How do I find out how many people live near a business site in NZ?

Pick the nearest of the 2,210 published statistical areas in the population calculator and choose a radius: it sums the Stats NZ population grid within that distance. Around the Queen Street area in central Auckland, for example, about 50,304 people live within 2 kilometres and about 173,042 within 5. The calculation runs in your browser and shows how many grid cells sit under each figure.

Is population within a radius the same as my customer base?

No, and treating it as one is the classic site-selection mistake. The radius figure is the ceiling on walk-in and local demand, not a forecast of it. It has to be cut down by how often people buy what you sell, how far they will actually travel for it, and who else already serves them, none of which the population data knows.

Should I use a radius or a drive time?

Drive time is the better model and needs routing data this site does not pretend to have. The radius is measured in a straight line, so where a harbour, river or range sits inside the circle, real reach is smaller than the figure. Auckland and Wellington sites deserve the most caution: a 10 kilometre circle on either includes a great deal of water.

How do I turn people nearby into a viability number?

Divide your revenue need by realistic spend per local customer per year, then ask whether the share of the catchment that implies is plausible against the competition already there. A break-even calculator gives the revenue need; the catchment gives the denominator; the honesty lives in the share you assume in between.

How Many Customers Are Within Reach of a Site?

Most New Zealand site decisions, the lease on the shop, the second clinic, the food truck's pitch, are made on foot traffic watched for an afternoon and a feeling about the street. The first measurable fact about any site is simpler and usually never checked: how many people live within reach of it, and whether that number is growing.

That fact is now free. The population calculator sums the Stats NZ population grid within any distance of any of 2,210 published areas. Around the Queen Street area in central Auckland, about 50,304 people live within 2 kilometres and about 173,042 within 5, on the 2025 modelled estimates. Every area page carries the same measure at 5, 10 and 30 kilometres, with the change since 2022.

This guide is about using that number without fooling yourself, because a catchment figure is the beginning of a viability case, not the case itself.

What the number is, and the three cuts it needs

The radius figure is a ceiling: everyone who could plausibly be a local customer, including the infant, the vegetarian outside your steakhouse, and the person who will never once cross the road to your side. Turning a ceiling into an estimate takes three honest cuts, each one yours to defend.

Cut one: who buys the category at all. A pharmacy's catchment is nearly everyone; a climbing gym's is a sliver. Category participation rates are your industry's knowledge, not the data's, and writing the assumption down is what makes it checkable later.

Cut two: how far people genuinely travel. Daily needs pull from minutes away; destination purchases pull from across town. Your real radius is set by what you sell, and the calculator's rings, 2, 5, 10 kilometres and outward, exist so you can price the version of reach your category actually gets.

Cut three: who already serves them. The catchment is shared with every incumbent. A suburb of 30,000 with four supermarkets is a different proposition from one of 18,000 with one, and only the second number is on this site. Count the incumbents yourself; divide before you dream.

After three cuts the arithmetic is a sentence: people in reach, times the share who buy the category, times a defensible share of them for you, times spend per year. Every term is an assumption except the first. That is precisely why the first one should be measured.

Radius honesty, and where the circle lies

The measure is a straight line between grid cell centres, and the pages saying so are not being modest: where water or hills sit inside the circle, the figure overstates reach. A 10 kilometre circle on central Auckland includes a large slice of the North Shore, which is a bridge queue away, not 10 kilometres. Wellington's circles include harbour and ranges. The narrower the radius you use, the smaller this distortion gets, which is convenient, because most walk-in businesses live at 2 to 5 kilometres anyway.

The figures are also modelled estimates, not counted people: Stats NZ spreads population estimates across one kilometre cells, so a figure over a healthy catchment is solid and a figure over three cells is the model talking. The calculator refuses radii the grid cannot support and shows the cell count under every answer, so you can see how much data is beneath the number you are about to put in a lease case.

Growth is the second axis. The same tools show the change since 2022, and for a business with a lease term the direction matters as much as the level: the growing or shrinking guide covers reading it without being fooled by small bases or rebound years.

From catchment to viability, in the right order

The catchment number earns its place at the start of the chain, not the end. The order that keeps a site case honest: first the break-even calculator, for the revenue the site must produce under its rent and costs. Then spend per local customer per year, from your own category knowledge, priced conservatively. Divide the first by the second and you have the customers the site needs. Only now does the catchment enter: is that customer count a believable share of the people actually within reach, after the three cuts, against the incumbents?

Run that way, the catchment number can kill a bad site in ten minutes, which is its real job. A site needing 4,000 regular customers from a 12,000-person catchment shared with three competitors does not need a marketing plan; it needs a different address. The cashflow guide and the employee cost calculator pick up the case from there.

What this data will never do is pick the winner between two adequate sites, because at that margin the decision lives in rent per metre, visibility, parking and the lease terms. It is a floor-check, done with measured numbers, in a decision otherwise made of feelings.

Test Your Knowledge

Quiz on sizing a catchment

1. What is a population-within-radius figure, for a business?

A forecast of customers

A ceiling on local demand, which still needs cutting by category, travel habit and competition

A guarantee of foot traffic

A measure of spending power

2. Which of the three cuts does the population data itself provide?

The share who buy your category

How far people will travel

The competition already serving them

None of them; the data gives the ceiling and every cut is your own stated assumption

3. Where does a straight-line radius most overstate a site's true reach?

Where water or ranges sit inside the circle, as on central Auckland or Wellington

In flat provincial towns

At very small radii

It never overstates reach

4. What is the right ORDER for a site viability check?

Catchment first, then work out what revenue it could produce

Break-even revenue first, then customers needed, then ask if that is a believable share of the catchment

Competition first, catchment last

Order does not matter

5. What is this data genuinely best at, for a site decision?

Picking between two good sites

Killing a bad site quickly, when the customers needed are an implausible share of the people in reach

Setting the rent

Predicting foot traffic by hour

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I measure the people near a site?

The population calculator sums the Stats NZ grid within any distance of any published area. Around Queen Street, about 50,304 people live within 2 kilometres and about 173,042 within 5.

Is the radius figure my market size?

It is the ceiling on it. Category participation, travel habits and incumbents all cut it down, and each cut is an assumption you should write down.

What does the straight-line caveat mean in practice?

Circles cross water and hills that customers do not. The tighter the radius, the smaller the distortion, and most walk-in trade lives at 2 to 5 kilometres anyway.

Can this pick my site for me?

It can rule sites out fast, which is worth more. When the customers a site needs are an implausible share of the people in reach, no fit-out rescues it.