Best locksmiths in Joondalup and the northern corridor (2026)
Table of Contents
A locksmith is one of the few trades you call when you are already having a bad day, which is exactly when nobody checks a licence. In Western Australia they are licensed, and the register is public. Eleven locksmiths advertising into Joondalup, Wanneroo, Clarkson and Butler were assessed for this page. Three could be ranked. Seven are licensed but publish no street address, so their locality cannot be verified, and one is named after the suburb and does not appear in the register at all.
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Most locksmiths in the northern corridor run without a shopfront, which keeps them off a page like this no matter how good their reviews are. A paid placement is the way onto it. Six licensed operators here carry strong review records and no public address.
See placement optionsArmoury Locksmith
A clean sweep of five-star reviews across a record large enough to mean something, and the only operator on this page with no rating below the top of the scale. Licensed as Armoury Locksmith, security agent licence 47348, held by Peter George Biddle. Its own Google listing describes a small mobile business with more than thirty-five years behind it and says plainly that it does not do cars, which is worth knowing before you call about a lost key fob. Alkimos is the northern edge of this cluster, so confirm travel before you book. The weighted margin over second place is 0.0241, real but slim.
Get a quoteABC Locksmiths WA
The most central of the three, and the only one whose Google category is emergency locksmith service rather than plain locksmith, which matches what most people are searching for at eleven at night. Registered as ABC Locksmiths WA Pty Ltd, security agent licence 56513, held by Erin Aroha Nicholas. One caveat we would rather state than hide: a second Google profile, A ABC Locksmiths Craigie, carries the same phone number and a separate 4.5 rating from 8 reviews. It is the same operator, and the two records are not added together here. The Kingsley address was confirmed by loading the street address as a place in its own right.
Get a quoteAdvanced Lock and Key
161 reviews is more than the other two ranked operators put together, and it sits at third place rather than first because the weighting rewards a high rating and a long record together, not volume on its own. If you want the busiest counter in the corridor, this is it. Registered as Advanced Lock and Key with an ampersand in place of the word, security agent licence 9729, held by Aaron James Dwyer. Wangara is a light industrial pocket with a real shopfront, which is the practical difference when you want keys cut while you wait rather than a van at your door.
Get a quoteThe finding that shaped this page
The single highest-rated locksmith advertising into this area is a business trading as Locksmith Joondalup, 4.7 from 13 reviews, open around the clock, named for the suburb itself. We could not find it in the Western Australia Police register of licensed security organisations.
That is a statement about the register, not an accusation. The list we checked is the published Organisations list, current as at 7 September 2026, and it holds 2,292 records. A locksmith can lawfully work as an employee of somebody else’s licensed business without appearing on it under their own trading name. What the regulator does say is that an installer who is self-employed or subcontracting under their own ABN must hold their own security agent licence, and an agent licence is what puts a trading name on that list.
So the useful version for a homeowner is this: a trading name you cannot find on that list is a question worth asking on the phone, not a verdict. Ask whose licence the work is done under and write the number down. The other name cut from this page, Mister Minit at Lakeside Joondalup, was excluded for a simpler reason — Google classifies it as a shoe repair shop, and this page ranks locksmiths.
How this was ranked
Same method as every ranking page on this site, with one change that matters for a licensed trade: the credential check happens before the review check, not after it.
- Licence first. Every operator ranked here appears by trading name in the WA Police list of current licensed security organisations, checked in the same session this page was written. A business we could not match is not ranked.
- Locality second. The register carries no street addresses, so locality rests on the Google place page, opened individually and checked against its own coordinates rather than read off a search result card.
- One licence, one operator. Trading names sharing a licence number are the same business and are never ranked twice or added together.
- Then reviews. A weighted score that pulls small samples toward the category average, so thirty reviews cannot outrank a hundred and sixty on rating alone.
- Nothing invented. Ratings and counts are read from live Google place pages on the date at the foot of this page.
Eleven operators were assessed. Three cleared every step, which is the honest size of this list.
One licence, seven trading names: the trap in this trade
Locksmithing has a quirk we have not seen this strongly in any other trade. Suburb-keyword trading names are cheap to register, and one licence can carry a lot of them. In the Western Australia list, a single security agent licence, 48250, holds seven separate trading names, every one of them a Baldivis variant: Baldivis Auto, Baldivis City, Baldivis Emergency, Baldivis Home and Automotive, Baldivis Locksmiths, Baldivis Master and Baldivis Mobile Locksmith. Another licence, 23964, carries Calibre Locksmiths, Freo City Locksmiths and Perth City Locksmiths. Four more licences hold two names each.
None of that is unlawful, and it is not evidence of anything bad. It does mean that a page of search results showing you six locally named locksmiths can be showing you one van. On this site those names are collapsed to a single operator before anyone is scored, and review counts from duplicate listings are never added together. In the northern corridor the case that came up was Guv’nor Locksmiths, which shares licence 2714 with A1 Locksmiths.
The licence classes that decide who does the work
Read off the WA Police page on types of security licences, last updated 8 May 2026. The categories below come from Regulation 27 of the Security and Related Activities (Control) Regulations 1997, quoted rather than paraphrased where it matters.
| Licence | Category | What it means when you call one |
|---|---|---|
| Security Agent | Agent | Authorises a business to advertise and supply security services, and to employ licensed installers. A locksmith who is self-employed or subcontracting under their own ABN must hold one. This is the licence that puts a trading name on the public register. |
| Security Installer Class 1 | Non-agent | Install, maintain and repair safes, vaults and locks of a kind prescribed in Regulation 6. The broadest of the four for lock work. |
| Security Installer Class 2 | Non-agent | Security alarms, closed circuit television for security purposes, and the equipment prescribed in Regulation 8. Not lock work. |
| Security Installer Class 3 | Non-agent | Security doors as prescribed in Regulation 7. Relevant if you are having a screen door or security door fitted rather than a lock changed. |
| Security Installer Class 4 | Non-agent | Install locks of a kind referred to in Regulation 6. Narrower than Class 1: installation only. |
The clause most people find surprising sits above all four of them. A Security Installer licence, in the regulator’s own words, does not apply to installers of security equipment in vehicles, vessels or aircraft. Cutting a car key or getting you back into a locked ute is therefore outside this licence entirely, which is why several of the strongest automotive locksmiths in Perth are not on the organisations register in the way a house locksmith is. If your problem is a car, the register is the wrong test and you should be asking about the immobiliser and transponder work directly.
Before you call anyone
- Ask for the licence number, not the licence. A number can be checked against the published list in about a minute; a laminated card on a dashboard cannot.
- Get the callout fee and the after-hours rate separately, before the van leaves. Lockout pricing is the part of this trade that generates the most complaints, and it is not published anywhere we could verify.
- Say whether it is a house or a car. They are different licences and often different businesses, and calling the wrong one costs you an hour.
- If you have just moved in, ask about rekeying rather than replacing. Reusing the existing hardware with new pins is usually the cheaper of the two.
- A suburb in the business name means nothing about where the van is. Seven Baldivis-named locksmiths in this state share one licence.
Questions
Only three locksmiths? Joondalup is bigger than that.
It is, and the shortlist is not a claim about the size of the market. Eleven operators advertising into Joondalup, Wanneroo, Clarkson and Butler were assessed. Seven of them are licensed and have good review records but publish no street address, because locksmithing is overwhelmingly a mobile trade and a service-area listing on Google shows no premises. Without an address we cannot verify that an operator actually works this corridor rather than driving up from Cannington, so they are not ranked. We could have padded the list by dropping that rule. It would have made the page longer and less useful.
Why is the one with the most reviews ranked third?
Because rating and record are weighted together. Advanced Lock and Key has 161 reviews at 4.6, which is a strong record; Armoury Locksmith has 33 at 5.0. The formula pulls a small sample toward the category average so a handful of perfect scores cannot leapfrog a long history, but it does not ignore the rating either. On these numbers the three sit at 4.6241, 4.6000 and 4.5617. Those gaps are small and deliberate to state: the order is meaningful, but any of the three is a reasonable call.
How do I check a locksmith licence myself?
The Western Australia Police Force publishes lists of current licence holders on wa.gov.au. The one that matters for a business is the Organisations list, which gives trading name, the name of the licensed agent, the licence number and the licence type. It is a PDF, and it is searchable once open.
Is a locksmith who is not on that list working illegally?
Not necessarily, and we would not say so. An employee doing lock work under an employer’s licence has no reason to appear on the organisations list under a separate trading name. The list names businesses that hold an agent licence. Where it is worth a question is when a business advertises to the public under its own name and ABN, because the regulator states that a self-employed or subcontracting installer must hold their own security agent licence.
My key snapped in the front door at midnight. Who do I call?
Any of the three above will take an after-hours callout; the second-ranked business is the one Google categorises as an emergency locksmith service. Ask for the callout fee and the after-hours rate before you agree, get it confirmed in a text message, and ask whether extraction is charged separately from a new cylinder.
Why is there no price table on this page?
Because we could not verify one. Locksmith callout and lockout pricing in Perth is quoted job by job, varies with the hour, and is not published by anyone whose figures we could check against a source. Putting a made-up range here would look more helpful than it is. The licence table above is what we could source properly, so that is what the page carries instead.
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See pricingBrowse directoryLast updated 21 September 2026. Ratings and review counts read from Google place pages on 20 and 21 September 2026; licence status checked against the Western Australia Police Force list of current licence holders, Organisations, as at 7 September 2026; licence categories and the vehicles exclusion quoted from the WA Police types of security licences page, last updated 8 May 2026. If you run a locksmith business in the northern corridor and think this page has you wrong, we would rather hear about it than leave it wrong.