What should I charge for a haircut in Australia?
Short answer: whatever covers what the cut really costs you, plus the margin you want to keep. The salon down the road can't tell you that number. Only your own costs can.
By Stevee Devonda, co-owner of two hair salons, Iron + Ivy and Revolver. Updated 17 October 2026.
What salons are charging right now
If you want the market number, here it is. Across prices published online by Australian salons in October 2026, the median women's haircut was $89, with the middle half of salons somewhere between $63 and $125. Sydney sat at $99, Melbourne $90, Brisbane $85, and most regional towns $75 to $95. A men's cut was $48. So a $90 cut is bang on average.
Average isn't the same as right. Keep reading.
Why "what everyone else charges" is the wrong place to start
Another salon's prices are built on their rent, their wages and their product bill. You can't see any of those. Their price might work because they own the building, or it might be quietly losing them money too. Copy it and you copy a business you know nothing about.
Is a $90 haircut really $90?
Not even close. Before you see a cent, GST takes its 10% if you're registered (one eleventh of the price). Then card fees, now a cost you carry yourself since surcharging ended on 1 October 2026. Then product, the salon's running costs for those minutes, and the wage cost of the person holding the scissors: the award rate or above, plus 12% super, leave loading, workers comp and the weeks they're paid but not on the floor. In a typical Australian salon, a 45 minute $90 cut can leave around a third of the price once all of that is paid. Before income tax.
The minutes matter more than the price
Here's the part most owners never see. Let that same $90 cut run 15 minutes over, and what's left can drop by about half. Nothing changed on the menu. The cut just took longer than the price allowed for, and every minute in the chair carries wages and running costs with it.
Multiply that across a week of cuts and colours, and a busy salon can be paying to be busy without knowing it.
What a good price is built on
Your real wage cost per client hour, not the hourly rate on the payslip. What your salon costs to run for every hour a chair is booked. Honest times for each service. Product. Card fees. GST. And the margin you actually want to keep, decided on purpose rather than left to whatever's over.
Every one of those is different for your salon, and most of them move every year. The award rate changes every 1 July. Rent goes up. That's why a price that was right two years ago probably isn't now.
Menu Pricing Calculator
Put in your own wages, running costs, times and product, and see what every service on your menu really makes, and the price each one needs to make your margin. Works for a solo stylist pricing their own chair or a salon pricing a whole team's menu. GST, super and the award are built in.
Prices are medians of published Australian salon prices in October 2026, GST-inclusive as the client pays them. General information, not financial or tax advice.