Choosing between a .au and .com.au domain for your business

You have built the website, written the copy and picked a hosting plan. The last step at the registrar's checkout is the one you did not think about until the dropdown appeared: do you take yourbusiness.com.au, yourbusiness.au, or something else entirely? It looks like a small decision, but the suffix you choose determines who can register the name, whether the name has to match your legal identity, and what you can do if someone else takes it first.

The three options on the table

For an Australian business there are really three places to put a website address, and they are governed by different rules:

The traditional Australian namespace: .com.au and its cousins .net.au, .org.au, .id.au and the state-based namespaces have existed for decades and are regulated by .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), the administrator and self-regulatory policy body for the .au domain space.
.au direct: the newer namespace of names like yourbusiness.au with no second-level label at all. It launched on 24 March 2022, and auDA describes it as the biggest innovation in the .au domain in more than 20 years.
The generic space: .com, .net, .org and the rest, which are open to anyone anywhere in the world with no Australian eligibility rules attached.

The practical question for most businesses is narrower than "which suffix should I use". It is usually ".au or .com.au, now, given who I am and the name I want". That is the decision worth working through, because two assumptions people bring to it are wrong. First, .au and .com.au are not interchangeable: they have different eligibility tests and different rules about what names you may take. Second, registering one does not protect the other: if someone else takes yourbusiness.au while you hold yourbusiness.com.au, your older registration gives you no automatic right to the newer name.

Weighing up the choice

Do you qualify to hold the name?

Every .au domain, whether .au direct or .com.au, is subject to the Australian Presence requirement. auDA explains that this means anyone registering a .au domain must show a validated connection to Australia. The most common ways to satisfy it are:

ABN or ACN: holding an Australian Business Number or having a company registered under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth).
Citizenship or residency: being an Australian citizen or permanent resident.
Australian trade mark: holding, or having applied for, an Australian trade mark, but only for a name that exactly matches the trade mark.
Other entities: incorporated associations, charities, cooperatives, registered political parties and government bodies also qualify.

Your registrar must validate this at registration, at renewal and on any transfer to a new registrant, typically against documents such as an ABN record or an Australian-issued driver's licence. The full list sits in the definitions section of the .au Licensing Rules.

That is where .au and .com.au start to differ:

Option A, .au direct: you need an Australian presence, and nothing more. A sole trader with an ABN, an individual citizen and a large company all stand on the same footing.
Option B, .com.au: you must be a Commercial Entity (broadly, a company, an ABN holder or a similar registered business, not an individual trading on citizenship alone) and the name must meet the connection rules discussed below.

If you are an individual wanting a personal or hobby site, .au direct is effectively your only Australian option, because .com.au is reserved for commercial entities. If you are a business, you qualify for both.

Does the name you want pass the rules?

The name rules are where the two namespaces diverge most sharply. For .au direct, the only requirement beyond Australian presence is availability. You can register a name that has nothing to do with your registered business name, which is why auDA markets the namespace as well suited to short, memorable names, new ventures and one-off campaigns. There is no rule that the name must match your company, your trade mark or anything else about you.

For .com.au and .net.au, auDA's rules require both a Commercial Entity and a connection between the name and the registrant. The name must be:

a match of your company, business or personal name, or an acronym of it;
a match of your Australian trade mark;
a match or acronym of a related company's name, or of a partnership or trust you are involved in; or
a match or synonym of a service you provide, goods you sell, an event you run or sponsor, an activity you facilitate or teach, or premises you operate.

In practice this means a trading business can usually register its own name in .com.au without difficulty, but a completely unrelated word is harder to justify. The old "close and substantial connection" idea lives on in this form: the name has to be connected to what you actually do.

Whatever namespace you choose, the technical rules are the same. Names must be at least two characters, use only letters, numbers and hyphens, and cannot start or end with a hyphen. Certain names are reserved entirely: state and territory names, the word "Australia", names restricted under Australian law, and names that could be confused with the namespace itself, such as co.au.

Who are your customers?

The trust argument is the reason most Australian businesses consider .au at all, and it rests on a real rule rather than marketing. Because every registrant must maintain a validated Australian presence, a .au address is a signal that the site is run by someone with a genuine connection to Australia. auDA's own position is that this helps reduce misleading registrations, impersonation and misuse of Australian brand identity, and it means a .au registrant is subject to Australian law.

How much that is worth depends on your market:

Selling mainly to Australian consumers: the local signal is a genuine advantage, particularly for a new business with no established reputation.
Selling overseas: a .com address is more globally neutral, and international customers may not recognise the Australian signal. A .au suffix can even be a mild drawback if your brand is meant to be location-neutral.
Hybrid businesses: there is no rule forcing a choice. Many businesses keep a .com for international traffic and a .au or .com.au for the local market.

One point to be careful about: search engines generally treat a country-code domain as a signal of geographic relevance, but rankings depend on far more than the suffix. Treat the local signal as a small factor in your favour, not a substitute for decent search optimisation.

Is the name already taken?

Domains are allocated first come, first served, and you do not own one: auDA issues a licence to use the name, and a licence confers no proprietary rights. That matters because of the window that has already closed. When .au direct launched in 2022, existing holders of matching .com.au, .net.au and other names had a priority period to claim the exact-match .au name before the public. That period ran from 24 March to 20 September 2022, and names without a priority application became generally available from 3 October 2022.

The consequence is straightforward: if the .au version of your name was registered during or after that process, it is now held by someone else, and your .com.au registration gives you no right to take it back. Your options are to negotiate a purchase from the current holder, to use a different name, or, where you hold rights in the name, to bring a complaint under the .au Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP). The auDRP is a cheaper, faster alternative to litigation for disputes over legal rights to a .au domain licence, and it is the mechanism trade mark owners use against cybersquatters.

The practical lesson runs the other way too: if you are eligible now and the name is free, the cost of taking the .au version of your primary name is usually small, and it stops someone else from holding it. auDA's own comparison point is New Zealand, where after .nz direct names launched in 2014, around one in five registrants chose the shorter direct form.

A domain registration is a renewable licence with ongoing conditions, not a one-off purchase. The obligations worth knowing before you commit:

Renewal: licences run in terms of one to five years, and a lapse means the name can go back into the pool.
Continuing eligibility: you must keep your Australian presence for the whole licence. If your trade mark lapses, your company deregisters or you cease to hold an ABN, auDA can cancel the licence.
Accurate records: you must keep your registry data true and current, and tell your registrar about changes within 14 days.
No dealing in the licence: in most non-commercial namespaces, holding names purely to resell them (domain monetisation) is prohibited, and you generally cannot rent or sub-licence a name to a third party.

None of this is onerous for a genuine business, but it means the suffix choice is not "set and forget". If your structure changes down the track, for instance if a company deregisters, the licence is cancelled 30 days later unless it is properly transferred to an eligible entity first.

When to talk to Artificer Legal before you register

Most domain registrations are routine and do not need a lawyer. The exceptions are worth flagging early, because they are far cheaper to deal with before the name is taken than after. An Artificer Legal practitioner can help in four situations in particular:

Eligibility: if your structure is unusual, such as a foreign company trading into Australia, a trust or a partnership, working out whether you meet the Australian Presence test and which namespace you qualify for is not always obvious, and a mistake at renewal can cost you the name.
Trade mark strategy: an Australian trade mark gives you an eligibility pathway and, more importantly, the standing to bring an auDRP complaint against someone holding your name in bad faith. Whether to register a mark, and for what goods and services, is a decision that shapes your ability to protect the domain later.
Disputes and acquisitions: if someone else holds the .au name you want, a practitioner can assess whether an auDRP complaint is worth bringing, negotiate a purchase from the current holder, or draft the transfer documents the Licensing Rules require. The same applies in reverse if a complaint is made against your own registration.
Domains changing hands in a bigger deal: buying or selling a business usually involves transferring its domain licences, and the transfer has to satisfy auDA's eligibility and allocation criteria. A lawyer can make sure the domains actually move with the business and that the new owner remains eligible to hold them.

The name you trade under deserves both suffixes

The part of this decision people most often get wrong is assuming that holding yourbusiness.com.au protects yourbusiness.au. It does not. The priority window closed in 2022, and every .au name since then has been allocated first come, first served. If the direct .au version of your name is still free and you are eligible, the cheapest protection available is usually to register it now rather than discover later that a squatter holds it.

The rest of the decision is a short checklist. If you are a commercial entity and your name connects to what you do, .com.au remains a safe default that customers recognise. If you want a shorter name, a personal site or a name unrelated to your registered identity, .au direct is the namespace that allows it, provided you can show an Australian presence. And if your market is genuinely global, a .com may serve you better regardless of what the Australian namespaces offer. Eligibility, name rules, customer signal and dispute risk: work through those four and the suffix picks itself.