Draw Catchment Tool

Draw a polygon, select a radius, or choose a travel time to analyse population and demographics within your custom catchment area.

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Custom Catchment Area Analysis for Any Location in Australia

AreaSearch's custom catchment tool lets you explore the latest population figures, demographic breakdowns and market insights for any area across Australia. Whether you're a property developer assessing a new site, a retailer planning a store location, a childcare operator evaluating demand, or a researcher mapping community profiles, this tool gives you the data you need in seconds.

How It Works

Place a point on any location in Australia and choose how to define your catchment area. Draw a custom polygon to follow natural boundaries like rivers, roads or council lines. Set a radius buffer from 100 metres to 20 kilometres to capture a circular trade area. Or generate a drive-time isochrone to understand the real-world reach of a location based on actual road networks and travel conditions.

What You'll Discover

Every analysis delivers a comprehensive snapshot of the people living within your defined area. Access total population estimates, age and gender profiles, household composition, dwelling types, median income figures, employment statistics, country of birth, language spoken at home, and education levels. Data is drawn from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Census and updated with the latest available estimates.

Flexible Catchment Options

Radius buffers — Set any distance from 100m to 20km around a point to define a circular catchment area, ideal for quick trade area assessments.
Custom polygons — Draw freeform shapes directly on the map to follow streets, waterways, rail lines or any boundary that defines your area of interest.
Drive-time catchments — Generate isochrone maps based on real driving times to understand how far customers, residents or workers can travel in 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes.
Point analysis — Drop a pin on any address or location to instantly identify the surrounding statistical areas, suburbs and demographic context.

Full Analysis and Reporting

Go beyond the initial summary with a full analysis that compiles detailed data across dozens of Census variables. Export your findings as professional PDF reports or Excel spreadsheets for presentations, feasibility studies, grant applications and business cases. Every report includes population projections, comparative benchmarks and clear data visualisations.

Compare Multiple Catchments at Once

With Multi Check, Pro users can generate several catchments from a single location in one run — for example a 1km, 3km and 5km radius, a drive-time isochrone and a drawn boundary — and see a side-by-side summary of each. It isn't a single-sector tool: every catchment is summarised across population, growth, age, income, employment, housing, household composition and development, plus any specialist sector modules included in your plan. Whatever sectors your access covers, a matching summary is provided for each catchment, making it easy to compare locations or trade-area sizes at a glance.

Coverage

This tool covers every location across Australia, from capital city centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide through to regional towns and remote communities. Analyse areas at the mesh block level — the smallest geographic unit in the Australian Statistical Geography Standard — for unmatched precision in your catchment planning.

Multi-Catchment Comparison

Pick a location, then generate several catchments at once (radial buffers, a drive-time isochrone, and/or a drawn catchment). Each one runs a full analysis and the results — population, demographics, market indicators and any sectors your plan includes — are compared side by side below.

Name for these shapes Saved as “Name — level”. Leave blank to use the suburb. Override any single shape below.

Each catchment is a full area analysis (2 credits) — saved to your portfolio, processed one after another.

Population Overview

2021 Census population and dwelling summary for this catchment — sign in for AreaSearch's current estimates

Population @ 2021 Census

Dwellings @ 2021 Census

Land Area (km²)

Pop. Density /km² (2021)

Population & Dwelling Trends

Census counts 2006–2021 only. AreaSearch's population and dwelling estimates to May 2026 require an account.

Analyzing catchment...

Your Workflow

Set one location

Add the catchments to compare

Name them (optional)

Run & compare side by side

1. Set Your Location

Three ways to set the centre

Search for an address or suburb, click Drop point on map then click where you want it, or use Use map centre. Every catchment is built from this one point (a drawn catchment is the exception — it defines its own boundary).

2. Add Catchments To Compare

Radius & drive-time levels

Add radial buffers (e.g. 1km, 2km, 3km) and drive / walk / cycle-time isochrones (e.g. 10 minutes). Adjust the distance or time on each row. Up to four catchments per run.

Draw a catchment

Click Draw catchment level, then click on the map to drop each point. Tap the first (large) point — or double-click — to close the boundary. Use Clear to remove shapes and the centre and start again.

3. Name Your Shapes

Saved with names that make sense

Set a Name for these shapes and each saved catchment becomes “Name — level” (e.g. Westfield site — 2 km radius). Leave it blank and we use the suburb of your location automatically. Need something specific for one catchment? Type an optional name on its row to override it.

4. Run & Compare

One run, every catchment Pro

Each catchment runs a full analysis, one after another — so a run uses roughly one credit per catchment. The shapes are also saved to your portfolio, where you can re-open each one.

A summary for every sector you can access

Results stack side by side across population, growth, age, income, employment, housing, households, development and more — plus any specialist sector modules your plan includes. The best value in each row is highlighted, and you can download the full comparison as a CSV.

Tip: Compare different trade-area sizes around one site (1km vs 3km vs a 10-minute drive), or name each catchment after a different location to compare places head to head.

Action completed

Draw Catchment Tool

Map Layers

Travel Catchment

Selection Info

School

Population Overview

Geographic Composition