Home Fertiliser comparison
55 lawn fertilisers, compared
Every bag tells you it is the best one. None of them tell you how they stack up against the bag next to it.
So I collected the analysis off 55 fertilisers you can actually buy in Australia, put the numbers side by side, and worked out what you are really paying for.
Every figure comes off a label or the manufacturer's own published page. Prices were checked on 2 September 2026 and they will drift, but the ranking holds up because prices mostly drift together. Nobody pays me to say any of this and I do not sell fertiliser.
If a product is missing, it is because I could not find a published analysis for it. If you know where to find one, please send me the details using the email link further down and I will add it.
The order below is how I have ranked these after my own research. It is one way of weighing them up, not the final word, and someone else could reasonably rank them differently. Each goal in the dropdown weighs the nutrients differently, so the order changes with what you pick. See how each one is scored.
Best of all, get a soil test. It tells you exactly what your soil is short of, and once you know that, the rankings matter a lot less. You can simply pick the product that supplies what is missing.
Either way, this page at least puts most of the fertilisers you can buy in Australia in one place, so you can compare them yourself.
Pick a nutrient or price from Sort by to reorder the whole list by it. On a bigger screen you can also tap any column heading. Tap the ★ next to a product to pin it above the list so you can compare a few side by side.
The ones that will not tell you what is in the bag ()
These are products I looked for and could not find a published analysis for, whether on the label, the maker's own site or anywhere else. Without a nitrogen percentage you cannot work out what you are paying for or dose it properly, so they cannot be scored or ranked yet.
If you have a bag of one of these in the shed, please send a photo of the analysis panel using the email link below and I will add it.
This is not every fertiliser in Australia. It is the ones I checked.
Something missing, or a number wrong?
If you have a bag in the shed that is not on here, or one of these figures does not match the label in front of you, tell me and I will fix it. A photo of the analysis panel is ideal. I would rather be corrected than be confidently wrong.
How this is ranked
What the research says
I could not find a meta-analysis comparing coated and other slow release fertilisers on lawns. Turf research has not been pulled together like that yet. These are the best studies I could find, and what each one found.
Slow release on pasture
Meta-analysis, 14 studies, 2024
Across 14 studies, slow release cut nitrate leaching by about a third and cut grass growth by about a quarter. On a farm that growth is the crop. On a lawn it is mowing you do not have to do.
Read the studyTwelve nitrogen sources on couch
Field trial, bermudagrass (couch), UC Riverside
Ten slow release products, coated and uncoated. They released at different speeds, but colour and quality came out about the same for all of them.
Read the studyRate and frequency on buffalo
Field trial, St Augustine (buffalo), University of Florida
How much and how often mattered more than which product. Polymer coated gave the most even response, as long as the rate was right.
Read the studyLeaching from residential lawns
Greenhouse trial, Côté et al. 2021
Polymer coated urea cut leaching most consistently, across sand, loam and clay. Most sources kept the turf looking fine at a sensible rate, and the rate was the bigger lever.
Read the studySoluble vs coated, same lawn
Field trial, lawn turf, Utah State
Same rate on both. The soluble fertiliser lost 16.8% of its nitrogen past the roots. The polymer sulphur coated one lost 1.7%.
Read the studyWhat the number on the bag means
Field and lab trial, PLOS ONE
Coated products rated anywhere from 45 to 180 days all released most of their nitrogen within about five weeks when spread on the surface, which is how a lawn gets fed. The rating comes from controlled conditions, not your lawn.
Read the studyWhat they agree on: slow release beats fast for losing less nitrogen, the type of slow release matters a lot less than people think, and the rate matters most. The rate is the bit the app works out for you.
The app does this for the bag in your shed
This page ranks the ones I have collected. The lawn app runs the same scoring over your own library, including products you type in off a label yourself, and it knows your lawn's size so it can work out the dose. Free, no account, no Pro tier.