Methodology
Plain rules, applied the same way to every room. Where the data has problems, they are listed at the bottom of the page rather than hidden.
In short: Every Escape That figure is a count or average of games logged in ER-OS; escape rate is escaped ÷ played, rankings need 100+ games, leaderboards show no names and drop times dated outside a room’s run.
ER-OS is the system Escape This uses to book every session and run every game. Each game it logs carries whether the team escaped, the finishing time and the clues used. Escape That reads those records through ER-OS’s public, read-only feeds; it has no access to bookings or personal details.
Only the five Escape This centres are counted. The ER-OS account also holds The Game Show quiz rooms; they are not escape rooms and are excluded everywhere.
For a single room, ER-OS returns the rate directly. For a centre, a city or the whole company, the games are pooled first and the rate is worked out once, so a room with 2,000 games counts twenty times as much as a room with 100.
Horror and adventure splits pool the open rooms by their ER-OS tag. The national figure includes every Escape This room with games in ER-OS, retired ones too; it is 56% today.
escape rate = games escaped ÷ games played × 100, rounded
A room is ranked once it has 100 logged games. Below that, a handful of lucky or unlucky teams can move its rate by ten points or more. Unranked rooms still get a page and full figures; they are simply left out of the ordered lists.
Hardest means lowest escape rate. Most played means most games logged. Fastest means lowest average time among winning teams. Ties are broken by number of games.
Average winning time only counts games the team escaped; failed games have no finishing time. Clues per game is the ER-OS average for the room. Most rooms run for 60 minutes; Telephone in Perth CBD runs for 45, and is marked wherever times are compared.
Each room’s top ten is drawn from the fastest escapes ER-OS holds for that room. A time is left off if its date falls before the room opened at that centre or after it closed there. ER-OS still carries some games dated 2001, which cannot be right for rooms that opened from 2020 on, and a few logged after a room had closed.
No names are published: a leaderboard row is the time, clues, team size and date, nothing that identifies who played.
All-time covers every game ER-OS holds for a room. The 2026 columns cover games since 1 January 2026. ER-OS counts games from when a room’s records began in the system, so a room that has run for years can show fewer games than it has really played.
ER-OS reports an all-time player count per room group: the same number for every copy of a room, at every centre. Added together, those counts would include the same players more than once, so Escape That does not publish a player total. Escape This’s own figure is more than 500,000 players.
Aggregates come from ER-OS as they are. The public feeds cannot filter games by date, so the misdated games stay inside the totals; the affected rooms are listed below.
Generated on every refresh · 24 October 2026
| Issue | Where | Handling |
|---|---|---|
| Other brands in the same ER-OS account | The Game Show Perth CBD and Sydney CBD | Excluded. Account-wide, ER-OS shows 52,482 games; Escape This rooms alone have 51,932. |
| Leaderboard rows dated outside a room’s run (mostly 2001 dates) | 33 rooms | Left off the top ten. Worst: Bank Heist, Perth CBD (19 of its 100 fastest rows); Magic School, Manly (15 of its 100 fastest rows); Dracula, Northbridge (14 of its 100 fastest rows). |
| Time logged after the room closed | Hitman, Manly | 37:20 on 16 March 2026 left off the leaderboard. |
| Games logged with no escapes | President's Briefcase, Perth CBD | 33 games, 0 escapes. Shown as logged, but read with caution. |
| Every logged game a win | Van Helsing, Melbourne CBD | Shown as logged; under the ranking threshold or early in its run. |
| Player counts per room group, not per venue | 10 shared rooms | Not summed or published as a total. |
| Stray whitespace in an ER-OS room name | The Buckens, Manly | Trimmed for display. |
| Lifetime plays on the old site vs games in ER-OS | Older rooms, e.g. Bank Heist, Perth CBD | The old site quoted 10.4K plays; ER-OS holds about 2,500 games. Only ER-OS figures are used. |
Q&A · each answer has its own link
Escape This says it has hosted more than 500,000 players. Escape That does not add up a player total of its own: ER-OS reports player counts per room group, the same figure for every copy of a room, so summing them would count the same players several times.
Mostly, but not entirely. Escape rate measures how often teams beat the clock, and Escape That uses it as the difficulty ranking because it is the one measure every room shares. It also reflects who books a room: horror rooms with 18+ age limits draw different groups from family adventures at Escape This.
A game counts if ER-OS logged it as an escape and its date falls inside that room’s run at that Escape This centre. Times dated before a room opened, such as the 2001 dates in some records, or after it closed, are left off the top ten.
Most retired Escape This rooms appear to have closed before ER-OS began logging their games, so ER-OS holds their opening and closing dates but no games. Escape That shows a dash for those rooms rather than a zero, because a zero would suggest nobody ever escaped.
Escape rate is games escaped divided by games played, as logged in ER-OS, rounded to the nearest whole per cent. For a centre, a city or Escape This as a whole, ER-OS combines the underlying games first, so a busy room counts for more than a quiet one.
A room’s first few dozen games swing its escape rate wildly, and new rooms often start easy. Escape That ranks only Escape This rooms with 100 or more logged games; the 4 rooms below that line are listed as not ranked yet.
A dash means there is nothing to report yet: no games logged, so no escape rate, winning time or clue count. Escape That never shows 0% for an Escape This room with no games, because 0% would mean teams played and none escaped.
The 2026 columns cover Escape This games logged since 1 January 2026, the period ER-OS returns for its year view. All-time columns cover every game ER-OS holds for the room. Both refresh together each time the site rebuilds.
The previous Escape That site drew on an older system and quoted lifetime play counts, for example 10.4K plays of Bank Heist at Perth CBD. ER-OS holds fewer games for that room (about 2,500), because it only counts games logged in ER-OS. Every figure here comes from ER-OS so Escape This rooms are compared on one basis.
No. The Game Show quiz rooms in Perth and Sydney share an ER-OS account with Escape This, but they are not escape rooms, so Escape That leaves them out of every total, ranking and leaderboard.
Shorter rooms are marked wherever times are compared. Telephone at Escape This Perth CBD has a 45-minute limit, so its average winning time and records look quick next to hour-long rooms; the fastest page names the quickest 60-minute room separately.
Every page is rebuilt from the public ER-OS feeds on a schedule, and each shows the date of its data; the current figures are from 24 October 2026. Between refreshes the Escape This numbers on the page stay as they were at that date.
From ER-OS, the system Escape This uses to book and run every game, through its public, read-only feeds: the leaderboard feed for games, escapes, times and clues, the room catalogue for which rooms run where, and the review summary for ratings and review totals.