Flat White Index

Sydney coffee price guide · 2026
Updated March 2026

We called 847 Sydney cafés to find the real price of a flat white.

80% price gap between Sydney's cheapest and dearest suburbs
Sydney average
$5.80
flat white, small
Cheapest suburb
$4.50
Marrickville
Most expensive
$7.20
Darling Harbour
Cafés called
847
of ~2,100 in Sydney
Prices collected
512
60% answer rate

What the data tells us

📍
Your suburb sets the price. Cross the bridge from Mosman to Marrickville and save $2.20 per cup.
🎲
The CBD is a lottery. The same drink costs $5.50 or $8.50 depending on which block you're on.
🏆
Inner west is the value belt. Newtown, Marrickville, Leichhardt — all under $5.50 with 60+ cafés sampled.
⏱️
7 minutes of work per coffee. At minimum wage ($24.10/hr), a $5.80 flat white costs 14 minutes. In Ashfield, it's under 12.

Price map by suburb

By suburb

tap map to filter
847 of ~2,100 cafés called · Phase 1 in progress

Price distribution

Cheapest finds ✦

How long do you work for a coffee?

Enter your annual salary to see how many minutes of your workday a flat white costs.

—
minutes of work
per flat white
—
per week
(1 coffee/day)
—
per year
(5 days/week)

How we built this

AI voice agent

An AI voice agent called "Mia" phones each café and asks: "How much is a small flat white?" She handles voicemail, cafés that don't do flat whites, and the occasional hostile barista. Each call takes about 45 seconds.

The tech stack

Cafés are discovered via Google Places API. Calls are dispatched through Bland.ai in batches of 10 with 30-second delays. Results arrive via webhook, and prices are extracted from transcripts using pattern matching — "$4.50", "four fifty", "five eighty".

The data

847 cafés called across 23 Sydney suburbs. January–March 2026. Updated monthly. Chains excluded (no Starbucks, McCafé, Gloria Jean's). Sample sizes shown per suburb — anything under 10 cafés, treat with caution.

What's next

Phase 2 expands to Greater Sydney — Eastern Suburbs, North Shore, Northern Beaches. Phase 3 hits Melbourne. Our goal: every independent café in Australia's major cities, priced and mapped. Got a suburb you want us to call? Request it below.

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Help us grow the index

Submit a price from your local, or request a suburb for our AI agent Mia to call next.