Updated July 2026 · First published May 2026
Which NZ city has the best tradespeople and professionals in 2026?
July 2026: we analysed 1,208 businesses across 18 categories and seven markets. Wellington edges Tauranga by 0.003 stars at the top of the table, but Tauranga still wins the most categories. Auckland, with more than triple any other city's reviews, finishes third.
1,208
businesses analysed
18
service categories
0.003
stars between 1st and 2nd place
13×
more complaints in property management vs mortgages
This update re-runs our May analysis with two months of fresh crawl data and a seventh market: Napier and Hastings, added to Top5.nz in July. The top of the table has changed. Tauranga, the May winner, has been caught by Wellington, and the gap between them is three thousandths of a star.
The city league table
We looked at the top 10 businesses in each of 18 categories across seven markets: 1,208 businesses in total. Ratings cluster tightly at the top, so the gaps between cities are small and the order near the top can change between runs.
Bar scale: 4.80 to 5.00.
| City | Avg rating | Avg reviews/biz | Total reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wellington | 4.898 | 111 | 20,068 |
| Tauranga | 4.895 | 86 | 15,174 |
| Auckland | 4.887 | 281 | 50,593 |
| Christchurch | 4.883 | 164 | 29,475 |
| Napier/Hastings | 4.875 | 90 | 14,238 |
| Hamilton | 4.855 | 116 | 20,522 |
| Dunedin | 4.846 | 93 | 14,652 |
A photo finish at the top
Wellington's top-10 businesses average 4.898 stars, Tauranga's 4.895. That is the closest result this analysis has produced, and the two cities split the honours: Wellington takes the table, Tauranga takes the most category wins.
6
category wins for Tauranga, more than any other city
5
category wins for Wellington, including a perfect 5.00 in mortgage broking
55%
of Tauranga's top-10 businesses hold a near-perfect rating (Auckland: 38%)
Tauranga leads in: plumbers (4.92), electricians (4.96, tied with Wellington), roofers (4.94), mortgage brokers (5.00, tied with Wellington), property managers (4.87), and immigration advisors (4.96). Wellington's wins skew professional: house painters (4.98), house cleaners (4.96), financial advisors (4.99), plus the two ties. The pattern from May holds in one respect: smaller, tighter markets keep producing the highest ratings.
The Auckland paradox
Auckland has 50,593 reviews across its top-10 businesses in 18 categories, more than triple any other city. Yet it ranks third overall and wins just 2 of 18 categories: accountants (4.97) and lawyers (4.89).
Category wins by city
Category wins = highest average rating among top-10 businesses for that category across all markets. Ties count for both cities.
More data, lower scores. There are a few plausible explanations: Auckland's market is large enough to support mediocre businesses that would struggle elsewhere; reviewers in a bigger, more anonymous city may be less generous; and with more businesses competing in each category, the gap between the top 10 and the rest is wider. None of these explanations is definitive, but the pattern has now held across every run of this analysis.
The newcomer: Napier and Hastings
Hawke's Bay joins the study for the first time, treated as a single market since Napier and Hastings function as one practical service area. It debuts fifth of seven on 4.875 stars and takes two categories outright: builders (4.99), the highest builder average of the seven markets, and solar installers (4.97). Its lawyers are last of the seven markets (4.66), which drags the overall average down.
Property managers: NZ's most consistently complained-about profession
In every market, property managers are among the lowest-rated professions, and they top the 1-star complaint table nationally. The complaint rate has risen since May: 4.35% of all reviews for top-10 property managers are 1-star, up from 3.6%.
Bar scale: 4.60 to 5.00.
For context, electricians average 4.94 nationally and mortgage brokers 4.98. Even property managers in Tauranga, the best-performing market at 4.87, are below what most other professions average at their worst. Hamilton's 4.65 is the lowest category-city average for any profession in the study.
Which professions generate the most complaints?
Across all 18 categories, 1-star complaint rates vary by a factor of 13. Professions that handle high-stakes personal matters get far angrier reviews when things go wrong.
Percentage of 1-star reviews across top-10 businesses in each category, averaged across all seven markets.
A disappointing house painter gets a 3-star review. A property dispute or a failed legal matter gets a 1-star review and a detailed account. The stakes look like the reason. Mortgage brokers are at the other end of the scale: roughly one complaint per 300 reviews.
Mortgage brokers: the outlier
4.97 to 5.00
rating range across all seven markets
599
avg reviews per Auckland top-10 business
0.33%
1-star complaint rate, lowest of any category
One possible explanation is that mortgage brokers are paid on settlement, so their incentives run with the client's, and the service is transactional and time-limited, with less room for things to go wrong. Wellington and Tauranga both hold a perfect 5.00 average.
Where your city matters most
For most services, your city makes very little difference to the quality of the top 10. But for a handful of categories, the gap between the best and worst market is large enough to matter.
| Category | Best city avg | Worst city avg | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofers | 4.940 | 4.690 | 0.250 |
| Lawyers | 4.890 | 4.660 | 0.230 |
| Property managers | 4.870 | 4.650 | 0.220 |
| Accountants | 4.970 | 4.760 | 0.210 |
| House cleaners | 4.960 | 4.760 | 0.200 |
| Recruitment agencies | 4.890 | 4.690 | 0.200 |
Roofers again show the largest city-level gap: 0.25 points between Tauranga (4.94) and Hamilton (4.69). Lawyers and property managers follow, with Hamilton at the bottom of three of the six widest-gap categories. For mortgage brokers and electricians, your city barely matters at all. The top 10 are consistently strong everywhere.
Category wins by city
This compares each market's top 10 rather than the whole market, and the gap between first and second is three thousandths of a star, which a handful of new reviews could reverse.
Methodology
Top5.nz recalculates rankings for tradespeople and professional services across New Zealand's major cities on a rolling cycle, using publicly available ratings and review data. We do not hand out awards or accept nominations. The data determines the result.
Rankings are calculated from publicly available ratings and review data for businesses in each market. We use the top 10 businesses by our ranking score for each category and city combination. Ties for a category win count for both cities. Full ranking methodology: top5.nz/how-we-rank.
This analysis covers 18 core categories: plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, solar installers, house painters, heat pump installers, house cleaners, accountants, building inspectors, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, property managers, real estate agents, recruitment agencies, web designers, lawyers, and immigration advisors. Top5.nz now covers over 50 categories; this analysis keeps to the original 18 for consistency with the May 2026 edition. Where a category is not covered in a market (a small number of cases), that market does not compete in it.
Markets: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, Tauranga, Napier/Hastings (combined, new in this edition), and Dunedin. Data snapshot: July 2026.
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