in rent, making the Victorian shire a cheaper lookalike for two capitals at once
Adelaide is the national exception. The City of Adelaide leads six of the seven lifestyle categories, recording the maximum score for food and drink, entertainment and culture, and transport, with only education led elsewhere (by Greater Hume in regional NSW, at 69.2). Yet its cheapest match is Bunbury (WA) at a weak 21.6% fit, as its closest match cities, Perth (59.2%), Hobart (32.7%) and Melbourne (32.4%), are actually more expensive. Alongside Perth, whose best match is Sydney at just 51.2%, Adelaide ranks among the ten “loneliest” places in the country: high-density council areas that serve a whole metropolis are statistical outliers with genuinely nowhere else like them.
Same lifestyle, for less: the biggest savings
Having trouble viewing the comparison? Open it in a new tab.
Where can Australians find the same lifestyle for less? The strongest matches pair areas with at least 85% lifestyle similarity with the biggest drops in median weekly rent, with Sydney’s wealthy harbourside and eastern councils dominating the list.
Woollahra to Mount Gambier (SA) is the biggest rent drop among strong lifestyle matches, with an 87.9% lifestyle fit and a saving of $596 per week in rent, or $30,940 per year. A comparable mortgage would also be around $4,144 per month cheaper, equating to approximately $49,700 in annual savings.
Waverley, home to Bondi, matches Victor Harbor (SA) at 88.0% for a 57% rent cut, taking the median from $840 to $364 per week and saving $24,752 a year in rent alongside $3,288 a month on a mortgage.
The pattern repeats across Sydney’s most expensive postcodes. Ku-ring-gai matches Murray (WA) at 92.7% for a $414 per week rent saving, the Northern Beaches match Townsville (Qld) at 90.5% saving $401 per week, and Mosman matches Marion (SA) at 91.5% saving $326 per week. Across these moves, the mortgage gaps are even larger than the rent gaps, with several cutting monthly repayments by between $2,500 and $4,150. South Australia emerges as the value destination of choice for premium Sydney lifestyles, with Onkaparinga, Prospect, Marion and Victor Harbour recurring as the affordable Sydney-lookalike areas.
A dramatic saving doesn’t always require an interstate move, either. Cottesloe’s cheaper lookalike sits inside its own metro area, with Perth’s Bayswater matching at 90.5% while remaining 36% cheaper on rent, a $245 per week saving. Importantly, affordability doesn’t have to mean a lifestyle trade-off: the Northern Grampians (Vic) rents for $251 per week yet scores 27.3/100 on lifestyle, well above the national median of 15.3.
There’s no place like home: The LGA’s with the least lookalikes
Not every area has a lookalike. While most Australian LGAs can point to at least one match somewhere in the country, a handful are so different that they don’t have a distinctive lookalike, meaning there isn’t anywhere in Australia that closely resembles them.
Cunderdin, a small LGA of Western Australia, is the loneliest place in the country. Its closest lookalike, Ararat in regional Victoria, is just a 51.1% match the weakest best-match of all LGA’s analysed. It's followed closely by the City of Perth, whose nearest lookalike anywhere in Australia is the City of Sydney at 51.2%, and remote Wiluna (WA), which also finds its best match in Sydney at 53.3%.
The list spans a state capital council with around 35,700 residents down to Wiluna, home to fewer than 600 people, and takes in both the country's highest-scoring lifestyle area and some of its most modest. The City of Adelaide tops the national lifestyle ranking at 84.6/100, yet its best match anywhere is the City of Perth at just 59.2%; both capitals sit among the ten loneliest places in the country, confirming that high-density inner councils serving an entire metropolis are true statistical outliers.
Kangaroo Island stands alone in a different way, with its specific mix of tourism-driven amenities finding no mainland or island equivalent; the closest thing to it anywhere in Australia is Hobart, a 61.9% match. The same is true across the rest of the list. Outback Quilpie's best match in the country is fellow rural Queensland shire Maranoa, at just a 56.7% fit. Central Darling, in far-west NSW, finds its nearest twin across the border in Port Augusta (SA), at 60.1%. Coober Pedy's closest match is also Maranoa (Qld), at the same 60.1%, while the tiny coastal borough of Queenscliffe (Vic) comes nearest to Hepburn, in Victoria's spa country, at 61.9%.
“For most Australians, the biggest barrier to moving somewhere more affordable is the fear of giving up the lifestyle they love. What this research shows is that for the vast majority of the country, that trade-off is a myth. However, it may involve a big move. Over half (56%) of Australians have their closest lifestyle match in another state entirely, and on average that twin sits more than 1,300 kilometres away. The lifestyle you've built isn't unique to your postcode; it exists elsewhere, often at a fraction of the cost.
“The savings on offer are genuinely life-changing. Someone renting in Sydney's eastern suburbs can find an almost identical lookalike area in regional South Australia and keep more than $30,000 a year in their pocket, while mortgage holders stand to save even more. We hope this gives Australians weighing up a move the confidence that their perfect match might be somewhere they've never even considered.”
About the Data
The Lookalike Cities tool matches every part of Australia to the places that feel most like it, and shows how much you could save on housing by moving there. It was built on official government data and leading open datasets, so every match and saving is grounded in real data rather than opinion.
How We Built It
We assessed all 548 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Australia, the council areas used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2025 boundaries), across seven everyday lifestyle categories that people weigh up when choosing where to live.
For each area we counted the amenities on the ground and expressed them per 10,000 residents (using ABS Estimated Resident Population at 30 June 2025), so that large cities and small towns can be compared fairly. Every measure was then placed on a simple 0 to 100 scale, and the seven category scores were combined into an overall lifestyle profile for each area.
To find each area’s lookalikes, we compared these detailed profiles and identified the places with the most similar mix of amenities. Importantly, cost of living is never used to find a match. Areas are matched purely on lifestyle, and cost is layered on afterwards to reveal where you could enjoy a similar lifestyle for less. This is what allows the tool to surface places that are just as liveable, yet more affordable.
Areas that are unincorporated territories, or that have fewer than 10,000 residents, are still included as a starting point but are not offered as destinations, as they are not realistic places to relocate to.
The Categories
| Category | What we measured | Source |
| Shops & Retail | Supermarkets and everyday stores, fashion, homewares, department and specialty shops | Foursquare Open Places |
| Food & Drink | Cafés and bakeries, restaurants, takeaway, bars and pubs | Foursquare Open Places |
| Education | Primary, secondary and combined schools | ACARA School Locations |
| Parks & Recreation | Green and blue space, beaches, gyms and sports facilities | OpenStreetMap, BeachSafe, Foursquare |
| Healthcare | Local GPs, dentists and hospitals | National Health Workforce Dataset, Department of Health |
| Entertainment & Culture | Cinemas, theatres, live-music venues, museums and galleries | Foursquare Open Places |
| Transport | Public transport access (bus, tram, train and ferry), weighted by mode | Transit (GTFS) feeds |
Weightings
By default, each of the seven categories carries an equal weighting (around 14% each), so no single part of life dominates the result. In the interactive tool, you can adjust these weightings to prioritise what matters most to you, such as giving more weight to food, beaches or public transport, and the matches update to suit.
Cost of Living and Savings
The savings shown compare median weekly rent and median monthly mortgage repayments between your area and each lookalike, sourced from the ABS Census. Because the Census figures are collected periodically, we brought them up to 2026 values using published national indices: the ABS Wage Price Index for incomes, the ABS Consumer Price Index (rents) for rent, and Reserve Bank of Australia lending rate data for mortgage repayments. This keeps the comparison fair and current.
Making Sure It’s Accurate
- Trusted sources. Every category draws on official or authoritative data, including the ABS, ACARA, the Reserve Bank, the Department of Health, and established open datasets.
- Independently validated. Our amenity counts were cross-checked against official ABS business data, and the two lined up almost perfectly, confirming the venue data reflects real activity on the ground.
- Located precisely. Every venue is placed into the correct area using its exact map coordinates, rather than an unreliable text address.
- Fair comparisons. Counting amenities per 10,000 residents means a busy small town is not unfairly beaten by a big city simply because the city is larger.
Limitations
- Venue data captures the presence and density of amenities, not their quality, price or opening hours.
- Open datasets have strong coverage in cities and larger towns. Some venues in remote areas may not yet be recorded, so a very low count can occasionally reflect a data gap rather than a true absence.
- Counting amenities per resident can flatter areas with very small populations, which is why the smallest areas are excluded as destinations.
- Some figures are based on the most recent Census and reflect conditions at that time, adjusted to 2026 dollars where relevant.
- The tool measures the structural, on-the-ground ingredients of a lifestyle, not the subjective experience of living somewhere.
