Buy .au Domain Name

Second-level .au names are open to organisations and individuals alike; the only condition is Australian presence. Australian citizens and permanent residents meet it inherently, while companies meet it through an ABN, ACN, ARBN or a registered business name. Unlike com.au and org.au, the extension does not ask whether the applicant is commercial or not-for-profit, so personal projects can register too. Where no connection can be shown, the registration is not completed.

.au is the short address taken directly at the second level and does not look at what type of applicant you are. .com.au is open only to commercial entities and requires the name to connect to your company name, trade mark or the services you provide. In practice: choose .au for a short, unrestricted name, and .com.au when you want the address itself to signal commercial identity. Many businesses hold both and redirect one to the other.

The requirement demonstrates a genuine connection to the country. For local businesses an ABN, ACN or ARBN, or a registered business name, is enough. Individuals meet it through citizenship or permanent residency. Organisations with no registered structure in the country meet it through an Australian registered trade mark. You do not need to open a physical office in Australia; what is required is a registered connection, not an address.

Yes, but the Australian presence requirement applies to applicants abroad as well. If you have no registered business in the country, you can establish the connection through an Australian registered trade mark or a trade mark application. Where an application rests on a trade mark, the rules limit how the domain may relate to it; on the .com.au side the name must be an exact match to the words of the mark. Have your evidence ready before applying.

No. When second-level .au registrations opened on 24 March 2022, a period ran that gave existing com.au, org.au and net.au holders priority to apply for the .au version of their name. That period closed on 20 September 2022. Today .au names go to the first eligible applicant. So if the name you want is free, waiting gains you nothing — the order of applications decides the outcome.

.au names can be moved between providers. Transferring does not remove the eligibility condition: your Australian presence must still hold under the new registration record, otherwise the transfer does not complete. The remaining registration period is preserved after the move, and your website and email keep working uninterrupted as long as you do not change name servers. You can start on the domain transfer page.

You can see whether a .au name is registered, and the general state of the record, through its WHOIS entry. Because of data protection obligations the registry publishes registrant contact details only in limited form, so a lookup will usually show you the status of the name and its registration dates. Run the lookup on the whois search page, and check whether a name is still free with domain search.