Benchmarking is the practice of comparing a municipality's costs, performance, and practices to those of similar municipalities or industry standards. This helps identify areas where a municipality is performing well, where improvements are needed, and what approaches work better elsewhere. For example, a city might benchmark its road maintenance costs per kilometre, recreation program participation rates, or water treatment efficiency against comparable communities. Effective benchmarking requires careful selection of comparison municipalities and understanding contextual factors that affect results. Municipal associations often facilitate benchmarking by collecting standardized data from member municipalities.