How many pharmacies does a big city have, and what the count says about access

Inside a 10 km circle around the centre, a large city has several hundred pharmacies. xMap's places database lists 866 in London, 519 in Toronto and 346 in Sydney (November 2026). Over the circle's 314 square kilometres that works out at about 2.8 pharmacies per square kilometre in London, 1.7 in Toronto and 1.1 in Sydney, which sounds generous, but the count hides two things that matter more: how evenly they are spread and how much of the market a few big groups hold.

Pharmacy counts are read by very different people. A health planner asks whether residents can reach one. A wholesaler or a medical rep asks how many doors there are to sell to. A pharmacist thinking of opening asks where the competition is thinnest. This article goes through the three cities with each of those questions in mind.

866London

519Toronto

346Sydney

Who runs them

The three cities have very different ownership patterns, and that shapes everything else.

xMap's places database, pharmacies within 10 km of each city centre, November 2026. Toronto and London list more pharmacies than one search brings back, so their chains and independents are counted among the 438 nearest the centre; Sydney's cover every pharmacy listed. Percentages are chain branches over the pharmacies counted.

Adding up the three largest groups gives a quick concentration figure: 94 of the 438 counted in Toronto (about 21%), 56 of the 438 counted in London (about 13%) and 88 of all 346 in Sydney (about 25%). Near the centre, London's pharmacy market is the most fragmented of the three; Sydney's the most concentrated.

• For a supplier, London is a large field-sales opportunity: 347 independents among the 438 pharmacies nearest the centre alone, out of 866 listed, while in Sydney three head offices reach about a quarter of the market.
• For a new independent pharmacist, a concentrated market means competing with discount-led formats on price is hard, so service, opening hours or a clinical niche matter more.

How customers rate them

Pharmacies are rated far more modestly than personal services. Among the pharmacies counted, the averages are 4.3 in Toronto, 3.9 in London and 4.1 in Sydney, each across more than 300 rated places (412, 413 and 323). The share rated 4.5 or more tells the same story from another side: 232 in Toronto, 127 in London, 117 in Sydney. In London, fewer than one rated pharmacy in three is in that top group, so a well-run independent with a 4.6 genuinely stands out there. For how to read such spreads, see reading ratings across a whole market.

Where they are thin

Where a market page holds every place in the circle, it splits the circle into nine equal parts and names the two with the fewest. Of these three cities only Sydney's page can: its thinnest parts are the north-east with 5 pharmacies and the south-east with 9. Both run out towards the harbour and the coast, so check on the map before drawing conclusions.

The Toronto and London pages hold the pharmacies nearest the centre, not all 519 and 866, so they do not name the thinnest parts: places further out are missing from them, and those parts would look emptier than they are. For those cities, count around your own sites or districts instead, as described below. Remember too that much of the southern half of Toronto's circle is Lake Ontario.

Access versus competition

The same count answers two opposite questions, and it helps to keep them apart.

Access: can people reach one?

Access is people per pharmacy, and how far the furthest residents must go. Counting pharmacies is half of it; you also need population. xMap's Demographics block has population figures for Canada and Australia, so a people-per-pharmacy figure can be worked out for parts of Toronto and Sydney. It has no population data for the United Kingdom, so in London you would need your own figures for that half of the question.

Competition: how many rivals within reach?

Competition is counted around a site, not across a city. A new pharmacy cares how many others sit within a short walk or a few minutes' drive, and whether they are chain branches with long opening hours. A circle of 500 m to 1 km around each candidate site is usually more telling than any city figure.

Doing the count for your own sites

A pharmacy chain choosing its next branch, a health authority checking coverage or a supplier planning territories can run the same counts on its own map:

1. My data: your candidate sites or branches, or draw the districts in Area of interest.
2. Travel area: an area of, say, 10 minutes on foot around each site, if walking distance is what counts.
3. Nearby places set to Pharmacy, passing on each site with counts: how many, how many chains, the nearest and its distance.
4. Demographics where population data exists, for residents around each site.
5. Sort and limit by the count, fewest first, and Email or Show on a map.

Several templates do variants of this: Competitor density around each site, Where to open sample collection points and, for suppliers, Independent pharmacies to open. A city service desk can point residents to the nearest pharmacy with Citizen services chat: nearest pharmacy or clinic.

Openings: a quiet market

Few pharmacies opened in the twelve months before November 2026. Of those counted with an opening date, 14 of 438 opened in Toronto, 5 of 436 in London and 6 of 346 in Sydney. Pharmacy is a licensed, slow-moving trade, so a single new branch near your own matters more than in a fast-turning category like cafes. That makes it a good case for an AI employee that only speaks up when one appears.