Australian Online Consumer Statistics (2026): How Australians Buy

Australians are among the most connected consumers on the planet. In 2025, 99.7% of Australian adults had access to the internet (ACMA, 2025), they spent an average of 41 hours a week online (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026), and they pushed online shopping to a record $82.6 billion in annual spend (Australia Post, 2026).

If you run a service business, those numbers are not trivia. They describe exactly where your next customer is looking, how long they research before they call, and what makes them trust one business over another. We compiled this page as a single, properly sourced reference for Australian online consumer behaviour. Every statistic below links to the original report, with the publisher and year named inline. No made-up numbers, no recycled global figures dressed up as local ones.

Key Statistics at a Glance

The ten numbers we reference most often when advising Australian service businesses:

1. 99.7% of Australian adults had access to the internet in 2025 (ACMA, 2025)
2. 97% of adults go online using a mobile phone, and 92% use mobile internet daily (ACMA, 2025)
3. Australians average 41 hours per week online, well above the global average of 33 hours (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
4. Google handles roughly 94% of general search queries in Australia, and about 98% on mobile (ACCC, 2024)
5. 6 in 10 Australians use social media to research brands each month (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
6. Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 13.9% year on year (Australia Post, 2026)
7. 9.8 million Australian households shopped online in 2025 (Australia Post, 2026)
8. Around 73% of consumer payments are made by card, with debit cards used for one in every two payments (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)
9. 30% of Australians use ChatGPT monthly (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
10. Australians reported $2.18 billion in scam losses in 2025 (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)

Internet and Smartphone Use: Almost Everyone, Almost Always on a Phone

The foundation of every other number on this page is simple: your entire addressable market is online, and most of it is on a phone.

• In 2025, 99.7% of Australian adults had internet access, effectively universal coverage (ACMA, 2025)
• 97% of adults use a mobile phone to go online, up from 95% in 2024, making it the most common way Australians access the internet (ACMA, 2025)
• 92% of adults use mobile internet every day, up from 90% the year before (ACMA, 2025)
• Only 12% of adults still used a landline in 2025, down from 54% in 2017 (ACMA, 2025)
• Australia had 26.2 million internet users (97.1% of the population) and 34.1 million mobile connections, equal to 126% of the population, in early 2026 (DataReportal, Digital 2026: Australia)

What it means for service businesses: the first impression of your business is a phone screen, not a desktop monitor. If your site is slow or fiddly on mobile, you are failing 97% of the market at the front door. That is why we treat mobile experience as the starting point of every web design project, not an afterthought.

Time Online: The Equivalent of a Full-Time Job

• Australians spend an average of 41 hours per week online, the equivalent of a full-time job and well above the global average of 33 hours (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
• Nearly half of that online time is spent on social media (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
• Australia has 21.0 million social media user identities, equal to 77.7% of the population (DataReportal, Digital 2026: Australia)
• YouTube reaches 80% of Australian internet users, and Australians spend more than 11 minutes per session on the app, longer than on any other platform (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)

What it means for service businesses: attention is abundant but fragmented. Your customers are online for 41 hours a week, yet none of that time is owed to you. Ranking well in search and being visible where people actually spend those hours is what converts national screen time into local enquiries.

How Australians Research Before They Buy

This is the section that matters most for anyone selling a service rather than a product.

• Google performs roughly 94% of general search queries in Australia, a share that has barely moved in years (ACCC, Digital Platform Services Inquiry, 2024)
• On mobile devices, Google's share of search has held around 98% (ACCC, Digital Platform Services Inquiry, 2024)
• 6 in 10 Australians use social media to research brands each month, almost matching the proportion using search engines (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)
• 30% of Australians say they use ChatGPT monthly, and ChatGPT drives over 85% of all chatbot-to-website referrals (We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026)

What it means for service businesses: the research phase now runs across three surfaces at once: Google, social platforms, and AI assistants. Winning the Google result is still the biggest single lever, which is what a proper SEO campaign is for. But with a third of the country already asking ChatGPT for recommendations, being citable by AI tools matters too. We covered the practical side of that in our guide to optimising for ChatGPT search.

Online Shopping: A Record $82.6 Billion Year

Australia Post's annual eCommerce Report is the most reliable picture of what Australians actually buy online, because it is built on real parcel and transaction data rather than surveys.

• Australians spent $82.6 billion online in 2025, up 13.9% year on year (Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026)
• 9.8 million households shopped online during the year (Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026)
• The average online basket is $96, with households buying from around 16 different online brands a year (Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026)
• Millennials are the biggest spenders at $29.7 billion, ahead of Gen X ($22.7 billion) and Gen Z ($14.6 billion), and 47% of Millennials shop online weekly (Australia Post via Inside Retail, 2026)
• Online marketplaces are the largest category at $18.9 billion (Australia Post, eCommerce Report 2026)
• Australia Post projects that agentic AI could account for 30% of ecommerce transactions by 2030 (Australia Post via Inside Retail, 2026)

What it means for service businesses: you may not sell products in a cart, but your customers have been trained by ecommerce. They expect instant answers, transparent pricing, and frictionless booking. A tradie or clinic website that behaves like it is 2015 gets judged against an experience shaped by $82.6 billion of annual online shopping. Our guide to website conversion optimisation for service businesses covers how to close that gap.

How Australians Pay

The Reserve Bank of Australia runs a Consumer Payments Survey every three years. The 2025 survey, conducted from October to early December 2025, shows a market that has almost finished going cashless for everyday transactions.

• Cards are used for around 73% of consumer payments, down slightly from 76% in 2022 as cash use stabilised (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)
• Debit cards alone account for one in every two consumer payments (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)
• Australians aged 18 to 29 make around 80% of their payments by card, compared with around 60% for those aged 65 and over (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)
• Mobile wallet use increased across every age group, alongside growing adoption of account-to-account methods such as PayID (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)
• Cash has not disappeared: half of Australians still use cash in a typical week, and about one third would face genuine hardship or major inconvenience if cash became difficult to access (RBA, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey)

What it means for service businesses: offer card and mobile wallet payment on the spot and digital invoicing by default, but do not punish the customers who prefer cash, especially older ones. Payment friction at the end of a job undoes the marketing spend that won the job in the first place.

Trust and Scams: Why Credibility Is a Ranking Factor for Humans

Australians are heavily online, and so are the criminals targeting them. That backdrop changes how carefully consumers vet unfamiliar businesses.

• Australians reported $2.18 billion in scam losses in 2025, from 481,523 scam reports, with 274,577 reports involving a financial loss (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)
• Losses rose 7.8% compared with 2024, though they remain about 29.7% below the 2022 peak of $3.1 billion (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)
• Investment scams caused the biggest losses at $837.7 million, followed by payment redirection scams at $166.8 million (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)
• Reports of online-contact scams with losses jumped 31.8%, with financial losses via online contact methods up 21% (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)
• Australians aged 65 and over accounted for 26.5% of Scamwatch losses, well above their share of the population (ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, 2025 data)

What it means for service businesses: every Australian consumer has either been scammed or knows someone who has. They are actively looking for reasons to distrust you. Verified reviews, a consistent business identity across the web, real photos, an ABN on the site, and a professional domain are no longer nice-to-haves. They are the trust signals that get the phone to ring. Our guides on getting more Google reviews and the broader local SEO playbook cover the practical fixes.

Methodology and Sources

All statistics on this page are Australia-specific and drawn from official government reports, the Reserve Bank of Australia, or large-scale industry research, accessed and verified in June 2026. Where a primary report is paywalled or gated, we link to the most direct public coverage of the publisher's own figures.

• ACMA, Communications and Media in Australia: How We Use the Internet (2025 survey data, published February 2026) - acma.gov.au
• We Are Social and Meltwater, Digital 2026: Australia (published early 2026) - datareportal.com
• Australia Post, Annual eCommerce Report 2026 (covering calendar year 2025) - auspost.com.au
• Reserve Bank of Australia, 2025 Consumer Payments Survey (RBA Bulletin, April and May 2026) - rba.gov.au
• ACCC and National Anti-Scam Centre, Targeting Scams report (2025 data) - accc.gov.au
• ACCC, Digital Platform Services Inquiry, ninth interim report (December 2024) - accc.gov.au

Figures are reported as published by each source. Survey years differ slightly between sources, so always check the year noted inline before comparing numbers directly.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Australians shop online?

9.8 million Australian households shopped online in 2025, spending a record $82.6 billion, up 13.9% on the previous year, according to the Australia Post eCommerce Report 2026.

How much time do Australians spend on the internet?

Australians spend an average of 41 hours per week online, the equivalent of a full-time job and well above the global average of 33 hours, according to We Are Social and Meltwater's Digital 2026: Australia report. Nearly half of that time is spent on social media.

What percentage of Australians use Google?

Google performs roughly 94% of general search queries in Australia, and around 98% of searches on mobile devices, according to the ACCC's Digital Platform Services Inquiry. For most service businesses, Google remains the single most important place to be found, which is why SEO still delivers the strongest return of any channel. See our SEO article library for how to approach it.

Do Australians still pay with cash?

Yes, but far less than they used to. Around 73% of consumer payments are made by card, and half of Australians use cash in a typical week, according to the RBA's 2025 Consumer Payments Survey. About one third of Australians say they would face hardship or major inconvenience if cash became difficult to access.

Citing These Statistics

You are welcome to cite any statistic on this page in your own articles, reports, or presentations. We ask two things: link each figure back to the original source named inline, and credit this compilation with a link to Orkkid (orkkid.com) so your readers can find the full, updated list. We review and refresh this page as new editions of each report are released.

If these numbers have you wondering whether your own business is capturing its share of Australia's online demand, that is what we do all day. Learn more about our SEO services and web design work, or browse the rest of our SEO guides.