The 5 Best Free EV Chargers in Adelaide (Updated for 2026)
Adelaide has more free EV chargers than Perth or Brisbane. It also has a problem those cities do not: most of them use a plug your car cannot fit.
South Australia went early on public charging. That was genuinely forward-thinking at the time. The catch is that "early" meant Type 1 J1772, the American connector that was standard here around 2015 and is now effectively obsolete. Almost every free charger in the Adelaide Hills, Gawler, Burnside and the Fleurieu runs J1772. If you drive a Tesla, BYD, MG, Polestar, Kia, Hyundai or basically anything sold in Australia in the last eight years, you cannot plug into them without an adaptor.
We went through every charger in our Adelaide database, filtered for free, threw out anything staff-only or not operational, then threw out anything you physically cannot connect to.
First, what "free" actually means
Five things get called free in Australia. Adelaide manages to demonstrate four of them.
Genuinely free. The electricity costs nothing. You still need the operator's app to start the session, because almost no Australian charger lets you just walk up and plug in. Free power, not free of admin.
Free with a quota. Jolt is the big one here. You get 7kWh a day free, roughly 45km of range, then you pay per kWh. A small service fee applies to every session. Useful, but it is a daily allowance, not a free charger.
Free power, paid parking. The charger charges nothing. The car park underneath it charges plenty. This catches people out constantly.
Every charger below is in the first category. Where there is a parking cost, we have said so.
One more thing worth knowing before you go: an RFID card is worth $5. You do not need one per network. A single Evie Pass can be registered inside the Chargefox, Exploren, Everty and bp pulse apps and will then tap on all of them. It works when your phone is flat or there is no reception in a basement car park.
1. Tonsley Innovation District
Tonsley Boulevard, Tonsley SA 5042
Operator: site host | 2 plugs | 50kW DC (CCS2 and CHAdeMO), plus Type 2 AC
The only free DC fast charger in metropolitan Adelaide, and it is not close to being matched.
Fifty kilowatts free, listed as fully public access with no membership requirement and no cost. Both CCS2 and CHAdeMO are available, so modern EVs and older Leafs and Outlander PHEVs are all covered. At 50kW you are looking at a genuine charge in 30 to 40 minutes rather than a half-day commitment. Everything else on this list is AC.
Tonsley is the redeveloped Mitsubishi manufacturing site at Clovelly Park, now an innovation precinct housing Flinders University, TAFE SA, and a long list of technology and manufacturing businesses. There is a Tesla service centre tucked in one corner, which tells you something about the site's EV credentials.
The main hall is open 24 hours and is a genuinely pleasant place to wait, with cafes, a gym and open public space. It is about 12km south of the CBD, just off South Road.
The limitation is two plugs. With the only free DC charging in Adelaide, expect competition.
How to start a session: Host-controlled rather than a national network, so check the signage on the unit or the PlugShare comments before you rely on it. Host-owned chargers like this are often on free vend, where you plug in and it simply starts.
2. Elizabeth City Centre
50 Elizabeth Way, Elizabeth SA 5112
Operator: not recorded | 2 plugs | 11kW AC, Type 2
Two free Type 2 plugs at Elizabeth City Centre, the major shopping centre for Adelaide's northern suburbs, listed as fully public with no cost.
Eleven kilowatts is the middle ground: roughly 50 to 60km of range per hour. An hour and a half of shopping is a meaningful chunk rather than a token top up.
The value here is location and connector. This is a large centre with Big W, Target, Coles, Woolworths and a full food court, so there is real reason to be there for a couple of hours. And crucially it is Type 2, which puts it in a small minority of Adelaide's free chargers.
Elizabeth is around 27km north of the CBD, so this is the practical free option if you live or work in the northern suburbs.
How to start a session: The operator is not recorded in our data, so check the signage or PlugShare first. Bring your own Type 2 cable.
3. Murray Bridge
2 Seventh Street, Murray Bridge SA 5253
Operator: ChargeStar | 4 plugs | 22kW AC, Type 2
Four free 22kW Type 2 plugs. On specification alone this is the best free AC charging in South Australia, and it is not a close contest.
Four bays means you will almost certainly get one. Twenty-two kilowatts adds roughly 100km of range an hour. Type 2 means your car can actually use it. Nothing else free in SA ticks all three.
The honest catch is distance. Murray Bridge is about 80km east of Adelaide on the South Eastern Freeway, so this is not a local option. It is, however, an excellent one if you are heading toward the Murraylands, the Coorong, or on to Victoria, and it is the reason it earns a spot rather than sitting in a footnote.
ChargeStar is also one of the better operators for access flexibility, which matters in a regional town.
How to start a session: ChargeStar supports a smartphone app with a credit or debit card, Google Pay or a prepaid PayPal wallet, plus a card reader on the station itself accepting credit and debit cards and NFC payments. ChargeStar also roams via Hubject, so some other network accounts may work.
4. Druid Avenue, Stirling
5 Druid Avenue, Stirling SA 5152
Operator: ChargePoint | 1 plug | 6.6kW AC, Type 2 tethered and J1772
A single free charger in the heart of Stirling, and one of the very few ChargePoint units in South Australia that offers a Type 2 tethered cable alongside the legacy J1772. That tethered Type 2 is why it makes this list when a dozen similar ChargePoint sites do not.
Tethered means you do not need to bring a cable, which is a genuine convenience.
Six point six kilowatts is slow, around 30 to 35km of range an hour. Treat this as a lunch charger. Stirling is one of the nicer Adelaide Hills villages, with a good run of cafes, providores and the Stirling markets, so two hours is easy to fill.
One plug is one gamble, so have a backup in mind.
How to start a session: ChargePoint app with a payment method saved, or a ChargePoint RFID card registered to your account. Note that ChargePoint cards do not roam onto Chargefox or Evie, so this is a separate account to set up.
5. The City of Adelaide network (first hour free)
Multiple CBD sites: 163-185 Rundle St, 40-60 Gouger St, 52-54 Waymouth St, 18-34 Wyatt St,
70 Light Square, 47 Hindmarsh Square, and 61 Jerningham St, North Adelaide
2 to 11 plugs per site | 22kW AC, Type 2
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This is not free, and we are including it anyway, because the deal is good enough that leaving it out would be doing you a disservice.
The pricing is: free for the first hour, then $0.20 per kWh from 6am to 6pm Monday to Friday, and $0.10 per kWh at all other times. A minimum $1 fee applies once you pass the first hour.
Run the numbers. One hour at 22kW is around 22kWh, which is 100km or more of range, for nothing. Go past the hour and you are paying 10 to 20 cents per kWh, against 60 to 75 cents at a typical commercial fast charger. Even the paid portion is roughly a quarter of the going rate.
The scale is the other draw. Rundle Street lists 11 charging points. Gouger Street lists 11. Waymouth Street and Wyatt Street list four each. These are Type 2 at 22kW, spread across the CBD and North Adelaide. In terms of sheer availability, nothing else in South Australia comes close.
So: if you can do a one hour errand in the CBD, this is genuinely free charging at a useful speed. If you are parking all day, it is very cheap charging. Just do not go in expecting unlimited free power.
How to start a session: The operator is not recorded in our data. Check the signage or PlugShare. Type 2 sockets, so bring your own cable.
The connector problem, in detail
This is the single most important thing to understand about free charging in Adelaide.
The following free, publicly accessible chargers all use Type 1 J1772 only, with no Type 2 option:
- 284 Unley Road, Hyde Park
- 41 High Street and Pioneer Place, Gawler
- 82 Onkaparinga Valley Road, Woodside
- 1 Crescent Drive, Norton Summit
- 85 Wellington Road, Mount Barker
- Bay Road and 2 Stuart Street, Victor Harbor
- 20 South Terrace, Strathalbyn
- 12 Edwards Avenue, Normanville
- 2 Cadell Street, Goolwa
- 5 Adelaide Road, McCracken
Cator Street, Burnside is a particular shame. Three free plugs at Burnside Village, fully public, but the connectors listed are Tesla proprietary and J1772, with no Type 2. A good site that most drivers cannot use.
If you own a J1772-to-Type 2 adaptor, that list above suddenly becomes the best free charging network in any Australian capital. If you do not, it is invisible to you. Worth knowing before you plan a Fleurieu or Adelaide Hills trip around it.
What else we left out
The Jolt cluster on Port Road. Chargers at Queenstown, Woodville South, Hindmarsh, West Hindmarsh and Park Holme, all running the 7kWh daily free allowance at 25kW. Genuinely handy if one is your local, but a service fee applies to every session and you pay per kWh beyond the quota. It is an allowance, not a free charger.
82 Grote Street, Adelaide. Two free plugs in the CBD, but 3.6kW on standard power points. That is around 20km of range an hour. Technically free, practically pointless.
Sir Richard Williams Avenue, Adelaide Airport. Four free 7kW plugs, but marked staff, visitor or customer only. Not public charging.
Allan Street, Plympton area. Free 22kW Type 2, fully public on paper, but listed as notice required, meaning you need to contact the site before arriving.
Before you drive there
Free is a status, not a permanent feature. Hosts switch to paid once demand picks up, and several records behind this list date back a few years.
Three of the five above are host-owned with no operator recorded, which means the access method is unconfirmed. Check PlugShare or the relevant app for live pricing, availability and connector type before you go. In Adelaide especially, check the connector.