ASIC Australian Companies – ACN/ABN Lookup & New Registrations

Get Australian company records from ASIC's Company Dataset — the official weekly snapshot of the ASIC company register (about 4.45 million name records, every registered company plus companies deregistered in the last year), published by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission on data.gov.au under CC BY 3.0 AU.

• New registrations: companies registered (or deregistered) in a date window — by default the 7 days up to the latest weekly extract, newest first.
• Search: look companies up by name keywords (current or former names), ACN/ARBN or ABN — up to 2,000 numbers per run.
• Filters: status (registered, deregistered, external administration, strike-off…), type (proprietary, public, foreign, registered body), class, sub class, previous state of registration, and "changed in the latest weekly extract".
• One row per company: current name, all former names, ACN, ABN, type, class, sub class, status (codes and ASIC's descriptions), registration and deregistration dates, previous state of registration, and the extract date the row comes from.

It reads the data through data.gov.au's documented CKAN API (the DataStore query interface that ASIC's own help file for this dataset recommends). No browser, no login, no API key, no proxy.

Quick start — verified input

Newest companies registered in the last week (this is also what an empty input {} does):

{
  "mode": "recent",
  "dateField": "registered",
  "lastDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 100
}

Search by name (whole words; former names count too):

{
  "mode": "search",
  "companyNames": ["Woolworths"],
  "maxItems": 50
}

Look up a list of company numbers:

{
  "mode": "search",
  "acns": ["004 085 616", "000 000 019"],
  "abns": ["53 004 085 616"]
}

Input

Field	What it does
mode	recent (default): companies registered/deregistered in a date window. search: look up by name, ACN/ARBN or ABN. Entering ACNs/ABNs switches to search automatically.
companyNames	Name keywords, e.g. "Woolworths", "bp australia", "mining*". Every word must be a whole word of one name (any order); * matches the start of a word. In recent mode they narrow the new registrations.
acns	ACNs or ARBNs (9 digits; spaces and "ACN" labels are fine). Numbers that fail the check digit are skipped and listed in RUN_SUMMARY.invalidNumbers.
abns	ABNs (11 digits). This dataset holds companies only — no sole traders, partnerships or trusts.
dateField	registered (default) or deregistered (ASIC keeps deregistered companies here for one year).
lastDays	recent mode: the N days up to and including the latest weekly extract (1–366, default 7).
dateFrom, dateTo	Optional window, YYYY-MM-DD (also DD/MM/YYYY, 1-Jul-2026, today, -30d). Up to 3,660 days in recent mode; any range in search mode.
statuses	REGD, DRGD, EXAD, SOFF, NOAC, NRGD, PROV, DISS, DIV3, PEND, CNCL — or names like "registered", "liquidation", "strike off".
types	APTY (proprietary), APUB (public), FNOS (foreign company), RACN (registered Australian body).
classes, subClasses	ASIC class codes (LMSH, LMGT, LMSG, NLIA, UNLM, NONE) and sub class codes (LIST, ULST, PROP, PSTC, PNPC, HUNT, …).
previousStates	NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, ACT, NT — the state an older company was originally registered in (before 1991).
onlyChangedThisWeek	Only companies that are new or whose name, type, class, sub class or status changed since the previous weekly extract. With statuses: ["EXAD"] you get this week's companies entering external administration.
includeFormerNameMatches	Return companies whose former name matches a keyword (default true).
maxItems	Maximum companies (default 100, up to 100,000). Raised automatically to cover an ACN/ABN list.
maxApiRequests	Hard request budget (default 30, up to 500).

Output

One item per company:

{
  "companyName": "B P AUSTRALIA PTY LTD",
  "acn": "004085616",
  "abn": "53004085616",
  "type": "APTY",
  "typeDescription": "Australian proprietary company",
  "class": "LMSH",
  "classDescription": "Limited by shares",
  "subClass": "PROP",
  "subClassDescription": "Proprietary other",
  "status": "REGD",
  "statusDescription": "Registered",
  "registrationDate": "1920-08-25",
  "deregistrationDate": null,
  "previousStateOfRegistration": "VIC",
  "stateRegistrationNumber": "C0007382M",
  "currentNameStartDate": "2002-03-26",
  "previousNames": ["B P AUSTRALIA LIMITED", "THE COMMONWEALTH OIL REFINERIES LIMITED"],
  "modifiedSinceLastReport": false,
  "matchedBy": "acn",
  "matchedTerm": "004085616",
  "datasetExtractDate": "2026-10-13",
  "datasetLastModified": "2026-10-12T13:53:24Z",
  "source": "ASIC Company Dataset (Australian Securities and Investments Commission), published on data.gov.au",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/asic-companies",
  "license": "Attribution: Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Commonwealth of Australia, ASIC - Company Dataset, sourced on 2026-10-13, https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/asic-companies. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/). Changed by this tool: ...",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-13T00:05:00.000Z"
}

• acn is the 9-digit number from the dataset's ACN column (for type RACN, ASIC's data dictionary says it is the ARBN).
• abn is null when the company has no ABN (ASIC publishes 0); brand-new companies often have none yet.
• matchedBy: name, formerName, acn, abn, dateWindow or filters.
• datasetExtractDate: the day of the weekly ASIC extract the row comes from (Sydney time).
• A run summary (window, counts, numbers not found, requests used, complete) is saved as RUN_SUMMARY in the key-value store.

Freshness

ASIC uploads a new extract every Tuesday (Australian time). Each row says which extract it comes from. For real-time details of a single company use ASIC Connect (ASIC's own search, some products are paid).

Common input mistakes

You entered	What happens / what to enter
companyNames: ["Woolw"]	Words must be whole words. Use "woolw*" for the start of a word.
companyNames: ["004 085 616"]	Recognised as an ACN and searched as one (a warning says so).
acns: ["4085616"] (zeros lost in a spreadsheet)	Padded back to 004085616. A number that fails the check digit is skipped and reported.
mode: "search" with no names or numbers	The run stops at once and explains what to enter. Use mode: "recent" to list new registrations.
previousStates: ["Sydney"]	Accepted as NSW, but note this is the pre-1991 state of registration, not the office location (the dataset has no address).
dateField: "deregistered" with a window older than one year	ASIC keeps deregistered companies here for one year only; older ones are not in the dataset.

Empty results?

• A keyword that is not a whole word of any company name (try * or fewer words).
• Filters that exclude everything (e.g. a status plus a type plus a previous state).
• A very short window on a weekend or holiday.
• ACNs/ABNs of companies deregistered more than a year ago (listed in RUN_SUMMARY.notFoundAcns / notFoundAbns).

A run that finds nothing still succeeds (0 items, complete: true) and logs why it may be empty.

Run time and resources

Job	Requests	Typical time
Quick start (100 newest companies)	2	5–10 s
One name search	2–3	5–10 s
1,000 ACNs	11	about 30–40 s
5,000 companies from a window	6	about 20–30 s

Requests are sent one at a time, at least 2 seconds apart. The Actor runs in 256 MB with no proxy, so platform usage per run is a small fraction of a compute unit.

What is not included

• No officeholders, shareholders, contact details or addresses — the ASIC dataset does not contain them, and this Actor adds none.
• No registered office or postcode: "previous state of registration" is the only state field (older companies only).
• Companies deregistered more than one year ago are not in the dataset.

Attribution and licence

The data is © Commonwealth of Australia (ASIC), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia. data.gov.au asks for this form of attribution: Organisation name, jurisdiction, title of dataset, date the content was sourced, dataset URL — every item carries it in license, for example:

Attribution: Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Commonwealth of Australia, ASIC - Company Dataset, sourced on 2026-10-13, https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/asic-companies.

If you republish the data, keep that attribution, say what you changed, and do not suggest that ASIC or data.gov.au endorses you.

Disclaimer

• Unofficial: this Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by ASIC, data.gov.au or the Commonwealth of Australia.
• It uses only public data from the official open-data portal, through its documented API.
• You are responsible for using the data lawfully and in line with the source's terms and the licence.
• GDPR and privacy: the output contains company-level register data only. Some company names include a person's name; treat such data according to the privacy laws that apply to you.