.com.au
Australian businesses trading under an ABN or ACN
About .com.au
- .com.au is Australia’s commercial namespace and the default choice for a business trading here. It sits under .au, which was delegated in 1986, making com.au one of the oldest and most established parts of the Australian internet.
- The namespace is governed by .au Domain Administration (auDA), the not-for-profit administrator of .au, with the registry itself operated by Identity Digital Australia on auDA’s behalf. Registrars like Domain Central issue licences under auDA’s rules.
- A com.au domain is not owned outright. It is licensed to you for a term of one to five years, and the licence continues for as long as you remain eligible to hold it. Australians read .com.au as a sign that a business is real and local, which is why it remains the most widely used namespace in the country.
Who can register .com.au
- You must be an Australian commercial entity. The usual way to qualify is an active ABN or ACN.
- Foreign companies trading in Australia can qualify with an ARBN, or with an Australian registered trade mark or a pending trade mark application.
- You do not need a physical address in Australia. auDA does not consider your business address when assessing eligibility, only whether you meet the Australian presence requirement.
- The domain name itself has to connect to you. It can be an exact match of your company, business, trading or personal name, an acronym of that name, a match of your Australian trade mark, the name of a related company, partnership or trust, or a word that matches or is a synonym of a product, service, event, activity or venue you provide.
- Eligibility is not a one-off check at registration. You have to remain eligible for the whole licence term, and a licence that no longer qualifies can be cancelled.
- Licences are issued first come, first served to the first eligible applicant.
Renewing .com.au
- You can renew from 90 days before the expiry date, for a new term of one to five years.Renewing does not cost you time.
- The new term starts from the old expiry date, so a licence due to expire on 30 June and renewed on 12 July for five years still runs to 30 June five years later.
- If the licence expires, you have 30 calendar days to renew it late. The domain will usually stop resolving during this window, so the website and email go down. Treat it as a recovery window, not a grace period to plan around.
- .com.au has no redemption period. Unlike .com and other generic extensions there is no paid recovery phase afterwards. Once the 30 days pass, the name moves to pending delete, drops from the registry, and becomes available to anyone on a first come, first served basis.
- You must still meet the eligibility rules to renew.
Transferring .com.au
- Transferring a .com.au licence between registrars is free. auDA does not permit a fee to be charged for it.
- You need the authorisation code, sometimes called the EPP or auth code. It is unique to each domain licence and is not the password for your account with your current provider.
- If your current provider will not give you the code, you can request it yourself from auDA at pw.auda.org.au. It is emailed to the registrant contact on the domain, so check that address is current before you start.
- The request has to come from the registrant in writing, and you must still be eligible to hold the licence.
- Your new registrar must complete the transfer within two calendar days of the request.
- Transferring between registrars does not change the expiry date and does not add time to the licence.
- A domain cannot be transferred while it is subject to a complaint, a dispute resolution process or court proceedings.
Changing the owner of .com.au
- Changing the registrant of a .com.au domain is a transfer of the licence to a different person or entity. It is not an edit to a contact record.
- The incoming registrant has to meet the Australian presence, eligibility and allocation rules in their own right, which means the domain name must connect to their name, business or trade mark.
- The current registrant makes the request in writing to the registrar. The licence must not be expired, and must not be under a complaint or dispute.
- The incoming registrant enters a new licence agreement, chooses a new licence period of one to five years, and pays the licence fee for that term.
- If you are selling a business, request the transfer within 28 calendar days of entering the contract, unless the contract says otherwise.
- The registrar must action the transfer within two calendar days of the request.
- Updating contact details for the same registrant, such as a new email address or phone number, is not a transfer and has no effect on the term.
Technical details
DNSSEC
Supported
Maximum nameservers
13
Internationalised names
Not supported
Minimum nameservers
2
Registry and WHOIS
WHOIS server
whois.auda.org.au
- .au Domain Administration Limited (auDA), the administrator of the .au namespace: https://www.auda.org.au/
- The registry is operated by Identity Digital Australia under contract to auDA.
- Public WHOIS lookups: https://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/au-tools/au-whois/
- Authorisation code retrieval for registrants: https://pw.auda.org.au/
- Postal address deliberately left out — confirm auDA’s current address before
publishing it, this field is low priority per the brief.
Ready to register your .com.au domain?