Each financial year, passenger numbers at each of Melbourne’s railway stations is collated and published by Public Transport Victoria.
The table below shows the top 20 most used Melbourne railway stations in the 2011/2012 financial year (1st July 2011 to 30th June 2012), with a comparison on how each of those stations fared from last year.
| Rank | Change this year |
Station | Millions of passengers |
| 1 | Flinders Street | 26.187 | |
| 2 | Southern Cross | 16.828 | |
| 3 | Melbourne Central | 14.333 | |
| 4 | Parliament | 10.734 | |
| 5 | Flagstaff | 4.982 | |
| 6 | +1 | Footscray | 4.199 |
| 7 | -1 | Caulfield | 4.065 |
| 8 | Box Hill | 2.743 | |
| 9 | +3 | Dandenong | 2.658 |
| 10 | -1 | Frankston | 2.472 |
| 11 | South Yarra | 2.399 | |
| 12 | -2 | Glenferrie | 2.356 |
| 13 | +1 | Richmond | 2.070 |
| 14 | -1 | Camberwell | 2.052 |
| 15 | Sunshine | 1.981 | |
| 16 | Glen Waverley | 1.801 | |
| 17 | Oakleigh | 1,760 | |
| 18 | +3 | Clayton | 1.721 |
| 19 | +4 | Laverton | 1.716 |
| 20 | +2 | Essendon | 1.671 |
The top 5 busiest stations are all the ones that immediately service the Melbourne CBD. They are the above-ground stations of Flinders Street and Southern Cross, plus the City Loop underground stations of Parliament, Melbourne Central and Flagstaff.
Of all the stations that were open for the entire 12 months of last financial year, Wattle Glen (on the Hurstbridge line) and Officer (on the Pakenham line) were the least used.
For the full patronage data for every single railway station over the last four financial years, see Melbourne metropolitan station by station patronage data.