What is the crime rate in Cardiff? Cardiff recorded 79.55 crimes per 1,000 people in the 12 months to April 2026, according to CrimeRate’s analysis of South Wales Police data. That is lower than every other big city in CrimeRate’s comparison except York (78.92), and about a third below Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds and Nottingham. The city-wide rate hides big local differences: in a July 2026 police-data sample, a small box in the city centre logged 28 incidents where the same-size box in Llandaff logged one.
Data: police-recorded crime, 12 months to April 2026, rates from CrimeRate’s analysis of data.police.uk (release updated 7 June 2026, still the latest when re-checked on 27 October 2026); category snapshot from the data.police.uk street-level API, July 2026; latest month on data.police.uk: August 2026. Percentage comparisons are our own arithmetic. The figures describe recorded incidents, not the people who live here. Updated 27 October 2026.
Cardiff is Wales’s capital and largest city, policed by South Wales Police. It is also the reason this series is not called “Crime in UK Cities” with an Edinburgh entry: Police Scotland does not publish street-level crime data through data.police.uk at all, so Scotland cannot be covered by the same verified method used for every other city here. South Wales Police does publish through it, so Cardiff gets the same treatment as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.
Overview: for the city-wide crime rate, the trend and whether Cardiff is safe overall, see is Cardiff safe? What the police data says. This page focuses on what the force-wide South Wales Police statistics mean and how different Cardiff areas compare.
What is the crime rate in Cardiff?
Cardiff’s crime rate is 79.55 recorded crimes per 1,000 people for the 12 months to April 2026 (CrimeRate, anti-social behaviour excluded), the second-lowest of the eleven big cities in CrimeRate’s comparison table. Only York is lower, at 78.92, a gap of under 1 per cent. Westminster, the highest, records 57 per cent more per head than Cardiff.
| City | Crimes per 1,000 people, 12 months to April 2026 | Compared with Cardiff (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|
| Westminster (London) | 125.00 | 57.1% higher |
| Nottingham | 107.74 | 35.4% higher |
| Leeds | 107.10 | 34.6% higher |
| Liverpool | 106.48 | 33.9% higher |
| Birmingham | 105.05 | 32.1% higher |
| Bristol | 104.64 | 31.5% higher |
| Leicester | 97.87 | 23.0% higher |
| Sheffield | 84.09 | 5.7% higher |
| Newcastle | 82.69 | 3.9% higher |
| Cardiff | 79.55 | – |
| York | 78.92 | 0.8% lower |
Source: CrimeRate city comparison (12 months to April 2026, page updated 7 June 2026), analysis of police-recorded crime on data.police.uk; one source and one method for every row. Differences are our own arithmetic.
Two things stand out. Cardiff sits in a low group with York, Newcastle and Sheffield, all within 6 per cent of each other, while the large English core cities cluster 31 to 35 per cent higher. And Cardiff’s rate is a daytime-population rate: the city is the shopping, work and events centre for much of south-east Wales, so commuters and visitors are counted in the denominator as well as residents. The full count, category mix and one-year trend are in is Cardiff safe?; what follows here is how much the rate varies inside the city.
Why a force-wide number hides more than it shows
South Wales Police covers Cardiff, Swansea, the Vale of Glamorgan and the South Wales valleys in one figure. Even within Cardiff alone, the pattern from every other city in this series repeats: the city centre around Cardiff Central and Cathays, the City Road nightlife and restaurant strip in Roath, and the leafy suburb of Llandaff a couple of miles out all sit under one force-wide rate — and, as the numbers below show, do not look alike at all.
Compare Cardiff areas yourself
A single figure cannot tell you about the specific street you actually care about. A couple of comparisons worth trying, each opens live with both postcodes already loaded:
- Cardiff city centre vs Llandaff — a dense retail and transport hub against a quiet cathedral-village suburb.
- City Road vs Llandaff — Cardiff’s nightlife and restaurant strip against the same suburb.
A live snapshot from the police API (July 2026)
Here is what the categories actually looked like in a small area around each postcode last month, pulled live from data.police.uk — the same feed the address checker uses — and checked by hand against the raw record count. The city-centre box is roughly 200 metres across and City Road’s roughly 300 metres, far below the police API’s limit for a custom area (more than 10,000 crimes returns an error instead of data), so every record in each box was counted. Llandaff’s sample came back with a single incident in a comparable box and the same month: a quiet spot, not a missing-data artefact.
City centre
City Road
Llandaff
Read these as a mix, not a scoreboard: the sample sizes are deliberately different, so the percentages show category share, not which area had more crime overall. The city centre splits fairly evenly between shoplifting and criminal damage, with violent crime close behind — a retail-and-evening-economy mix. City Road, a dedicated restaurant and nightlife strip, leans harder towards violent crime and, more distinctively, vehicle crime, which barely registers in the city-centre sample. This is one month of data, not a trend — for the full twelve-month picture and an actual up-or-down trend for one address, use the checker itself.
The limits of this data
This is recorded crime — what was reported and logged, not everything that happened. A rate, high or low, is not a verdict on a place or the people who live there; it is one data point among several worth weighing. If you want the fuller picture of how UK police data works and what it cannot tell you, we have written that up separately.
One gap matters for central Cardiff in particular. British Transport Police provided no crime data to data.police.uk for any month from March 2025 to August 2026 (data.police.uk changelog, checked 27 October 2026), so offences recorded inside Cardiff Central and Cardiff Queen Street stations are missing from recent street-level counts. South Wales Police’s own crime data has no such gap in that period. Our guide to the police crime map lists every missing month by force, and how to check crime in your area explains how to read a street-level count.
See how South Wales Police compares with other forces in our police force crime rate ranking, how the city’s own Castle ward compared to leafy Cyncoed in our safest areas in Cardiff post, or specifically how much of that crime is violent in our violent crime breakdown. Every Cardiff ward is ranked individually in our ward-by-ward breakdown, and the same treatment for the other South Wales city is in safest areas in Swansea. For the city’s overall crime rate, trend and crime types compared with other UK cities, read is Cardiff safe?.
Want this on the walk itself?
Safety App UK puts a live safety map built from official police data on your Android phone, with safer routes and one-tap SOS that shares your live location with your trusted circle. It does not call the emergency services. Start with a 7-day free trial (for accounts that have not used one; a payment method is needed), then £2.99 a month or £29.99 a year; cancel any time in Google Play.
Get the app — free for 7 days Check a Cardiff postcode
Cardiff crime data FAQ
What is the crime rate in Cardiff?
Cardiff’s crime rate is 79.55 recorded crimes per 1,000 people for the 12 months to April 2026, according to CrimeRate’s analysis of police data. Anti-social behaviour is not included.
Is Cardiff safer than other UK cities?
On recorded crime per head, yes for most of them. In the 12 months to April 2026 Cardiff (79.55 per 1,000) was below Newcastle, Sheffield, Leicester, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Nottingham and Westminster; only York (78.92) was lower in CrimeRate’s comparison.
Which part of Cardiff has the most crime?
The city centre and the areas around it. In our July 2026 police-data sample, a 200-metre box in the city centre logged 28 incidents and one around City Road logged 30, against a single incident in Llandaff. Our Cardiff ward ranking compares every ward on one method.
Are crimes at Cardiff Central station on the police map?
Not recently. British Transport Police, which polices the railway, provided no crime data to data.police.uk from March 2025 to August 2026, so station offences are missing from those months.
And as always: none of this replaces calling 999 in an emergency. This is context for everyday decisions, not a substitute for the emergency services.