With six different Australian domains to select from, you can be forgiven for not knowing what domain you should choose. Should you go with the old, reliable .com.au domain, the new up and coming .au domain or perhaps something else?
Choosing a domain name is always a big decision, so to help you avoid making the wrong choice, we’re going to pit the two most popular Australian domain names against each other across various categories and see who comes out on top.
Let’s go find out who wins in this .com.au vs .au head-to-head analysis.
What audiences do .com.au and .au target?
If the primary reason you’re looking to register an Australian domain name is to reach an Australian audience, .com.au and .au will both get the job done. In fact, any of the six Australian domains (.net.au, .org.au, .id.au and .asn.au are also available) would be suitable for targeting an Australian audience.
Unlike .com, which is a global domain name and can be used to target any country, when someone sees a website using a domain that ends in .au, they’ll immediately know that website is targeting Aussies. That kind of immediate user feedback is invaluable and a big benefit country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) have over generic top-level domains (TLDs) like .com or .net.
We actually go over the major differences between .com.au and .com in our in-depth .com vs .com.au article so feel free to check it out if you’re considering .com as an option but let’s continue on with our .com.au vs .au analysis.
How popular is .com.au vs .au?
The .com.au domain name has been synonymous with Australian domain names for 30 years, so you’d expect it to be much more popular than .au. And it is, but .au ain’t no push-over.
At the time this article was published, there were 3,100,000 .com.au domains registered verses 770,000 registered .au domains.
Now that seems like a pretty big gap, but when you consider .com.au has been offering registrations since the 1990s, while .au was only launched a year ago, it shows that .au is 100% in demand. This is especially true when you compare it against .net.au, which has been available for the same amount of time as .com.au but currently has 212,000 total registered domains.
.com.au vs .au: SEO
If you’re looking to rank higher with Australians when they search on places like google.com.au, then .com.au and .au are both good for SEO purposes. Neither has outright advantages over the other.
There theoretically could be additional SEO benefits for .com.au due to the fact it’s been around much longer than .au so it could be considered more trustworthy by users, which could lead to more clicks, a better click-through-rate and thus a better chance to have a higher ranking but there’s no way of knowing if this theoretical scenario has any basis in reality. For that reason, we can’t give .com.au a tick of approval over .au for SEO.
Are .com.au and .au priced differently?
When .au was first launched in 2022, some registrars offered .au domain registrations at cost price as a way to get people locked into their ecosystem. Pretty smart ey? Those days are long gone, and you’ll now find .au is priced very similar to .com.au, with both in the $12 AUD to $20 AUD per year price range.
At OnlyDomains, we currently provide .com.au domain registrations for $14.99 AUD and $16.99 AUD for .au domains. Whilst .au is a bit higher, it’s only a few dollars so there’s not much of a price difference between either domain.
Both .com.au and .au also come with the same number of added extras, such as 24hr customer support, a free business email trial and free DNS hosting.
Does .com.au or .au have domain requirements?
We can confirm that both .com.au and .au are considered restricted domain names and thus require additional details before they can be successfully registered.
For .com.au, to register a domain your best chance is to be the owner of an Australian Business Number (ABN). There are additional options available to you, like being an Australian trademark holder and we go over those options in further detail in our how to get a .com.au domain without an abn article, but most people opt for supplying an ABN to register their domain.
The requirements for .au are more lenient when compared against .com.au. For .au, whilst an ABN is still valid, if you don’t have one then providing proof that you’re an Australian citizen should be good enough. This is done by supplying a valid Australian passport or driver’s license ID number.
Due to being less strict, we give .au the thumbs up over .com.au when it comes to domain requirements.
The .com.au vs .au conclusion
Congratulations for making it to the end. As a reward, here’s an abbreviated version of all the previously discussed points.
| .com.au | .au | |
| Registration Price (excl GST at OnlyDomains) |
$14.99 AUD | $16.99 AUD |
| Audience | Australian Users | Australia Users |
| Availability | Somewhat limited | Not limited |
| Popularity | Very popular | Popular |
| SEO | Benefits in Australia | Benefits in Australia |
| Eligibility | ABN Holders | Australian citizens |
When compacted into a nice table, there really doesn’t appear to be a massive difference between both domains.
Both .com.au and .au are similarly priced, target Australian users, are popular in Australia and have Australian SEO benefits. The only major difference is the domain requirements for each.
Due to being so similar, it does make it hard to recommend one over the other. As previously mentioned though, .com.au has been synonymous with Australian domain names for a very long time and that kind of mindshare is very powerful if you’re trying to market a website.
If you’re an ABN holder, I would go with .com.au simply because .com.au is still the daddy of all Australian domain names and that does count for something. A .au domain name is a great alternative if you don’t have an ABN but are an Australian citizen.
To conclude, you can’t go wrong with either .com.au or .au.
