Registering a website in Australia, almost every business owner hits the same fork in the road early on: lock in the familiar .com.au, or grab the shorter .au address that auDA opened up back in 2022. Most advice online either dodges the question or hedges so hard you're left no better off than before you searched.
It's worth five minutes of actual thought, because unlike a logo tweak or a new headline, a domain is painful to change once customers, suppliers and Google have all learned your address. Get it wrong and you're paying for two websites, redirects and reprinted signage to fix it later.
More than 740,000 Australian businesses and individuals registered the shorter .au address within its first year alone, according to auDA's own figures (auDA, 2023), so this isn't a fringe choice anymore. Here's how to actually decide.
- Choose .com.au if your exact business name is still available under it. It's still the extension Australian customers expect and type without thinking.
- Choose .au if your ideal .com.au name is taken, or you want a shorter, easier-to-say address for a new brand.
- Register both if you can stretch to roughly $40 to $55 a year combined. It's cheap insurance against a competitor or scammer grabbing the one you didn't take.
- The one thing that usually decides it: whether your exact name is still free as .com.au. If it is, take it first.
What a .com.au domain actually is, and who can register one
.com.au is the commercial second-level domain under Australia's country code, .au. It's been the default address for Australian businesses since the 1980s and 90s, long before .au direct existed, which is why it's still the extension most customers expect to see on an invoice, a shopfront sign or a business card. Registering one requires an eligible Australian presence, typically an ABN or ACN, under auDA's licensing rules. Sole traders, companies, partnerships and registered associations can all qualify, but you generally can't register a .com.au purely as an overseas entity with no Australian footprint.
What a .au domain actually is, and why it exists
The shorter .au address, often called ".au direct", launched on 24 March 2022 as an alternative that sits directly under .au rather than nested under com.au, net.au or org.au. The appeal is brevity: a name like yourbusiness.au is shorter to say, print and type than yourbusiness.com.au.
Existing holders of a matching .com.au, net.au, org.au, id.au or asn.au licence got first option on the equivalent .au direct name during a Priority Allocation Period that ran from 24 March 2022 to 20 September 2022 (Henry Hughes Lawyers, 2022). Where more than one eligible holder applied, licences created on or before 4 February 2018 took priority, and only names contested between several of those older holders stayed locked until one claimant remained. Anything unclaimed opened to general registration on 3 October 2022.
Uptake has been genuinely strong. auDA reported more than 740,000 .au direct domains registered within the first year, about 18 per cent of everything registered in the .au space and second only to .com.au itself (auDA, 2023). By February 2024, that had grown past 762,000 registrations, still holding at roughly 18 per cent of the total (auDA, 2024). So .au direct is a real, popular second choice today, not a gimmick that failed to catch on, but .com.au remains the namespace most Australians still default to first.
.com.au vs .au, side by side
| Factor | .com.au | .au |
|---|---|---|
| Who it suits | Established businesses wanting the extension customers already expect | Short rebrands, new names, or defensive registration |
| Eligibility | Commercial entity (ABN, ACN etc.) and a name linked to your business | Australian presence only (citizens and permanent residents qualify, no ABN needed) |
| Typical cost (AUD/yr) | Roughly $18 to $28 at mainstream registrars | Roughly $18 to $28, same registry wholesale price |
| Address length | Longer, includes "com." | Shorter, direct |
| How established | Default since the 1980s and 90s | Available only since March 2022 |
| Chance your name is free | Lower for names registered decades ago | Higher for many names, though 740,000+ were already claimed by 2023 |
| SEO signal | Geotargets Australia via the shared .au ccTLD | Identical geotargeting signal, same ccTLD |
| Risk someone else holds it | Possible, especially for common names | Possible too, particularly post priority-period |
| Best for | Businesses wanting the extension customers expect first | Businesses chasing a short URL or protecting their main domain |
What a domain actually costs in Australia
auDA sets a single wholesale price that registrars pay for a domain licence, and it applies the same way whether that licence is a .com.au or a .au direct name. Under auDA's current pricing statement, that wholesale price rose from $8.64 to $9.50 a year, ex GST, on 1 October 2026 (auDA, 2026). Because both extensions share the same wholesale floor, retail prices from Australian registrars tend to track each other closely too, usually landing somewhere in the high teens to high twenties per year once a first-year discount rolls off, plus GST.
A worked example
Say your business name is available as both yourbusiness.com.au and yourbusiness.au. Registering just the .com.au might run you roughly $20 to $25 a year at a mainstream Australian registrar. Registering both to protect your brand brings that to somewhere around $40 to $55 a year combined, a small, predictable cost next to what it takes to rebuild an audience around a new address later if someone else grabs the one you didn't register. We treat this the same way we treat a new client's domain during a web design project: lock in the name before you build anything on top of it, not after.
Does a .au domain help your SEO?
No, not in any way that's specific to choosing .au over .com.au. Google's current Search Central guidance on multi-regional sites explains that country-code domains provide a strong signal to both users and search engines that a site is intended for a certain country (Google Search Central, 2025). That's genuinely useful context, but it misses the detail that actually matters here: .com.au and .au both sit inside the same .au country-code domain. Google's geotargeting operates at that top level, not at the second-level split between "com.au" and plain "au", so switching from one to the other doesn't change your geographic signal at all. It only changes your address.
Several vendor blog posts claim a .au domain will "boost your ranking". We haven't seen evidence for that, and nothing in Google's own documentation supports it either. What actually moves local rankings is the work we cover in our SEO foundations guide: content, links, page speed and a properly set up Google Business Profile, not which side of the dot your name sits on.
Our verdict: which should you register first
Register your exact business name as .com.au first, if it's available. It costs about the same as .au, it's the extension almost every Australian customer still types without thinking, and it carries nearly four decades of familiarity that a four-year-old namespace hasn't built yet, whatever the registration numbers say about its growth.
If your ideal .com.au is already taken, don't assume you've lost the fight or overpay a domain squatter to get it back. Check whether the matching .au is free first. There's a reasonable chance it is, since 18 per cent of the .au namespace sitting on .au direct still leaves most of it elsewhere, and a short, clean .au address is a completely credible primary domain today, not a consolation prize.
If budget allows, register the matching .au defensively even once you've secured your .com.au, and point it at the same site with a redirect. At somewhere around $18 to $28 a year, it's cheap cover against a competitor, a disgruntled ex-employee or a phishing attempt using a near-identical address to your own. This kind of decision usually comes up early in a rebrand or new brand identity project, right alongside the logo and colours, so it's worth settling before the rest of the brand gets built around it. And if you're weighing up the bigger picture of what a new site will cost altogether, our guide to website costs in Sydney is the place to start.
