Australia ABR / ABN Company Scraper

Scrape Australian Business Register (ABR) entity records by name search or direct ABN lookup.

What it does

This actor queries the Australian Business Register — the authoritative, free source for Australian entity status and GST registration data. For each matched entity it fetches:

• ABN (Australian Business Number, formatted as XX XXX XXX XXX)
• ACN (Australian Company Number from ASIC, where present)
• Entity name and entity type (e.g. Australian Private Company, Sole Trader, Trust)
• ABN status (Active / Cancelled) and the date it took effect
• GST registration status and effective date
• Main business location (state and postcode)
• Registered business names (from the ASIC Business Names Register)
• Trading names (legacy, collected before May 2012)
• Full status history — chronological timeline of all name, status, GST, and location changes as a JSON array

Why ABR

The Australian Business Register is the free, authoritative substitute for paid ASIC company searches ($10/search). It provides real-time entity status, GST registration, all registered business names, and complete historical records — the full KYB (Know Your Business) picture at zero per-query cost.

Use cases

• KYB / due diligence: Verify Australian business entity status before entering a contract
• Lead enrichment: Append entity type, GST status, and location to business contact lists
• Compliance monitoring: Track ABN status changes for a portfolio of entities
• Research: Bulk entity data for market analysis, academic research, or data products
• ASIC cost reduction: Replace $10/search ASIC lookups with free ABR data

Input

Field	Type	Description
queries	array	Name / keyword search terms (e.g. ["woolworths", "bhp"]). Results are the matching entities on ABR.
abns	array	Direct ABN list for lookup (e.g. ["88000014675", "51 824 753 556"]). Takes priority over queries when provided.
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of entity records to return (default: 10, 0 = unlimited)

Modes:

• Query mode (default): Supply queries → ABR search results → full entity detail
• Direct ABN mode: Supply abns → fetch each ABN detail page directly (faster, no search step)

Output

Each item in the dataset represents one ABN entity:

{
  "abn": "88 000 014 675",
  "acn": "000 014 675",
  "entity_name": "WOOLWORTHS GROUP LIMITED",
  "entity_type": "Australian Public Company",
  "abn_status": "Active",
  "abn_status_from_date": "01 Nov 1999",
  "gst_registered": true,
  "gst_from_date": "01 Jul 2000",
  "main_business_location_state": "NSW",
  "main_business_location_postcode": "2153",
  "business_names": "WOOLWORTHS\nBIG W\nSAFEWAY\n...",
  "trading_names": "WOOLWORTHS\nDICK SMITH ELECTRONICS\n...",
  "entity_status_history": "[{\"category\":\"Entity name\",\"value\":\"WOOLWORTHS GROUP LIMITED\",\"from_date\":\"08 Dec 2017\",\"to_date\":\"(current)\"}, ...]",
  "source_url": "https://abr.business.gov.au/ABN/View?abn=88000014675"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: charged per entity record successfully extracted.

Technical notes

• No proxy required — ABR returns clean 200 responses without any proxy
• Rate limiting — Actor uses polite concurrency (5 parallel requests) to respect the public government registry
• History — Each entity's full history page is fetched to populate entity_status_history
• Source — Data sourced directly from Australian Business Register (ABR Lookup)

Legal

Data sourced from the Australian Business Register (ABR Lookup) operated by the Australian Taxation Office. The ABR provides publicly available information. Use in accordance with the ABR data disclaimer.