Common questions
Short answers about where the prices come from, how fresh they are, and what we do with your data. Each one links to the page that explains it properly.
Last updated 31 July 2026
Where do the prices come from?
Two places, and every price is labelled with which one it is. Either someone paid for that drink at that cafe and told us what it cost, or we read the price off a menu the cafe published.
Menu prices reach us two ways. Our crawler reads menus that cafes publish on their own websites, and a cafe or our team can enter a rate card directly. When we hold both a menu price and a price from a local for the same drink, size and milk, the local wins. Menus go out of date, and what you pay at the counter is what counts.
How current is a price, and what does outdated mean?
It depends on where the price came from. A price a person submitted or confirmed is shown as outdated after 30 days. A price we read off a menu ourselves is shown as outdated after 180 days, because a printed menu changes more slowly than our confidence that someone still stands behind a number they typed.
Outdated means old, not wrong. Nothing is quietly dropped, and anyone can confirm a price in one tap, which resets the clock. Both thresholds are settings we can change, so read them as where we draw the line today rather than a permanent promise.
A price is wrong. What should I do?
Submit what you actually paid. It counts towards the median straight away, and the next person sees a better number.
When several people submit the same drink and size at the same cafe, we show the median of those submissions from the last 60 days, so one odd price cannot move the number.
If submitting cannot fix it, use the Feedback button in the corner of any page and tell us what you saw. It comes straight to us.
Is Coffee Near Me free?
Yes. The price data is free, and it stays free.
You do not need an account to browse the map, read prices, or submit one.
How do you decide which cafes to show first?
Price, and how close a cafe is to you. For comparing cafes against each other, and for the map pins, we use a broad all-milk figure that mixes every milk together. It is not a full-cream price, and it cannot be submitted directly. We derive it.
We do not rate or review cafes. The ratings you see come from Google, not from us.
Do cafes pay to appear, or to rank higher?
No. Organic rankings are not for sale. Any paid placement is clearly labelled and never changes where a cafe ranks, and we do not show any today.
A rate card a venue sends us is labelled as a menu price like any other, and a local who paid something different still overrides it.
I run a cafe. Can I correct a price or send you my menu?
Yes. Email us with the cafe name or the domain. You can send us a rate card, which expands into a price for each drink, size and milk combination it covers, and it is labelled as a menu price like any other.
Corrections and opt-out go through email today. If you would rather we stopped reading your menu, the crawler page carries the full detail and a ready-made opt-out message.
Which areas do you cover?
Coverage is uneven, and most Australian cafes have no price on record yet. That is the honest state of it.
Where we hold no price for a cafe, the cafe still shows, with no price against it. Submitting the price you paid is what fills that in, and it is the fastest way to make your own suburb useful.
What do you collect about me?
As little as we can. You do not need an account to browse or submit. Submissions are deduplicated with an anonymous token in your browser and a one-way hash of your IP address. We never store raw IP addresses, and we never sell your email.
Can I reuse the price data?
Personal use is fine. Look up prices, compare cafes, share a link, screenshot a page. Bulk extraction is not, and neither is redistribution or resale.
Media and researchers are welcome, with attribution. Quote our figures, cite Coffee Near Me and link to the page you took them from. If you want more than a few numbers, ask us first.
This place is not a cafe, or it has closed. How do I tell you?
Open the place and use the Report link. It sits on the cafe page and on the map popup. Pick Not a cafe, Permanently closed or Wrong info, and add a note if it helps.
Is there an iPhone or Android app?
The web app is live today. Open it in any browser, no install needed. Native iPhone and Android apps are in the works, and there is a waitlist on the about page.
Not covered here? Send us the question or email hey@coffeenearme.au.