How accurate is Australian address autocomplete?

17 July 2026 · updated 5 Sept 2026 · 5 min read

Australian address autocomplete accuracy is how often the correct G-NAF record comes back as the top suggestion from the kind of text a person types: WattleAddr measures about 94% for a complete address and about 98% within the top six. This post sets out how we measured it, on what data, and where it falls down.

The method

We take a random sample of real G-NAF addresses and turn each back into text a person would type: complete addresses, addresses with a mistyped suburb, addresses with no postcode, and unit addresses. We then score whether the correct record comes back as the top suggestion, and whether it is anywhere in the first handful. The method is described here and the saved runs are available on request, so the numbers can be checked. The other half of accuracy, whether verify tells the truth about a match, is measured separately.

The numbers

• A complete Australian address returns the correct record as the top suggestion about 94% of the time, and within the top six about 98% of the time.
• Partial and misspelt input scores lower.

The weak spot: a mistyped suburb

The hardest real-world case is a misspelt suburb, because a mistyped final token can otherwise wipe out the whole result set. We handle it with a fallback that peels off a trailing token and retries, so “23 Wakool Ave Deerpark” still returns the street even when the suburb is wrong. That turned misspelt-suburb queries from an empty dropdown into a useful shortlist. Misspelt streets are harder, and we do not fix all of them yet.

Why we publish the weak spots

A benchmark that reports only the good number does not tell you much. If you are evaluating an address API, ask for the method and the failure cases as well as the headline percentage. Ours are in this post.