Here’s a quick comparison: Victoria has half price fares until the end of 2026. So how does Melbourne now compare to other capital cities?
It’s a bit complicated. These are current adult fares for short to medium distance trips:
I would expect that most people pay the top of the price range shown.
The ranges are due to:
- peak vs off-peak (Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide)
- differing train vs tram/bus fares (Sydney)
- fare zone differences (Melbourne Zone 1 or Zone 2)
- cash/Tap And Go vs Smartcard (Perth – Why did they decide to charge the higher cash fares for Tap And Go? It seems illogical.)
Other things to note:
- In all cities except Sydney the fares include free transfers onto other services and modes. Sydney has a transfer discount, so you don’t pay a complete additional fare when say changing from train to bus, but it’s not zero.
- The Sydney range shown here includes peak trips up to 10km by train. The fares are higher for longer trips, including on buses. Ferries are even more expensive. Single tickets (instead of Opal or Tap And Go) are also more expensive. It’s complicated.
- Cities other than Sydney have mostly flat fares; the maximum shown here will get you to anywhere in the metropolitan area.
- The maximum fare in Melbourne right now is $2.85, but you’ll pay up to $5.70 for longer journeys to and from regional Victoria
- Daily and/or Weekly caps apply in most jurisdictions. (Unfortunately Melbourne only has Daily caps. Weekly caps would be a very welcome upgrade.)
- Not shown: Hobart has free fares until mid-2027. Darwin is free indefinitely.
The price cut means Melbourne has gone from the most expensive for short distances (up to $5.70) to one of the cheaper capital cities.
But in Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, and even sometimes Sydney, many shortish trips to/from the CBD and inner suburbs are still cheaper. (Brisbane is cheapest obviously at 50 cents, but it’s an outlier.)
So Melbourne is not the cheapest. But at least now it’s competitive.
With Melbourne finally getting Tap And Go, it’ll be interesting to see what effect this and half price fares have on patronage.
And of course, will whoever wins the November State election leave the fares at this level, or revert most fares back to $5.70 per 2 hours/$11.40 per day?
PS. They don’t make it easy to check the fares in Melbourne these days. You’re forced to have a smartphone and scan a QR code that takes you to a not-particularly-mobile-friendly web site where you have to navigate to a price list.
7 replies on “Comparing PT fares around Australia”
I will guess fares will return to full price on January 1st, regardless of who wins the election.
I don’t understand how it is complicated to calculate your fare. It is either a two hour ticket price or a day ticket price, with the exception of travel in zone two, that not being an area where strangers generally venture.
I just Googled ‘Melbourne public transport fares’ and I had all the answers, without having to search any further. It is hard to imagine people not having an internet connected phone now.
Sydney’s fare system is absurdly complicated, until you reach the magical age of 60, when it is $2.50 a day.
The fare system isn’t too hard, but the zone fares vary according to Melbourne zone 1 or 2, and regional zones are different again.
The question is when you’re standing in front of the machine wanting to travel for a day, can you remember if it’s $6 or $7 or whatever that you need to load, assuming you don’t want a bunch of money left on your card afterwards.
Tap And Go helps with this, but not everyone can use it or wants to use it. And the system shouldn’t rely on everyone having a smartphone when they could just put the main prices on the poster, like they did until this year.
Marcus Wong has a good post on this: https://wongm.com/2026/06/useless-qr-code-posters-for-melbourne-public-transport-fares/
— as he shows, they’re on the 4th poster this year, so it’s not even like the QR codes save money.
I don’t understand the difficulty. Even if you don’t have auto-top-up, what’s wrong with loading extra money on your myki? Sure, it would be interesting to know the fare for a given trip, but heaps of trips hit the 2-hour maximum; I pay $1.80 now/$3.60 normally to ride bus route 774 within Frankston, from the Foot Street corridor to the railway station. Can’t say for sure, but I suspect that most trips will hit the 2-hour maximum, unless you’re staying within your suburb and riding a normal route whose price you can memorise.
The reason Perth charges the “higher” fare for contactless payments is because that’s historically been the standard cash fare. It was to dis-incentivise using cash and instead use a Smartrider card where you get a 10% discount rate (20% if you autoload with a bank card). Going forward, as contactless is now available, it would make sense to just apply that full discount across all payment methods but who knows?
@Nathaniel, it’s important to remember that some people are closely watching their pennies, and don’t want extra money put on a card that could be better used elsewhere.
Likewise, some occasional users on principle don’t want to leave money on a card they rarely use.
@Van, it’s interesting – Perth’s stance on this is unique in Australia. I also don’t recall seeing other systems elsewhere do this, but I couldn’t swear to it.
Bring back the 3-hour fares, but capped at exactly 180 minutes rather than the Metcard-era two hours plus the remainder up to the next hour (120-179 minutes depending on the exact minute the ticket was validated). The suburban network is too large for long trips to fit exactly within 120 minutes.
Case in point Frankston to Ringwood on a Sunday evening when the already-useless (half-hourly) 901, 902, 903 and 703 SmartBuses are all in bed asleep. The only way from Frankston to Ringwood after all of 8PM on a Sunday without paying three figures for a taxi/uber is to take a train all the way to Richmond, stopping all stations, and then wait up to 30 minutes for the next Belgrave or Lilydale from there (as the 20-minute Frankston line doesn’t mesh with the Burnley group), stopping all stations except East Richmond. Eltham to Ringwood is just as bad.
@Heihachi_73, yeah definitely benefits bringing back a 3 hour fare; including for people making short return trips for appointments etc.
Plenty of suburban trips take more than 2 hours, noting that the fare is still valid as long as the last tap on is before the expiry.