Aussie Weed Prices 2026: What Cannabis Costs in Each Australian City

A gram of weed costs about $20 in Australia in 2026 and an ounce about $250 to $270, according to the latest national drug surveys. Here are prices by city, how they have changed, and why they differ.

Recreational cannabis is still illegal to sell everywhere in Australia, so there is no official price list. This page brings together two things: Cannaus's own estimates of typical street prices in each capital city, and the prices reported in the national drug surveys run by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW.

Weed prices in Australia by city

These are Cannaus estimates of the typical price range for each amount in each capital city. Treat them as a guide: what people actually pay depends on quality, the seller and how much they buy.

What the national drug surveys found

Every year NDARC interviews people in each capital city who use drugs regularly and asks what they last paid. It runs two surveys: the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) and the Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS). The 2026 national results were published in September 2026.

• Hydroponic cannabis: $20 a gram in both surveys. An ounce was $270 in the IDRS and $250 in the EDRS.
• Bush cannabis: $20 a gram in both surveys. An ounce was $178 in the IDRS and $250 in the EDRS.

Each figure is a median: half the people surveyed paid less and half paid more. The 2026 IDRS interviewed 902 people who regularly inject drugs, and the 2026 EDRS interviewed 698 people who regularly use ecstasy or other stimulants. The prices are for cannabis bought without a prescription.

Survey prices by capital city

City results for 2026 are not out yet. These come from NDARC's 2025 state and territory reports, published in December 2025. Each figure is the median price of hydroponic cannabis.

• Sydney: $20 a gram, $300 an ounce
• Melbourne: $20 a gram, $250 an ounce
• Brisbane and Gold Coast: $20 a gram (too few responses for an ounce price)
• Adelaide: $25 for a bag of 2 to 3 grams, $200 an ounce
• Perth: $400 an ounce (too few responses for a gram price)
• Hobart: $20 a gram, $265 an ounce
• Canberra: $20 a gram, $280 an ounce
• Darwin: too few responses to report a price

Gram prices are from the IDRS. Ounce prices are from the IDRS for Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and from the EDRS for Perth, Hobart and Canberra. The city figures rest on small groups of between 6 and 37 people, so read them as a rough guide. The surveys cover capital cities only, and NDARC says they are not designed to represent everyone who uses drugs.

Have weed prices gone up?

Not much. In Sydney, the median price of a gram of hydroponic cannabis has been $20 since the survey began in 2003, according to NDARC's 2025 NSW report. Once inflation is taken into account, a $20 gram costs much less in real terms than it did then.

Ounce prices have drifted down. In the 2026 IDRS an ounce of hydroponic cannabis was $270, compared with $250 the year before, while an ounce of bush cannabis fell from $240 to $178, the lowest price that survey has recorded in 20 years. In the 2026 EDRS an ounce of hydroponic cannabis was $250, the lowest that survey has recorded.

Cannabis Price FAQs

Questions? Have a read of the most asked questions about how much weed costs in Australia:

How much is a gram of weed in Australia?

About $20. That was the median price of a gram of both hydroponic and bush cannabis in the two national drug surveys in 2026, and it has barely moved in two decades.

How much is an ounce of weed in Australia?

About $250 to $270 for hydroponic cannabis, going by the 2026 national surveys. It varies by city: in the 2025 surveys the median was $200 in Adelaide, $250 in Melbourne, $300 in Sydney and $400 in Perth.

Why do the prices differ from city to city?

Unlike typical consumer goods, which are priced relatively similar throughout the major capital cities in Australia, the story's a little bit different for weed. But why?

One word - illicit.

Weed is still illegal to sell for recreational purposes everywhere in Australia. The ACT is the one partial exception: since January 2020, adults there can possess up to 50 grams of dried cannabis and grow two plants each, with a limit of four per household. Selling it, sharing it or giving it away is still an offence, according to ACT Policing.

Every extra kilometre weed must travel to reach its consumer increases the risk of seizure (which still occurs frequently across Australia) or something going wrong during transit. And more risk equals a higher price to pay.

That shows up in the survey figures. Perth, the most isolated capital, had the highest median price for an ounce in the 2025 surveys at $400. Adelaide had the lowest at $200.

Is there a price difference between black market and medicinal grade marijuana?

There used to be a big one, with legal products costing far more. That gap has narrowed.

Trade publication Highly Capitalized reported in August 2025 that medicinal cannabis flower had fallen to as little as $3.30 a gram for patients, and that nearly 40% of flower products cost less than $10 a gram. On the street, a single gram costs about $20, although buying in bulk is cheaper: a $270 ounce works out to just under $10 a gram.

Cannabis being grown in medical facilities

The product is not the only cost. Medicinal cannabis is only available on a doctor's prescription, so patients pay for appointments as well. The Penington Institute estimates Australians spent $448 million on medicinal cannabis products in 2023, and $402 million in the first six months of 2024 alone.

Prescribed products are regulated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which black market weed is not.

Want to know who's supplying Australia's medicinal cannabis? Check out some of the companies in the industry, including Australian Natural Therapeutics Group (ANTG) and Cannim, or browse the Cannaus directory of Australian cannabis companies.

How do Australian prices compare to other countries?

As Australia benefits in many ways when it comes to being an island, there are some negatives as well.

For consumer products, that generally means paying a higher price for the same items in other countries, simply because it's harder to bring the product to our shores.

There are only two ways to get weed into Australia - boat or plane. Both are extremely risky and expensive, further increasing the price end-consumers must pay for the product.

Of course, that's not stopping many individuals and organisations from cultivating their own weed right here in Australia. And many do it successfully, but there are also many who become subject to police raids, have their crop seized, and ultimately destroyed.

For comparison, a gram of legal cannabis flower averaged $9.91 in local currency in Ontario, Canada, in October 2026, according to market tracker Headset. In Colorado, the first state in the US to legalise recreational cannabis, an eighth of an ounce (3.5 grams) averaged US$15.14 in September 2026, or about US$4.33 a gram, Headset's price data shows.

What will happen to weed prices when recreational cannabis is legalised in Australia?

Surprisingly, it's not what you may think. Legal recreational weed would not automatically be cheaper than buying from the black market.

For starters - there are far more extra costs producers and retailers bear than your local street dealer.

Safety, regulations, taxes, employees, payroll tax, land tax, rent, production costs - these would all be factored into the price of legal weed.

In saying that, there is good news - prices come down, eventually. We don't have to guess, because some US states legalised weed more than a decade ago. So how did their prices react?

Colorado first legalised weed in January 2014. Here's a graph showing the effect on prices.

Gram of weed price in Colorado after legalisation

As you can see, prices increased for the first 6 months, then declined at a steady pace for the years to come. The same is seen in Washington, which legalised in July 2014.

Gram of weed price in Washington after legalisation

Special thanks to Grizzle and BDS Analytics for providing the graph and data.

Safe to say that we'd likely see a similar thing happen to Australian weed prices if recreational cannabis is legalised here.

Is Australia close to legalising weed?

Not yet. A Greens bill to legalise cannabis nationally was voted down in the Senate in November 2024, 13 votes to 24, after a Senate committee recommended against it. In NSW, a parliamentary inquiry called for decriminalisation in 2025, but the state government said it had no intention of decriminalising or legalising cannabis, according to the Penington Institute. No state has followed the ACT.

Public opinion has moved further than the law. As Cannaus has reported, more Australians now support legalising cannabis than oppose it. The Penington Institute puts the value of Australia's illicit cannabis market at more than $5 billion.

Remember - cheaper weed would not make it legal to drive on it. Driving with any THC in your system is an offence across Australia, whether or not you feel impaired. Tasmania is the one state with a long-standing legal defence for patients taking prescribed medicinal cannabis as directed, according to the Tasmanian Department of Health. The penalties are heavy, and you are a danger to yourself and others whilst driving on cannabis.

Keep up with Australian cannabis news

Laws and prices keep changing. Read the latest national cannabis news, or browse the directory of Australian cannabis companies.

More questions on the price of weed in Australia? Leave a comment below!

Sources

• National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW: Illicit Drug Reporting System national report 2026 and Ecstasy and Related Drugs Reporting System national report 2026, plus the 2025 state and territory reports for both surveys.
• Penington Institute: Cannabis in Australia 2025 and Cannabis in Australia 2024.
• ACT Policing: Drugs and the law.
• Headset: retail cannabis prices for Ontario and US states.