A free directory of businesses in Cairns and Tropical North Queensland, from the southern beaches to Port Douglas and the Daintree. As of October 2026 it lists 5,427 businesses in 338 categories across 76 suburbs.
Cairns has grown by 19,390 people in 10 years, 12%, to 179,334 at June 2025 (ABS Regional population 2024-25), and is projected to add another 30,000-plus residents in the coming years (Queensland Government projections, 2025 edition).
Douglas Shire, with 13,169 people, entered the Regional Movers Index for the first time in March 2026 as a destination for people leaving the cities (Regional Australia Institute, June 2026).
The work is lined up behind that growth: the Cairns Hospital expansion is fully funded at more than $1 billion, with construction running to 2031 and about 3,800 construction jobs, and the Navy's wharf at HMAS Cairns will homeport patrol vessels (Queensland Government, September 2026; Department of Defence, 2026).
Every new arrival, here for a season or for good, needs a mechanic, a vet, a physio and a gym once they settle in, and has no idea yet who the locals trust.
The guide covers Cairns Regional Council, from Babinda and Gordonvale through the city to the northern beaches of Trinity Beach and Palm Cove and up the range to Kuranda, and Douglas Shire, its own council again since 2014: Port Douglas, Mossman, Wonga Beach and the Daintree. Yarrabah is a separate shire and is not listed.
The Tablelands and the Cassowary Coast are not included, but may be included in future local guide releases.
Tourism shapes the mix more than anywhere else in the network. Douglas Shire's third-largest business group is accommodation and food, behind only construction and property (ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, June 2025). Cairns itself has 15,166 businesses, led by construction at 2,699, property and rentals at 1,817 and professional services at 1,608.
Dive and reef operators, car hire and restaurants sit alongside the tradies who keep the suburbs running.
A Port Douglas dive tour operator's website gets the same daily scan as a Gordonvale mechanic's. We won't remove a listing for a website that loads slowly, blocks automated visitors or times out. A listing is removed only when the business is confirmed as no longer operating, or the owner tells us.
Licensed trades carry the number matched to the Queensland QBCC register. Claimed pages come first in every list and nobody can buy a better spot.
Arriving in Cairns ahead of the removal truck? New to Cairns covers the car rental, the vet, the GP and the dive shop, from Edmonton to Palm Cove.
Marlowe Bennett runs this guide. He founded Coastworks AI, a Queensland consultancy that builds websites, email marketing and AI automations for small businesses, after 30 years in service businesses, and he pays for the guide and runs the system behind it.
That system scans every listed website each day; anything it cannot verify itself waits for Marlowe and his team to check. Nothing on a listing is influenced by Coastworks AI. Questions about a listing go to [email protected] or 0495 039 007.
Which listings are offered to Google, and how a listing is added, checked, claimed, fixed or removed: how this guide is built. The same guide runs in other regions, built the same way: all the local business guides. Business owners can also ask for a free Growth and Automation Audit of their own website.
The same daily-checked guide runs in other regions, built the same way by Coastworks AI.
The full breakdown by suburb and category is at the numbers.