Is Perth an affordable place to live? A typical resident spends around 25.1% of income on rent and 7.0% on food. That leaves approximately 68.0% of income available for savings and daily expenses.
The Urban Stress Index (USI) provides a structured way to evaluate cost-of-living pressure in Perth. By combining housing and essential food costs, it highlights how much income is required to maintain a basic standard of living relative to local wages.
| Item | Monthly | % of Income |
|---|---|---|
| Income | 9,337 | — |
| Rent (1BR) | 2,340 | 25.1% |
| Essential Food | 650 | 7.0% |
| Remaining | 6,347 | 68.0% |
Use our cost of living calculator to estimate your own disposable income in Perth.
Perth records an Urban Stress Index of roughly 32, placing it in the “Stretched” category but still among the less financially pressured large cities in the developed English-speaking world. The underlying structure is important. Housing absorbs about 25.1% of a typical monthly income, while essential food costs account for only around 7.0%. This means the city’s cost burden is driven primarily by rent, but not to an extreme level. Compared with many Canadian and European cities where both rent and food impose visible pressure at the same time, Perth shows a more favourable affordability profile because everyday consumption remains relatively manageable and wages are strong enough to offset a meaningful part of housing costs.
Within Australia, Perth sits in a relatively competitive middle position. Its overall USI is lower than Brisbane and clearly below Sydney, where housing pressure is substantially heavier, but it is very close to Adelaide and only slightly above Canberra. This suggests Perth belongs to the more affordable side of the Australian metropolitan system rather than the most stressed end.
The contrast becomes even clearer when Perth is compared internationally. Canadian cities provide the sharpest example. Winnipeg, for instance, records a USI above 50 in the same dataset, despite much lower absolute housing costs. That difference highlights one of the central insights of the Urban Stress Index: affordability is not just about whether rent is high, but whether local income can keep up with baseline living costs.
Perth benefits from a much stronger wage environment, which compresses both the housing share and the food share of income. As a result, the city delivers a noticeably wider margin after basic costs than many mid-sized cities in Canada. This keeps Perth far below the severe affordability levels seen in structurally strained markets such as Toronto or Vancouver, and closer to the more balanced Australian pattern seen in Adelaide and Melbourne.
The Urban Stress Index (USI) measures how much of a typical income is spent on housing and essential food.
USI = Housing burden + Food cost share.
See full methodology here.
Housing data for Australian cities are based on the Domain Rental Report (September 2025). Median advertised rents for units/apartments are used as the housing proxy. Because these figures include a mix of studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom dwellings, a 0.9 adjustment is applied to approximate the cost of a typical one-bedroom unit for a single-person household.
Income data are based on Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 2025 published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Median weekly ordinary time earnings are converted into monthly gross salary estimates.
Food cost estimates are derived from a standardized meal-price proxy designed to approximate essential living costs for a single person. The measure is based on local restaurant price benchmarks and is converted into a monthly food cost estimate using a consistent methodology across cities.
For full explanation of assumptions, please see the Methodology and Sources pages.
Other cities in Australia:
Cities with similar affordability outside Australia: