Fares Benchmarking Report 2025

The Fares Benchmarking Report is released annually and provides data on the relative cost of public transport fares in cities across the globe, marked by the estimated number of minutes of work it would take at the minimum wage to afford a public transport ticket.

What can you expect?

• A review of discounts and incentives for frequent public transport users.
• Development and analysis of fares policy options
• Benchmarking price levels across peer cities

Since 2015, NineSquared has collected data on public transport fares charged by transit agencies to identify trends in the affordability and structure of public transport pricing. The NineSquared fares database now includes detailed fares data on more than 100 cities across the world, including all capital cities in Australia.

Our fares database includes detailed fares data, including fares by passenger type, ticket type, peak and off peak, and payment options. Additionally, the database includes minimum and average wage data, and data on purchasing power parity (PPP), which is used to inform international comparisons of pricing for public transport services.

An invaluable resource for governments and transit agencies that informs fares policy development, the fares database has assisted agencies to understand international trends in fares policy and benchmarked agencies against national and international peers.

Data on a subset of the cities in the database is published annually in the NineSquared Fares Benchmarking Report. The report includes data on fare trends and the relative cost of public transport fares in cities internally, with reference to the number of minutes of work it would take at the minimum and average wage to afford a public transport ticket. The report has been published annually since 2015 and compares the cost of fares across 38 of the cities in the database.