.com.au versus .au versus .com

A business choosing between .com.au, a bare .au and .com is really choosing between three different things: a namespace with an eligibility test attached, a newer namespace with the same test attached, and an open namespace with no Australian eligibility test at all. Ten searches a month in Australia ask directly about .com.au eligibility, measured 3 August 2026 in research/outer-volume-au.json — a small but genuinely commercial number, because the answer decides whether a registration attempt succeeds.

This page explains the shape of the choice in general terms. The full detail of the eligibility rules themselves — who qualifies, and the current state of the rules review — is on Australian domain eligibility, which this page defers to rather than repeats, and neither page is a substitute for reading auDA’s own published rules.

.com.au — the commercial domain namespace, with a test attached

.com.au (and .net.au, treated as equivalent to it under current rules) is reserved for registrants with a genuine Australian presence, and the domain itself has to relate to that registrant. Since 12 April 2021 that relationship is tested as a Match or a Synonym — a Match being the domain identical, in order, to the registrant’s legal name, a registered business name, or a trade mark they hold; a Synonym being the domain a genuine synonym of a good, service, activity, premises, event or profession the registrant actually deals in. That current test replaced an older, vaguer “close and substantial connection” standard, and it is worth stating plainly that anyone still describing the rule in those older terms is describing something auDA stopped applying years ago.

A bare .au domain name — the same test, a shorter address

Direct .au, opened in March 2022, sits at the second level with nothing in front of it — a business could hold example.au rather than example.com.au. It carries the same Australian presence requirement and the same Match-or-Synonym test as .com.au; it is not a looser namespace, only a shorter one. A business eligible for one is, in the ordinary case, eligible for the other, and many registrants hold both, pointing one at the other, specifically to protect the name from being registered by someone else under the shorter form.

.com — no Australian eligibility test at all

A .com is administered globally, with no Australian presence requirement and no Match-or-Synonym test. Anyone, anywhere, can generally register an available .com. That openness is exactly why it offers a business no protection against someone else registering the matching name — nothing about Australian trading rights follows from holding a .com the way eligibility rules attach meaning to holding a .com.au.

Why this is not simply “which looks more professional”

The three options are not aesthetic choices sitting on equal footing. A .com.au or .au registration is evidence, checkable by anyone through auDA’s public WHOIS lookup, that a registrant met a genuine eligibility bar tied to their actual Australian business. A .com carries no equivalent signal, because none is required to hold one. For a business trading only in Australia, that is a real, if quiet, difference in what the domain communicates, separate from any question of length or brand preference.

A short domain name comparison

	.com.au / .au	.com
Australian presence required	Yes	No
Name must Match or be a Synonym of the registrant	Yes	No
Administered by	auDA	Global registries, no single national authority
What it signals	A checked Australian eligibility bar was met	Nothing about trading location

One live caveat, stated once and worth repeating

auDA’s .au Licensing Rules Review is ongoing. A draft report was published in June 2026; public consultation on it closed on 10 July 2026, and the Policy Advisory Panel is now preparing its final recommendations for the auDA Board. None of the current rules — including the Match-or-Synonym test — has changed as a result. None of the detail above is settled for the long term. Anyone making a decision that turns on the fine detail of eligibility or allocation should check the current position directly with auDA rather than rely on this page, or any other, to have kept pace with it.

Why registering both .com.au and the matching .com is common practice

Many Australian businesses register both, using the .com.au or .au as the primary address while holding the .com defensively to prevent an unrelated party — often overseas — registering the identical global name and creating confusion. This is not required, but it is a common, low-cost piece of brand protection worth budgeting for alongside the primary registration, particularly for a business with any international dealings or ambitions.

Namespaces beyond the four covered here

A small number of further, more specialised namespaces exist within the .au space, generally reserved for particular sectors or purposes and carrying their own specific eligibility criteria beyond the general rules described above. These are a minority interest for most small businesses and are not covered in detail here; auDA’s own published rules list the full set for anyone whose business genuinely falls into one of those specific categories.

What to do next: check whether you’re eligible, then register

Check your own business’s actual eligibility — legal name, registered business name, or trade mark — against the Match-or-Synonym test before choosing between .com.au and a bare .au, and register both if the name matters to the business, because holding one does not reserve the other. The registration mechanics themselves are on choosing and registering a domain name, and a supplier commissioned to build the site should be confirming this eligibility question as a normal part of website design services, not leaving it for the business to discover unassisted.