How many people are inside your service radius?
Widening a service radius sounds free and is not: it adds travel to every job and dilutes the advertising across more ground. This counts the suburbs, the residents and the dwellings inside a radius of any Melbourne locality, using real coordinates rather than a circle drawn on a map.
Your numbers
The answer
Residents inside the radius
1,262,894
149 localities within 15 km of Melbourne
Localities covered
149
Of 498 in Greater Melbourne
Dwellings
686,774
ABS Census 2021, table G36
Land area
576 km²
Sum of the localities inside
Share of the metro population
31%
Of 4,079,027 in this dataset
Travel cost a month
$970
60 jobs at 18 km round trip
442 of 498 localities in the dataset carry a population figure and 491 carry a dwelling count. 31 of the 149 inside your radius have no population figure, so the total below understates the real number.
How this was worked out
- Localities inside
- Distance from Melbourne ≤ 15 km → 149 of 498
- Residents
- Sum of population across those 149 localities = 1,262,894
- Average round trip
- Mean distance 9 km × 2 = 18 km
- Travel cost
- 60 × 18 km × $0.90 = $970
The ten nearest localities to Melbourne
| Locality | Distance | Residents | Dwellings | In your radius |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melbourne | 0 km | 54,941 | 27,478 | Yes |
| East Melbourne | 1.5 km | 4,896 | 2,396 | Yes |
| South Wharf | 1.5 km | 71 | 23 | Yes |
| Southbank | 1.7 km | 22,631 | 11,894 | Yes |
| Carlton | 1.9 km | No figure | 6,924 | Yes |
| Docklands | 1.9 km | 15,495 | 7,540 | Yes |
| South Melbourne | 2.1 km | 11,548 | 5,547 | Yes |
| Fitzroy | 2.4 km | No figure | 4,565 | Yes |
| Collingwood | 2.6 km | No figure | 4,489 | Yes |
| North Melbourne | 2.7 km | 14,953 | 6,486 | Yes |
Distances are straight-line between locality centre points. Population is measured for the whole locality and attached to its centre, so a radius clipping the edge of a suburb still counts all of it — the totals are an order of magnitude, not a census.
What to do with this
- A 15 km radius of Melbourne covers 149 localities, about 1,262,894 residents and 686,774 dwellings — roughly 31% of the Greater Melbourne population in this dataset.
- The average round trip inside that area is about 18 km. At 60 jobs a month and $0.90 a kilometre, that is $970 a month of running cost before anyone is paid.
- The nearest locality you are excluding is Ardeer, 15.1 km out with about 3,170 residents. Worth knowing before someone from there calls.
- Set the same boundary in the ad account as in the van. A radius set wide in Google Ads and narrow in practice pays for enquiries you then turn down, which is the most expensive way to run a service area.
Change anything above and the link in your address bar changes with it, so you can send the exact result to whoever needs to see it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere — the whole calculation happens in your browser.
What this does, and how the maths works
What it does
- Measures the straight-line distance from your chosen centre to all 498 gazetted Greater Melbourne localities and reports which fall inside your radius.
- Adds up the resident population and dwellings across those localities, and says how many of them had no figure to add.
- Prices the travel a wider radius adds, so the reach and the cost are on the same screen.
How to use it
- Pick the locality you work out of. All 498 gazetted Greater Melbourne localities are in the list.
- Set the radius you are willing to travel. Straight-line, not drive time — the note below the result explains the difference.
- Enter your jobs per month and running cost per kilometre to see what the travel inside that radius costs you.
- Compare a couple of radii before settling. The reach curve and the travel curve do not have the same shape.
The formula
- Distance = great-circle distance between the two sets of coordinates
- Inside = every locality whose centre is within the radius
- Reach = sum of the population of those localities
- Travel cost = jobs × average round trip × cost per kilometre
Reading the answer
- Reach grows with the square of the radius while travel grows with the radius, so early widening buys a lot of people cheaply and later widening does not.
- If most of the population sits in the first few kilometres, a wide radius is buying travel rather than customers.
- Use the suburb list to decide where to point the advertising, not just how far. A radius that includes forty suburbs and names none of them is not a plan.
What it cannot tell you
Straight-line distance, not drive time — the bay, the river and the freeways all make real travel longer than this, and often much longer across the water. Population is a whole-locality figure attached to its centre point, so a radius that clips the edge of a suburb still counts every resident in it. Read the totals as an order of magnitude.
Where every figure on this page came from
Every default in the calculator above is either your own number or a figure from one of the studies below, with the market and the sample stated. Nothing here is an estimate somebody felt was about right, and no United States figure is wearing an Australian label.
Australia Post locality coordinates, English Wikipedia population figures, ABS Census 2021
SoudCoh, from open data · 2026 · measured in AU · medium confidence
498 gazetted Greater Melbourne localities with centroid coordinates from Australia Post data, resident population from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), and dwelling counts from ABS Census 2021 table G36 (CC BY 4.0).
Population is measured for the whole locality and assigned to its centroid, so a radius that clips the edge of a suburb still counts all of it. Treat the total as an order of magnitude.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about working with SoudCoh
Have more questions? Let's chat!
Book a Free Strategy CallFar enough to fill the day and no further, which is a different answer for every business. The arithmetic that decides it is on this page: reach grows with the square of the radius while travel grows with the radius, so the first ten kilometres buy a great many people cheaply and the next ten buy fewer per kilometre driven. Price the travel at your own running cost, compare it against the reach it adds, and set the boundary where the two cross.
In this dataset, a 10 km radius of the Melbourne locality centre covers a substantial part of inner Melbourne — set the tool to Melbourne and 10 km and it will count the localities and residents exactly. Two caveats apply to any answer it gives: population is measured for the whole locality and attached to its centre point, so a radius clipping a suburb still counts everyone in it, and 442 of the 498 localities carry a population figure, so totals understate rather than overstate.
The same dataset that builds our 498 Melbourne suburb pages. Locality names, postcodes and centroid coordinates come from Australia Post locality data; resident population comes from English Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0; dwelling counts come from ABS Census 2021 table G36 under CC BY 4.0. The tool carries seven fields per locality rather than the whole record, which is why it loads quickly.
Straight-line, and the difference matters in Melbourne more than in most cities. Port Phillip Bay makes some short straight lines into long drives, and the freeway network makes some long ones quick. Use the suburb list against a map before you commit to a boundary — the list is the useful output here, more than the radius number.
It should match the area you will actually attend, not the one you would like to. A radius set wider in the ad account than in the van buys enquiries you then turn down, and you pay the same for those as for the ones you take. It is also worth targeting by presence rather than interest, so you reach people who are in the area rather than people merely searching about it.
Run these next
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Work out cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead from three numbers, then compare against a US benchmark and our measured Australian range.
SoudCoh case studies · WordStream 2026
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