- ABN details: entity name, ABN status with effective date, entity type, GST registration date, state and postcode
- ACN details: the same record resolved from a 9-digit Australian Company Number
- Name search: ranked candidates with ABN, status, name type, state and postcode for a typed business name
- Official, free government source — the Registrar's public ABN Lookup data, no paid data vendor in between
- Technical note: the service always returns JSONP (callback-wrapped JSON); Apivom documents the unwrap step
Australia ABN Lookup API (Australian Business Register)
Look up Australian businesses in the official Australian Business Register through ABN Lookup web services: ABN and ACN details with status, entity type, GST registration and location, plus name search with match scores — registered in Apivom Atlas as three read-only routes.
What you can do
Use cases
- Validate an ABN on invoices and onboarding forms — Check that a supplier's or customer's ABN is active and matches the entity name they gave you before you store it or rely on it for invoicing.
- Resolve a company number to its ABN record — Start from an ACN found on a contract or ASIC extract and pull the matching ABN, status and GST registration in one call.
- Find the right entity from a typed name — Search a trading or entity name, show the ranked candidates with state and postcode, and let the user pick the correct ABN instead of typing it.
The Australian Business Register (ABR) is the government register behind every Australian Business Number; its ABN Lookup web services publish the register's public data free of charge to registered integrators. Apivom Atlas registers the three JSON routes: abn-details resolves an 11-digit ABN to the entity name, ABN status and effective date, entity type, GST registration date and the business location (state and postcode); acn-details returns the same record from a 9-digit Australian Company Number; matching-names searches by name and returns ranked candidates with a match score, ABN, status and location, capped by maxResults. One quirk is worth knowing before you integrate: the service wraps every response as JSONP — callback(…) — whatever you pass as callback, so the wrapper has to be stripped before parsing; Apivom's integration guide documents the exact pattern. Trading names in the register have been frozen since 2012 and appear for historical reference only — registered business names are the current ones. No Apivom product workflow uses this source today; it is registered for tenants onboarding or verifying Australian customers and suppliers, and a product flow is scoped per customer.
Authentication
No Australian Business Register account is needed on your side: calls run under Apivom's registered ABN Lookup web-services GUID. Apivom Atlas stores nothing and logs each call per tenant. Not yet self-serve in the Atlas portal — request access and we enable it for your tenant.
Frequently asked questions
Does the response tell me whether the business is registered for GST?
Yes. The ABN and ACN details include the GST registration effective date when the entity is registered; an empty value means it is not currently registered. The ABN status (Active or Cancelled) and its effective date are returned alongside.
Why do I get callback(...) around the JSON?
ABN Lookup's JSON endpoints are JSONP by design and wrap every response in the callback function name, even when the callback parameter is empty. Strip the leading name and parentheses before parsing — the integration guide shows the one-line pattern.
Are trading names and business names the same thing?
No. The register stopped collecting trading names in 2012; they are shown for historical reference and carry no legal status. Registered business names are maintained by ASIC and appear in the business-name list of the record.
Can I buy this API self-serve in the Atlas portal?
Not yet. The source is registered in Apivom Atlas with its full route catalogue and AI integration guide, but per-query portal pricing has not been published. Request access and we enable it for your tenant with logging and quota visibility.
More Atlas integrations
AI integration guide (llms.txt)
Machine-readable markdown — feed it to your AI assistant as integration instructions.